Multiword Expressions Research Articles

Los fraseologismos en el aula de prácticas de traducción: estudio de caso sobre el impacto de los traductores automáticos

Abstract The use of machine translation (MT) systems by undergraduate and postgraduate students has been analysed in different studies (Sycz-Opoń and Gałuskina 2017; Jia et al. 2019; Loock and Léchauguette 2021, to mention a few). An analysis of the German-into-Basque translation of multi-word expressions (Sanz-Villar 2024) observed that students’ dependence on MT systems was very high; i.e., traces of the MT proposals were found in the outputs of translation trainees. To specifically analyse the impact of MT proposals on students’ translations, two tasks were designed in 2021 in which nine students participated. Both tasks consisted of translating an excerpt of a children’s literary text from German into Basque. The first translation task was done with the aid of MT tools and the second was a from-scratch translation where the use of MT systems was not allowed. The goal of the present study is to compare the results of both tasks, focusing on the translation of phraseological units (PUs) to observe the features of students’ translations accomplished with and without the aid of MT tools. Since students used MT outputs during the first translation task, machine-translated texts are also compared to human-translated ones. The results show that the tendency to retain the phraseological character of the original text is stronger in professional translations than in machine-translated texts. In general, reliance on MT system outputs when translating PUs is quite strong among trainee translators. When comparing the results of the two tasks, it was observed that for some students, the number of techniques used to maintain the phraseological level of the original text increased in the translation done without MT. Interestingly, examples of creative translations were found in the translations done without the aid of MT tools.

Adding a Piece to the Puzzle: Children’s Exposure to Idioms

Idioms are figurative multiword expressions that need to be learned as part of the native phrasal vocabulary. While it has been shown that non-figurative multiword expressions are acquired with language exposure, the learning process for idioms may be different because the figurative meaning adds complexity to the learning task. Idiom vocabulary overall develops relatively late, but it is unknown to what extent children are exposed to idioms, and what kinds of idioms they encounter. Here, we investigated children’s idiom exposure and its effect on the development of idiom vocabulary in three studies: we explore the frequency of a well-tested set of Dutch idioms in a corpus of child literature, test idiom familiarity in a controlled setting in primary school children, and compare those findings to a set of online familiarity ratings. We find that children’s idiom exposure differs from adult idiom exposure, when comparing idiom frequencies based on children’s books and a corpus with resources for adults. Idiom decomposability and idiom frequencies from the children’s books, but not frequencies from the adult corpus, influenced the familiarity ratings of older children, suggesting that language exposure and idiom characteristics, such as decomposability, both play a role in idiom acquisition.

Improving Classroom Teaching and Learning of Multi-Word Expressions for Conversational Use Through Action Research with Learner Feedback

Multi-word expressions make up a large proportion of the English language and particularly spoken language. Using multi-word expressions can assist with the impression of fluency, making them useful for language learners to know and use. However, proven methods for teaching this language phenomenon are required, so that learners can easily use multi-word expressions in their conversations. The purpose of the study was to examine the efficacy of a fluency workshop focused on multi-word expression use in conversation and to determine the most appropriate implementation for the Japanese context. An action research structure was used over three iterations of the fluency workshop, learner feedback and teacher observations were used to make improvements. Learner feedback regarding the usefulness of each activity for learning English was compared between the original cohort and subsequent cohorts. The results showed significant differences in levels of perceived usefulness for activities where improvements were made, but also for some activities where no specific improvement was made, suggesting that teaching improves through practice. Pedagogical implications include maximising the time on task via clear instructions, providing visual time constraints, and offering scaffolding to support the use of multi-word expressions when recall seems beyond a learner.

국어의 조사를 대체하는 다단어 표현 연구: 체계기능언어학의 경험적 은유의 관점

Objectives The purpose of this paper is to explain the relationship between experiential metaphors and multiword expressions that substitute for postpositional markers in Korean from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics. Methods grammatical metaphor, a concept introduced in Halliday (1985), operates in the opposite direction of metaphor to lexical metaphor. Whereas lexical metaphor starts at the lexical-grammatical level and realizes ‘alternative meanings’ at the discourse-semantic level, grammatical metaphor starts at the discourse-semantic level and realizes ‘alternative forms’ at the lexical-grammatical level. More specifically, circumstantial(or postpositional) metaphor is a phenomenon in which a multiword expression, such as phrase or clause, metaphorizes the meaning of a particular adverbial postposition, and has various lexicogrammatical alternative realizations. Here, the former circumstantial metaphoric expressions are called incongruent, and the latter adverbial postpositions are called congruent. Results The results of this study show that multiword expressions in Korean three different kinds: verbatim type, experiential metaphor type (Type I), experiential idiomatic type (Type II). Among these, the verbatim is only recognized as an entry stage for multiword expressions. After reviewing in detail the lists of previous studies (postpostion equivalents, postpostional collocation, periphrastic construction, grammaticalization, etc.), this paper applies the criteria of non-congruent, congruent, and postpositional meanings to them, and finally selects 34 experiential metaphors that substitute for postpositional markers and 13 idiomatic forms that replace postpositional markers. Conclusions Although we have limited our discussion to grammatical metaphors as substitution for postpositional markers, the scope of application of grammatical metaphors is very broad, and future research efforts need to continue to expand the scope.

Differentiating Brazilian and European Portuguese Multiword Adverbs

The identification of Portuguese multiword adverbs in texts such as de fininho ‘sneakily’ or em plena luz do dia ‘in broad daylight’ is an essential part of determining the meaning units forming a text. This paper explores the boundaries of adverbial multiword expressions in European and Brazilian Portuguese varieties. The primary purpose is to determine the frequency and distribution of the expressions in the pt TenTen18 corpusfrom Sketch Engine. Furthermore, we aim to analyze lexical and grammatical differences, as well as some cases of ambiguity and faux-amis(false-friends) between the two varieties. Finally, we seek to establish the boundaries of the variety-specific lexicon (European and Brazilian), which is part of our ongoing investigation on identifying, collecting, and providing a syntactic-semantic description of multiword adverbs in (Brazilian) Portuguese based on similar studies for European Portuguese, French, and Spanish. We adopt and adapt the classification proposed by Molinier and Levrier (2000), based on the Lexicon-Grammar theoretical-methodological framework.

Shortening mechanisms in construction morphology: the Russian spec-N construction

AbstractThis study presents an in-depth analysis of Russian stub compounds in spec ‘special’ and their competition with the corresponding full adjective special’nyj ‘special’ followed by a noun. Couched in Construction Morphology the corpus-based analysis addresses four understudied areas in theoretical and Russian morphology: shortening mechanisms, competition between morphological words and multiword expressions, blocking, and compounding in Russian. It is argued that shortening mechanisms create words that are more than stylistic variants of the corresponding longer constructions, although full synonymy may occur under specific conditions. The diachronic and synchronic motivation of the shortening mechanism under scrutiny is analyzed in terms of economy, extravagance and expressiveness. Blocking is demonstrated to be statistical (involving tendencies rather than categorical rules) and bidirectional, whereby a morphological construction may be favored over a syntactic construction and vice versa. The proposed analysis adds to the knowledge of stub compounds in Russian and demonstrates how a wide variety of generalizations can be adequately accounted for in Construction Morphology.

A platform-based Natural Language processing-driven strategy for digitalising regulatory compliance processes for the built environment

The digitalisation of the regulatory compliance process has been an active area of research for several decades. However, more recently the level of activities in this area has increased considerably. In the UK, the tragic incident of Grenfell fire in 2017 has been a major catalyst for this as a result of the Hackitt report’s recommendations pointing a lot of the blame on the broken regulatory regime in the country. The Hackitt report emphasises the need to overhaul the building regulations, but the approach to do so remains an open research question. Existing work in this space tends to overlook the processing of actual regulatory documents, or limits their scope to solving a relatively small subtask. This paper presents a new comprehensive platform approach to the digitalisation of the regulatory compliance processing. We present i-ReC (intelligent Regulatory Compliance), a platform approach to digitalisation of regulatory compliance that takes into consideration the enormous diversity of all the stakeholders’ activities. A historical perspective on research in this area is first presented to put things in perspective which identifies the challenges in such an endeavour and identifies the gaps in state-of-the-art. After enumerating all the challenges in implementing a platform-based approach to digitalising the regulatory compliance process, the implementation of some parts of the platform is described. Our research demonstrates that the identification and extraction of all relevant requirements from the corpus of several hundred regulatory documents is a key part of the whole process which underlies the entire process from authoring to eventually compliance checking of designs. Some of the issues that need addressing in this endeavour include ambiguous language, inconsistent use of terms, contradicting requirements and handling multi-word expressions. The implementation of these tools is driven by NLP, ML and Semantic Web technologies. A semantic search engine was developed and validated against other popular and comparable engines with a corpus of 420 (out of about 800) documents used in the UK for compliance checking of building designs. In every search scenario, our search engine performed better on all objective criteria. Limitations of the approach are discussed which includes the challenges around licensing for all the documents in the corpus. Further work includes improving the performance of SPaR.txt (the tool created to identify multi-word expressions) as well as the information retrieval engine by increasing the dataset and providing the model with examples from more diverse formats of regulations. There is also a need to develop and align strategies to collect a comprehensive set of domain vocabularies to be combined in a Knowledge Graph.

Chunking in the Second Language: Implications for Language Learning and Teaching

Among the various challenges that adult and other late language learners face on their journey to achieving nativelike proficiency, chunking has been identified as one of the most difficult tasks to master. Language users are able to derive and utilize chunks during language processing—both in the first (L1) and the second language (L2)—yet the extent to which the L2 learners utilize and benefit from chunking is not on a par with L1 speakers. L2 learners are generally less sensitive to the statistical regularities in the linguistic input and possess a smaller repertoire of multiword expressions, leaving them susceptible to slower real-time language processing, hampered comprehension during conversation, and distinct production errors. Drawing on insights from Brian MacWhinney's Unified Competition Model of L1 and L2 acquisition, this review examines these unique challenges in L2 chunking as a function of differences between L1 and L2 learning. According to the Unified Competition Model, the existence of deeply entrenched L1 linguistic representations may hinder effective L2 chunking by encouraging over-segmentation in favor of L1 transference at the lexical level and diverting the necessary attention away from the grammatical elements in prefabricated multiword units. Based on these observations, we offer practical suggestions for educators to facilitate chunking in L2 learners and bring them closer to nativelike fluency.

Chinese EFL learners' processing of English binomials: the role of interlexical and intralexical factors.

Binomials have been relatively understudied compared to other types of multiword expressions (MWEs) in second language research, such as collocations and idioms. This study investigated English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' processing of English binomials and how it is influenced by interlexical factors (L1-L2 congruency and L1-lexicalization) and intralexical factors (word and binomial frequency, binomial reversibility, and binomial predictability). Forty Chinese EFL learners participated in a phrase acceptability judgment task of 64 target binomials (16 congruent L1-lexicalized, 16 congruent L1-nonlexicalized, and 32 incongruent) and 64 non-binomial controls. Results revealed that learners experienced difficulty judging the formulaicity of binomials. They processed binomial stimuli significantly faster than non-binomial baselines, demonstrating a binomial phrase effect. They also processed L1-L2 congruent items faster and more accurately than incongruent items, showing a robust congruency effect. The congruent items which are lexicalized in the L1 showed further processing advantage than the non-lexicalized items, indicating a graded congruency effect. Moreover, binomial reversibility and binomial predictability (measured with cloze probability) also showed significant effects. These findings highlight the need to distinguish and investigate different types of congruency, explore appropriate measures for MWE predictability, and to examine binomials focusing on their unique features.

Human versus Neural Machine Translation Creativity: A Study on Manipulated MWEs in Literature

In the digital era, the (r)evolution of neural machine translation (NMT) has reshaped both the market and translators’ workflow. However, the adoption of this technology has not fully reached the creative field of literary translation. Against this background, this study aims to explore to what extent NMT systems can be used to translate the creative challenges posed by idioms, specifically manipulated multiword expressions (MWEs) found in literary texts. To carry out this pilot study, five manipulated MWEs were selected from a fantasy novel and machine-translated (English > Spanish) by four NMT systems (DeepL, Google Translate, Bing Translator, and Reverso). Then, each NMT output as well as a human translation are assessed by six professional literary translators by using a human evaluation sheet. Based on these results, the creativity obtained in each translation method was calculated. Despite the satisfactory performance of both DeepL and Google Translate, HT creativity was highly superior in almost all manipulated MWEs. To the best of our knowledge, this paper not only contributes to the ongoing study of NMT applied to literature, but it is also one of the few studies that delve into the almost unexplored field of assessing creativity in neural machine-translated MWEs.

Multi-word expressions for Russian L2 learners: corpora-based selection with expert verification

The article describes the experience of creating a corpus-based list of the most relevant multi-word expressions for Russian L2 learners, distributed across the levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) from A1 to C1. Modern linguistic and cognitive research shows that our speech is patterned and largely consists of stable segments. This fact is supported by the linguodidactic idea of teaching not isolated language units but their combinations of different nature. However, the selection and ranking of multi-word expressions based on language proficiency levels is constrained by the difficulty of automatically extracting them from a corpus of texts and estimating their frequency, as well as disagreements in defining the boundaries, linguistic nature, and terminology of multi-word expressions. This article describes the experience of compiling a list of the most valuable fixed-type multi-word expressions from various sources: two types of existing CEFR-graded vocabulary lists for Russian L2 learners – lexical minimums for the TORFL (Test of Russian as a Foreign Language) system and Russian KELLY (KEywords for Language Learning for Young and adults alike); the most frequent n-grams from the RuFoLa – Russian L2 textbook corpus and from the Russian Web corpus of internet texts; list of discourse formulas from the «Pragmaticon» project. The CEFR level of each multi-word expression is predicted using the frequency-based Max Delta measure, and its effectiveness is subsequently validated through annotation by multiple experts. The resulting list of multi-word expressions contains 1645 entries from A1 to C1 levels. The proposed version of the list has been implemented into an automated text analysis system for learners of Russian as a Foreign Language and can be useful for a wide range of professionals in the preparation of educational content for foreign language learners. The suggested Max Delta measure has demonstrated a high degree of agreement with expert evaluations within proficiency levels A1-B1. This signifies the importance of further exploring its potential in addressing related practical tasks and in selecting language learning content derived for other languages.

Rethinking tokenization

Abstract Tokenization significantly influences language models (LMs)’ performance. This paper traces the evolution of tokenizers from word-level to subword-level, analyzing how they balance tokens and types to enhance model adaptability while controlling complexity. Despite subword tokenizers like Byte Pair Encoding (BPE) overcoming many word tokenizer limitations, they encounter difficulties in handling non-Latin languages and depend heavily on extensive training data and computational resources to grasp the nuances of multiword expressions (MWEs). This article argues that tokenizers, more than mere technical tools, should drawing inspiration from the cognitive science about human language processing. This study then introduces the “Principle of Least Effort” from cognitive science, that humans naturally seek to reduce cognitive effort, and discusses the benefits of this principle for tokenizer development. Based on this principle, the paper proposes that the Less-is-Better (LiB) model could be a new approach for LLM tokenizer. The LiB model can autonomously learn an integrated vocabulary consisting of subwords, words, and MWEs, which effectively reduces both the numbers of tokens and types. Comparative evaluations show that the LiB tokenizer outperforms existing word and BPE tokenizers, presenting an innovative method for tokenizer development, and hinting at the possibility of future cognitive science-based tokenizers being more efficient.

The Effect of L2 Proficiency on the Processing of Multiword Expressions

The processing of multiword expressions (MWEs) has gained increasing attention nowadays, and many factors have been proven to influence it. However, within all these factors, whether L2 proficiency affects MWE processing has still not been answered satisfactorily. Some studies have shown that higher L2 proficiency will lead to a processing advantage while others have not. Thus, this paper intends to answer this question by synthesizing and analyzing the related studies about the effect of L2 proficiency on the processing of MWEs through research methods, characteristics of participants, research procedures, and research results and conclusion. This paper provides some possible reasons for the mixed findings of those studies from the aspects of the division of the proficiency levels, the differences of research methods, and the amounts of participants. Based on the limitations of studies that found L2 proficiency did not influence the processing of MWEs, this paper concludes that L2 proficiency plays a role in MWEs processing.

Myth of mankind and the representation of people in Late 18th-century British dictionaries of trade and commerce

The investigation aims at analysing the two general notions of mankind and people in two lexicographic reference works on trade and commerce published in London in the 1750s: Rolt’s A New Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (1756) and Postlethwayt’s The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (1757). An overview of the same notions in universal dictionaries of arts and sciences (cfr. References, Primary Sources), issued before and after ND and UD, will also be of help to define a more general background. Starting from the key words mankind and people, their frequency and relevance in the two dictionaries, the investigation is widened to include related terms (e.g. multiword expressions and language patterns in which mankind and people occur) and semantic categories (e.g. specific contexts of use: social condition, social values, demography, identity and citizenship, etc.). The many entries, cross-references, and the various lexical clusters reveal a complex lexicographic and lexicological network. This network, beyond providing information and contents on specific topics, ultimately emphasises the hierarchical organising principle at the basis of Late Modern British society: in particular, people unfolds into a myriad of ‘entities’. Dictionaries of trade and commerce are plentiful sources of knowledge, from general concepts and notions to more specific contents, but also powerful ideological tools.

Semantics of Multiword Expressions in Transformer-Based Models: A Survey

Abstract Multiword expressions (MWEs) are composed of multiple words and exhibit variable degrees of compositionality. As such, their meanings are notoriously difficult to model, and it is unclear to what extent this issue affects transformer architectures. Addressing this gap, we provide the first in-depth survey of MWE processing with transformer models. We overall find that they capture MWE semantics inconsistently, as shown by reliance on surface patterns and memorized information. MWE meaning is also strongly localized, predominantly in early layers of the architecture. Representations benefit from specific linguistic properties, such as lower semantic idiosyncrasy and ambiguity of target expressions. Our findings overall question the ability of transformer models to robustly capture fine-grained semantics. Furthermore, we highlight the need for more directly comparable evaluation setups.

Discourse patterning and recursion in the EU case law

Abstract This paper proposes a novel approach to analysing the text organization of legal texts, specifically focusing on discourse patterning and recursion in the context of EU case law. The study investigates the discourse organization of the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) by exploring, in a data-driven analysis, the use of multiword expressions that occur with specific colligation properties. One peculiarity of CJEU judgments is that their structure is not readily visible since headings are unsystematically used. The application of the present approach demonstrated that discourse organization can be revealed in terms of discourse patterns, signalling devices, and by exploring the position of linguistic expressions in the text. The findings not only reveal concealed text organization units in CJEU judgments but also offer a methodological model for similar analyses in other legal and non-legal texts. The proposed model suggests an investigation of the interaction between metadiscourse (IMD), discourse patterns (DPD), and textual colligation, positing that when IMD and DPD exhibit textual colligation, they signal discourse patterning. This proposal connects two levels of text organization through textual correlation. The study further explores relations between discourse patterns in terms of the notion of recursion.

Dutch compound constructions in additional language acquisition

Abstract Studies have demonstrated that Dutch has a much stronger tendency towards compounding than French (e.g., Du. badkamer vs Fr. salle de bains ‘bathroom’) when adopting a restrictive approach of compounding in which the presence of prepositions and/or internal inflection in multi-word expressions is considered evidence for their syntactic formation. The example above illustrates that Dutch compounding differs from French in another important aspect: while Germanic compounding is by definition right-headed, French has a general tendency towards left-hand headed compounds and phrases. In this study, we investigate the impact of these typological differences on the acquisition of Dutch nominal compounds by French-speaking learners in the context of multilingual Belgium. We provide an in-depth corpus analysis of the acquisition of Dutch compounds at different levels of abstraction (schematic and substantive compound constructions). Moreover, we investigate the impact of additional target-language input through CLIL programs (Content and Language Integrated Learning) on the acquisition of Dutch compounds by French-speaking learners of Dutch. The results are described and interpreted from the perspective of Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG), which conceptualizes the linguistic competence of multilingual speakers as one integrated network of constructions, containing language-specific idioconstructions and shared diaconstructions.

PolylexFLE

Abstract MWE knowledge is key in the process of learning a foreign language, but its teaching remains hindered by the lack of list of expressions connected to pedagogical aims. In this paper, we present an extended version of the PolylexFLE database, containing 4,525 French multiword expressions (MWE) of three types: idioms, collocations or fixed expressions. In order to propose exercises following the difficulty scale of the European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), we used a mixed approach (manual and automatic) to annotate 1,186 expressions according to the CEFR levels. The paper focuses mostly on the automatic procedure that first identifies the expressions from the PolylexFLE database (and their variants) in a corpus of pedagogical texts (with CEFR labels) using a pattern-based system. In a second step, their distribution in this corpus is estimated and transformed into a single CEFR level. The automatic approach proposed is finally evaluated by 52 French as foreign language learners.

Multiword Expressions: Understanding the Meanings of Noun-Noun Compounds in L2

Multiword Expressions: Understanding the Meanings of Noun-Noun Compounds in L2

Managing the Flow of Talk: A Longitudinal Case Study of the Multiword Expression det er sant in L2 Norwegian Interactions

Abstract Drawing on recent scholarship integrating usage-based linguistics (UBL) and conversation analysis (CA) in the investigation of second language development, this paper reports on a microanalysis tracing one adult learner’s recurring, increasingly frequent, and diverse use of the multiword expression det er sant (it/that is true) (DES) in L2 Norwegian interactions over a time span of four months. While the use of DES did not undergo syntactic changes, the analysis revealed that the functions of the expression diversified as DES became more frequent in use. Initially functioning primarily as a means of expressing agreement, DES was increasingly used to preface disagreement and indicate the closing of self-initiated repair sequences. This functional diversification was accompanied by increasing morphophonological reduction indicating an ongoing process of routinization. We argue that these changes, also when non-linear and not complying with the target norm, allowed the learner to participate more actively in managing the flow of talk. The study provides insight into how interaction shapes L2 development and the role of education in providing access to situations that foster increased membership in the speech community.