Multi-word Units Research Articles

Determining the importance of frequency and contextual diversity in the lexical organization of multiword expressions.

Corpus-based models of lexical strength have called into question the role of word frequency as an organizing principle of the lexicon, revealing that contextual and semantic diversity measures provide a closer fit to lexical behavior data (Adelman et al., 2006; Jones et al., 2012). Contextual diversity measures modify word frequency by ignoring word repetition in context, while semantic diversity measures consider the semantic consistency of contextual word occurrence. Recent research has shown that a better account of lexical organization data is provided by socially based measures of semantic diversity, which encode the communication patterns of individuals across discourses (Johns, 2021b). While most research on contextual diversity has focused on single words, recent corpus-based and experimental evidence suggests that an integral part of language use involves recurrent and more structurally complex units, such as multiword phrases and idioms. The aim of the present work was to determine if contextual and semantic diversity drive lexical organization at the level of multiword units (here, operationalized as idiomatic expressions), in addition to single words. To this end, we analyzed normative ratings of familiarity for 210 English idioms (Libben & Titone, 2008) using a set of contextual, semantic, and socially based diversity measures that were computed from a 55-billion word corpus of Reddit comments. The results confirm the superiority of diversity measures over frequency for multiword expressions, suggesting that multiword units, such as idiomatic phrases, show similar lexical organization dynamics as single words. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

On the learning of multi-word units via flashcard applications

Knowledge of multi-word units (MWUs) helps to facilitate communicative fluency and research of them has gained more and more attention in recent years in regard to teaching methods and designing materials for second language (L2) acquisition. Incidental and intentional vocabulary learning are two dominant approaches to acquiring MWUs. In lexical studies, much research has examined the effects of these methods in various contexts. However, a gap in the research remains in regard to materials development. This study aims to discuss various interventions that affect the teaching and learning of MWUs. This paper will highlight how more exposure and focusing learners’ attention on particular MWUs is essential to efficient acquisition of MWUs fluency, and that this can be achieved through intentional learning activities such as the use of appropriately designed specialist digital flashcard-style computer applications. Specifically, pedagogical implications are discussed when such applications employ either spaced repetition or a Leitner algorithm.

Less Direct, More Analytical: Eye-Movement Measures of L2 Idiom Reading

Idioms (e.g., break the ice, spill the beans) are ubiquitous multiword units that are often semantically non-compositional. Psycholinguistic data suggests that L1 readers process idioms in a hybrid fashion, with early comprehension facilitated by direct retrieval, and later comprehension inhibited by factors promoting compositional parsing (e.g., semantic decomposability). In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated the role of direct retrieval and compositional analysis when idioms are read naturally in sentences in an L2. Thus, French–English bilingual adults with French as their L1 were tested using English sentences. For idioms in canonical form, Experiment 1 showed that prospective verb-related decomposability and retrospective noun-related decomposability guided L2 readers towards bottom-up figurative meaning access over different time courses. Direct retrieval played a lesser role, and was mediated by the availability of a congruent “cognate” idiom in the readers’ L1. Next, Experiment 2 included idioms where direct retrieval was disrupted by a phrase-final language switch into French (e.g., break the glace, spill the fèves). Switched idioms were read comparably to switched literal phrases at early stages, but were penalized at later stages. These results collectively suggest that L2 idiom processing is mostly compositional, with direct retrieval playing a lesser role in figurative meaning comprehension.

Multi-word units (and tokenization more generally): a multi-dimensional and largely information-theoretic approach

It has been argued that most of corpus linguistics involves one of four fundamental methods: frequency lists, dispersion, collocation, and concordancing. All these presuppose (if only implicitly) the definition of a unit: the element whose frequency in a corpus, in corpus parts, or around a search word are counted (or quantified in other ways). Usually and with most corpus-processing tools, a unit is an orthographic word. However, it is obvious that this is a simplifying assumption borne out of convenience: clearly, it seems more intuitive to consider because of or in spite of as one unit each rather than two or three. Some work in computational linguistics has developed multi-word unit (MWU) identification algorithms, which typically involve co-occurrence token frequencies and association measures (AMs), but these have not become widespread in corpus-linguistic practice despite the fact that recognizing MWUs like the above will have a profound impact on just about all corpus statistics that involve (simplistic notions of) words/units. In this programmatic proof-of-concept paper, I introduce and exemplify an algorithm to identify MWUs that goes beyond frequency and bidirectional association by also involving several well-known but underutilized dimensions of corpus-linguistic information: frequency: how often does a potential unit (like in_spite_of) occur?; dispersion: how widespread is the use of a potential unit?; association: how strongly attracted are the parts of a potential unit?; entropy: how variable is each slot in a potential unit? The proposed algorithm can use all these dimensions and weight them differently. I will (i) present the algorithm in detail, (ii) exemplify its application to the Brown corpus, (iii) discuss its results on the basis of several kinds of MWUs it returns, and (iv) discuss next analytical steps.

The Representation of Collocational Patterns and Their Differentiating Power in the Speaking Performance of Iranian IELTS Test-Takers

Corpus studies have highlighted the role of multiword units in naturally occurring language. Speech theories, too, have underlined the linkage between such formulaic sequences- collocations in particular- and speech production. Few studies, however, have focused their attention on examining collocations in speaking assessment, especially in high-stakes tests. This study investigated the most frequently used collocational patterns and their discriminating power across three groups of participants with band scores 6, 7, and 8 respectively. To collect data, a corpus entailing 60 IELTS speaking samples, 20 samples from each band score, and approximately 110,000 words was gleaned. The results revealed that L1 (adjective + noun) and L7 (verb + noun) were the most frequently used types of lexical collocations, and G8 (verb + preposition) was the most frequently used grammatical collocation. The study also found that L1(adjective + verb), L5 (noun of noun), L8 (phrasal verb and adverb), L9 (noun and phrasal verb), and L10 (phrasal verb and noun) were the five types of lexical collocations with the most discriminating power across the band scores. Given the grammatical collocations, G4 (preposition + noun) and G5 (adjective + preposition) had the power to differentiate across the three band scores.

Language Play with Formulas in an EFL Classroom

Language learners’ play with language can be a useful and effective tool for learning. Since language play generally involves deviating from the norms, one potential source for it can be multiword units of language known as formulaic sequences. This study is informed by sociocultural perspective and Bakhtinian dialogism and investigates language play with sequences among young foreign language learners in a classroom context. A class of 11 pupils (aged 9 to 11), in Iran, was observed and video recorded for 16 × 90 min sessions. Across recordings, episodes where pupils were engaged in language play were identified and analyzed qualitatively to document patterns of use and participation. Additionally, formulaic sequences were identified based on pre-established criteria. Results revealed that the young learners of the present study were recurrently engaged in different types of language play with formulaic sequences such as playing with sounds, manipulating some units of sequences or using a sequence to play a role. The data provide examples illustrating the role of language play in generating occasions for learners to practice, repeat, explore, and interact with the language in a more lively and low stress environment.

Technical single and multiword unit vocabulary in spoken rugby discourse

Rugby union is played by first and second language speakers of English in many countries. Rugby has its own technical vocabulary (e.g., ruck, inside pass) and its knowledge is crucial for joining the rugby community. This article reports on a study into the nature and knowledge of technical vocabulary in spoken rugby discourse through identifying technical vocabulary and developing both single and multiword word lists. This study involved the creation of a spoken rugby corpus (61,295 running words) and a vocabulary load analysis using Nation's (2012) BNC/COCA frequency and supplementary lists. The results found learners need over 4,000 word families plus supplementary lists to reach 98% comprehension. The corpus analysis resulted in a list of 252 technical single words which covers over 12% of the spoken corpus. A pedagogically oriented multi-word unit list of 267 items was also created. A receptive knowledge task using a sample of the rugby lexis and general English words was administered to 77 (29 English L1; 48 L2 speakers of English) participants. The results highlighted differing levels of technical rugby vocabulary knowledge between first and second language speakers of English. This article concludes with implications for ESP rugby courses and suggestions for possible future research.

Delayed prediction of idiom constituent meaning points to weak holistic multi-word representation in children

ABSTRACT While generative accounts of language processing assume that children break down language into smaller components on which they apply computational operations, usage-based accounts assume that children acquire frequently co-occurring words as large chunks, which they decompose only later in development. We investigated the evidence for the multi-word representation of idioms like to let the cat out of the bag in 9- to 10-year-olds using eye-tracking and Event-Related Potentials. Both measures indicated that children rapidly predict idiom-final words (bag). However, although they are generally capable of rapidly predicting semantic associates for highly predictive endings of novel sentences (as demonstrated in a control experiment), within idioms they activate semantic associates (basket) only in a late processing stage. We conclude that children rapidly activate multi-word units for idioms and decompose these units only after a short delay during online processing. This effect might relate to unitary acquisition of idioms as assumed by usage-based accounts.

Formulemes as a translation issue: a case study of English and Ukrainian

The present article focuses on exploring formulemes in English and Ukrainian from a translatological perspective. The multiword units under study constitute a specific type of clichés alongside nickname clichés, termemes and sentencemes. The distinctive characteristic of this class of phrasemes is that they designate a ritualized speech act which correlates with an internal state of the speaker, a moment of time, or a specific event or state of affairs. Formulemes are to be regarded as a hyponym of formulaic sequences and formulas viewed, in turn, as multiword units. Depending on whether the source language formuleme’s formal and/or semantic constituents are fully or partially retained in the target language, formulemes may be rendered literally or using translation shifts. If the target language formuleme’s form and meaning are identical to those of its source language counterpart, word-for-word translation is used, which, however, proves to be an infrequent occurrence in English-to-Ukrainian and Ukrainian-to-English translation. Far more common are cases when the target language formuleme’s form and/or meaning are non-identical to those of its source language counterpart, and so a translation shift takes place. The three basic shifts employed in rendering formulemes are found to be metaphoric transformation, explicitation and antonymic translation. In addition to the three techniques mentioned, contextual translation of formulemes is occasionally possible when conditioned by the pragmatics of the speech act.

Framing karstology

Abstract We describe the creation of a knowledge base in the field of karstology using the frame-based approach. Apart from providing a new multilingual resource using manually annotated definitions as the source of structured information, the main focus is on exploring text mining methods to identify targeted knowledge structures in specialised corpora. The first stage of this process is the design of a domain model and its implementation in a definition annotation task. Once annotation is completed, an analysis of typical co-occurrence patterns between semantic categories and the relations describing them allows us to discern ideal definition templates. We demonstrate that such templates contribute to a more comprehensive and structured representations of concepts, but also help us design targeted text mining experiments to retrieve new semantic relations from text. Two such experiments are presented, the first using intersections of word embeddings to identify words expressing a specific semantic relation, and the second using the embedding of the semantic relation to extract multiword units which contain the target relation. Results suggest that the proposed methods are promising for capturing the semantic properties of relations in frame-based knowledge modelling.

LES LOCUTIONS ADVERBIALES DANS LES ÉCRITS JOURNALISTIQUES FRANÇAIS

French adverbial phrases used as multi-word units can occur in different types of texts. In this paper, we have chosen to study the nature and frequency of adverbial phrase use as relational markers in press articles. The paper is divided into two parts: First, we present the corpus, the recurrent adverbial phrasings in journalistic texts, and the methodology. Second, we focus on the two most frequently used adverbial phrases in this type of text, namely d'ailleurs and en effet, as multi-word relational markers.

‘Who would have thought that I’d ever know that!’: subject-specific vocabulary in CLIL student interactions

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), an educational approach where a foreign language is used to teach non-language subjects. More specifically, this contribution presents new insights into an under-researched area, namely the potential of CLIL in fostering the learning and use of subject-specific target language vocabulary (SSV). This is investigated in a case study analysing spontaneous oral classroom productions of two groups of advanced, secondary-school students in an Austrian CLIL programme within the subject European economics and politics. Based on a holistic definition of SSV comprising both single and multi-word lexical units, complementary quantitative lexical and qualitative discourse-embedded research methods are employed to present a comprehensive picture of the engagement of learners with subject-specific vocabulary. Findings of the lexical analysis show a substantial and active use of SSV with some homogeneity but also considerable variation between students. Discursive investigations of the affordances for learning arising in interactions indicate that in constructing and negotiating SSV, the students make use of a range of learning and communication strategies, which indicates their heightened level of SSV learning awareness.

What is a metaphorical collocation?

In research on collocations published in English we encounter, albeit rarely, the use of the notion “metaphorical collocations”. It is interesting to note that seldom if ever are metaphorical collocations defined in any way in these studies, suggesting that researchers find the term self-explanatory. However, seeing that metaphorical collocations are an exciting area of research that is yet to draw attention from the wider community of researchers, the aim of this paper is to analyze the current understanding of what a metaphorical collocation is by examining the theoretical foundations as well as studies, specifically those published in English (as the language of scientific research). Therefore, I examined publications in English (and German) for definitions of a metaphorical collocation, and I examined a number of studies on such collocations, or studies that refer to such collocations, in English. In view of theoretical considerations, I have found that metaphorical collocations indeed have an established definition, while in regard to research on such collocations, I have found that authors most often than not leave out the definition and actually label a wide range of multiword units as metaphorical collocations. I propose that for the sake of clarity and transparency in research on metaphorical collocations in English, researchers refer to and adhere to a definition of the notion. This is particularly important as metaphorical collocations are at the intersection of two quite complex linguistic phenomena: metaphors and collocations.

POKORA i POKORNOŚĆ w polszczyźnie (w świetle jednostek kolokacyjnych, frazeologicznych i paremicznych)

The main intention in the presentation of Humility and Being Humble in the Old and Contemporary Polish language is to reveal the formation and consolidation of these concepts in the minds of language users. The subject of the review are multi-word units – collocation, phraseology and paremism. In the image of Humility and Being Humble, two fundamental planes are distinguished. The multifaceted fulfillment of the manifestations of a human attitude boils down to: an attitude towards humility, its formation, its manifestation and the attitude expressed; in the case of humility – to acquire it, form it, manifest it, act in harmony with it, and obey something in humility. You express the nature of humility as the source of something else, the perpetration, effects, coexistence with certain concepts; humility determines its character and consequences.

Functionally-defined recurrent multi-word units in English-to-Polish translation

AbstractThis study uses both parallel and comparable reference corpora in the English-Polish language pair to explore how translators deal with recurrent multi-word items performing specific discoursal functions. We also consider whether the observed tendencies overlap with those found in native texts, and the extent to which the discoursal functions realised by the multi-word items under scrutiny are “preserved” in translation. Capitalizing on findings from earlier research (Granger, 2014;Grabar & Lefer, 2015), we analyzed a pre-selected set of phrases signaling stance-taking and those functioning as textual, discourse-structuring devices originally found in the European Parliament proceedings corpus (Koehn, 2005) and included in the English-Polish parallel corpusParalela(Pęzik, 2016). Since our goal was to explore whether and to what extent English functionally-defined phrases reflect the same level of formulaicity and regularity in both Polish translations and native Polish texts, the findings provided insights into the translation tendencies of such items, and revealed – using inter-rater agreement metrics – that the discoursal functions of recurrent n-grams may change in translation.

"dit en dat" en "al daai goed": 'n Korpuslinguistiese ondersoek na pragmatiese merkers in gesproke Afrikaans

Pragmatiese merkers is 'n frekwente verskynsel van gesproke taal. Daar is egter nog baie min studies onderneem na pragmatiese merkers in Omgangsafrikaans. Pragmatiese merkers tree op as belangrike kontekstualiseringswenke deurdat dit gespreksgenote rig in terme van die relevansie van die uiting, en die spreker in staat stel om, op bondige wyse, 'n houding teenoor die proposisie van die uiting te openbaar. In hierdie studie word gefokus op 'n bepaalde tipe pragmatiese merker, naamlik vaekategoriemerkers (VKM's). Vaekategoriemerkers in Afrikaans is 'n meerwoordige leksikale eenheid, of woordkluster, wat as pragmatiese merker optree, byvoorbeeld "en goed" en "of iets". Hierdie ondersoek het ten doel om aan die hand van korpuslinguistiese metodes te bepaal watter vaekategoriemerkers in Omgangsafrikaans gebruik word en watter pragmatiese funksies dit verrig.

Die Kritische Online-Edition der Nuntiaturberichte Eugenio Pacellis (1917–1929)

Abstract Eugenio Pacelli, the later Pope Pius XII, was already considered a leading diplomat of the Holy See when he served as nuncio in Germany. Using the critical online edition of his nuncial reports, digital humanities methodologies will be used to explore which topics dominated his reports, the diplomatic style of his nunciature and whether Pacelli adapted the form and content of his reports to the various recipients. To this end, quantitative methods of textual analysis such as the frequency distribution of types in relation to tokens as well as recourse to key terms and multi-word units (N-grams) will be employed. Moreover, methods from the field of corpus linguistics, information retrieval (TF-IDF) and quantitative stylometry (contrastive analyses with Burrows’ Delta and Zeta) are applied to evaluate both stylistic and content-related issues.

Le traitement de la phraséologie dans DEFI

DEFI is a prototype computer tool aimed at ranking (from most to least relevant) the French translations of an English lexical item in context. This paper deals with the strategies used by DEFI to recognize multi-word units (mwus) in running text. Any lexical unit included in the lexical database used in the project (a merge of the Oxford/Hachette and Robert/Collins English-to-French dictionaries) and longer than a single word is submitted to a surface parser, and the same process is applied to the user ’s text. A program written in Prolog assesses the quality of the match between the parsed user’s text and candidate mwus retrieved from the project’s lexical database. The matcher is able to account for some of the distortions undergone by the mwu, e.g. movement of a constituent as a result of relativization or passivization.

Promoting L2 acquisition of multiword units through textually enhanced audiovisual input: An eye-tracking study

This study examines the effect of textual enhancement on learners’ attention to and learning of multiword units from captioned audiovisual input. We adopted a within-participants design in which 28 learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) watched a captioned video containing enhanced (underlined) and unenhanced multiword units. Using eye-tracking, we measured learners’ online processing of the multiword units as they appeared in the captions. Form recall pre- and posttests measured learners’ acquisition of the target items. The results of mixed effects models indicate that enhanced items received greater visual attention, with longer reading times, less single word skipping and more rereading. Further, a positive relationship was found between amount of visual attention and learning odds: items fixated longer, particularly during the first pass, were more likely to be recalled in an immediate posttest. Our findings provide empirical support for the positive effect of visual attention on form recall of multiword units encountered in captioned television. The results also suggest that item difficulty and amount of attention were more important than textual enhancement in predicting learning gains.

자동화된 어휘 분석 프로그램을 활용하여 어휘의 정교화와 쓰기 능력간의 관계 탐색

This study explores the relationship between newly developed indices of lexical sophistication and essay scores written by Asian college students. The study employs the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Lexical Sophistication(TAALES) program. A total of 440 essays written by EFL students from Korea, China, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, and Indonesia were selected from the ICNALE(International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English) corpus. The following two research questions were addressed. First, what is the best lexical sophistication predictor of essay scores? Second, what are differentiating lexical sophistication indices among high-, mid-, and low-level EFL students? Two statistical analyses such as the stepwise regression analysis and the discriminant function analysis were performed using the SPSS version 26.0. Results showed that ‘age of acquisition content words’ turned out the best predictor of essay score, indicating that essays with content words that on average are perceived to be learned later received higher scores. Also, two multiword units such as ‘COCA magazine trigram strength of directional association’ and ‘COCA magazine bigram mutual information’ contributed to distinguishing among EFL students with different English proficiency levels. Therefore, EFL students who produced two-word and three-word phrases with stronger associations were classified as the high proficiency group, hence judged to be more proficient in writing.