27_Euralex_Ulrich Heid - On Ways Words Work Together - Topics in Lexical Combinatorics

7/23/2019 27_Euralex_Ulrich Heid - On Ways Words Work Together - Topics in Lexical Combinatorics

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Ulrich

Heid

Institutfr

maschinelleSprachverarbeitung,Universitt

Stuttgart

On

Ways

WordsWork

Together

-

Topics

in

Lexical

Combinatorics

1.

Introduction

1.1

Broad

areas

of

combinatory

phenomena

The

domain

of

lexical

combinatorics

has

received

much

interest

over

the

last

ears,

n

yntax,

exical

emantics

nd

exicology,

ut

lso

n

lexicography,erminology,

erminography

nd

naturalanguage

Processing

NLP).

f

he

ield

ofcombinatorics

can

maybe

rivially

be

defined

by

the

fact

that

it

deals

with

syntagmaticcombination

phenomena

involvingwoormoreexemes,

t

s

much

harderocomeup

with

ny

reasonable

internal

subdivision

of

the

field.

Phenomenawhichareusuallydescribedsbelongingohedomain

of

combinatorics

include,

among

others:

electional

properties

of lexical

items:

for

example,

the

English

verb

to

growas ,

roadly

speaking,

worenchequivalents,

pousser

and

grandir.Andmostdictionarieswouldstatethatpousseris

preferred

if

thesubjectnoun

denotes

a

plant,grandirifitdenotes

a

human

being

1

The

classical

exampleofGerman

essen

^ >

fressen,

for

English

toea t

(depending

onthe

distinction

betweenhumanbeingandanimal)

is

anotherinstanceofthis

phenomenon.

ollocations:

ccording

o

any

inguistsndexicographers,

2

collocationsarecombinationsofexactlywo

exemes

of

category

noun,

verb,

adjective

or

adverb),

ealizing

two

concepts,

where

the

choice

ofoneofthemdepends

on

(or:

is

restricted

by)the

other.

Typical

examples

which

are

often

cited

are

FR

un

clibataire

endurci,

&i

eingefleischterJunggeselle,

EN

pay

attention,

FR

pousser

un

cri,

etc.

Usually,

some

sort

ofdetermination

relation

between

the

twoitems

can

be

found.

3

OtherlexicographersandNLP

researchers

haveawidernotionof

collocation

whichsubsumes

any

kind

of

combination oftwo

words,

as

itoccurs(adjacently)in

a

text.

Suchawider viewisnotuncommonin

work

on

statistical

tools

(where

e.g.

also

the

combination

with

closed

classitemsmayberegardedas

a

collocation,and

where

frequency,e.g.

of

co-occurrence,

is

the

maindefinitioncriterion).

Much

f

he

iscussion

n

his

onference

ill

eevoted

o

collocations;

this

is

one

of

the

reasons

whywehavechosento

discuss


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The

way

words

work

together

/

combinatorics

27

collocationsn

some

more

detail,

n

his

paper,

aking

hem

s

paradigmaticexampleof

some

of

theresearchtopicsinthe

linguistic

and

lexicographicdescriptionof

combinatory

phenomena.

dioms:

he

ommon

iew

n

dioms

s

hat

hey

re

ultiword

expressions

(more

than

twoitems)

which

have

anen

bloc-meaning

opaque

with

respect

to

the

usual

meaning

ofthewordsmaking

up

the

combination.In

examples

like

DE

das

Kind

mit

dem

Badeausschtten,

we

do

not

sayanythingabouta

child

orabath,somebody

who

FR

a(voir)

unearaigneau

plafond

may

alsohaveother

trouble

than

just

withaspider.

Assoon

as we

look

at

data

fromtextcorpora,

cases

comeup

whereitisnot

easy

to

determine

clearly

whether

to

treat

a

given

item

as

idiomatic

or

as

collocational:

DEeine

Frage

stellenis

usually

classified

anddescribed

as

a

collocationa

upport

erb

onstruction

lmost

ynonymous

ith

E

fragen),

whereas

DEin

Fragestellenis

lessclear:should

it

betreatedas an

idiomroughlyequivalenttoDEanzweifelnorasacollocation?

1.2 Structureofthispaper

Thepurposeof

this

paper

is

togiveanoverviewofsomeresearchtopics

in

the

field

of

lexicalcombinatorics.

This

includes

apresentation

ofthe

main

approaches,

methods

and

strands

of

research,

as

of

open

issues

and

lines

to

be

followed,

in

paricular

those

discussed

at

the

Euralex-94conference.Such

anoverview

is

boundtobepartial,inboth

sensesoftheword:

it

is

impossible

to

select

all

and

only

the)relevanttopics,andtheselection

is

ofcourse

biased

towards

the

preferencesofthe

author.

Nevertheless,selectingcollocations

as

a

prototypical

phenomenon

seems

tomakesenserom moregeneralpointof

view

swell:collocational

phenomenareentraloexicographers,orpusinguistsnd

terminologists;evidence:

the

sheer

numberofpapers

on

this

topic

submitted

to

theEuralex-94

conference.

Moreover,

the description

and

lexicographic

modeling

and

representation

of

collocations

isnot

at

allan

easy

task:a

few

propertiesofcollocations

are

well-known

and

easily

eproducible,

but

othersare

controversial

ornot

easy

to

consistentlyverify

on

data.

The

problems

which

need

to

be

addressed

and

which

will

beto

some

extent

discussedin

this

paperfall

into the

following

areas:

efining

the

notion

of

collocation,delimiting

it

with

respect

toother

combinatory

henomena

nd

dentifying

riteria

llowing

o

operationalize

tosome

extent

the

definitions;

escribingsyntactic,semantic

and

pragmatic

properties

ofcollocations

and

other

combinatory phenomena,

both

within

descriptive

linguistic

and

lexicographicwork(thelatterincludinginaddition

to

linguistic

descriptionalso

issues

ofthepresentation

of

the

descriptiveresults);


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228

uralex

1994

etting,

y

eans

f

computational

ools

or

exical

cquisition,

material

potentiallyrelevant

forcollocationaldescription:

techniques,

methodsandtools

for

extractingcollocationcandidates

from

texts;

epresenting

nd

sing

ollocational

nformation,

or

xample

n

translation,

bothhumanand computer-aidedor

automatic.

These

opics

span

a

ange

ofactivities

ofcomputational)

inguists

and

(computational)

lexicographersand

terminologists:

definition,description

andexicographicresentationf

ollocations,

s

ell

sheir

(semi-)automaticcquisitionndse

n

uman

nd

omputational

applications oflexical

knowledge

sources.

W e

havechosen

to

comment

on

these

topics

in

thefollowing

order:

efinitional

and

descriptive

problems,

as

treated

inlinguisticworkon

lexical

combinatorics

will be

discussed,

alongwith

syntactic,

semantic

andpragmaticpropertiesofcollocations,

in

Section

2.

Thisallowsus to

better

capture

the

phenomenonwedeal

with,

fromdifferentpointsof

views.

nthisbasis,

we

willdeal

withthelexicographicandterminographic

treatmentofcollocations,

ncluding

aspectsofhepresentationof

descriptiveresults

indictionaries,

inSection

3.

he

acquisitionof

collocationally

relevantinformationfromtextual

corpora,

s

well

s

he

use

of

collocation

knowledge

n

ranslation

dictionaries

will

be

the

topic

ofSection4.

W e

will

illustratesomeofthestatements

made

in

this

paperwithexamples

fromdictionaries.

The

aim

ofthispaperis

not

to

support

onegivenapproach

or

to

argue

foragiven

methodortool

for

theacquisitionordescription

of

collocations:

the

exampleshavebeen chosenfortheir

illustrative

character,

andanattempt

has

been

made

to

cover

several

approaches.

2.Propertiesof

combinatoryphenomena

-

th e

case

of

collocations

2.1

Data

and

afirstinterpretation

Thentuitionaboutcollocationsshatheyarecombinationsof

two

lexemes,

not

necessarily

extuallyadjacentones.

To

hese

wo

exemes

correspondwoconcepts.

ncertaincollocations,wecan

ind

egular

semanticinterrelationship

between

thetwocomponents

whichiscloseto

a

determination

relation(collocations

arepolar

in

Hausmann's

terms).

Anessential

property

ofcollocationsseems

to

beheirperception

by

native

peakers

f

a

anguage

s

requent,

ecurrent,

onventionalized

building

locks

fheexicon:

dj-vu ,

s

ausmann

ays.

he

combinationof

exactly

the

twoitemsappearing

in

thecollocation

is

lexically

determined;

itis

often

notpredictable; but nativespeakersarequitegoodat


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Theway

words

worktogether

/

combinatorics

229

identifying

non-collocationalcombinations

in

other

people's

texts,

and

they

feel

thatnon-collocational

texts

arenot

fluent,

not

elegant

or

just

not

the

usual

way how

one

would

express

agivenidea.

Collocations

occur

in

both

general

language

and

sublanguage.

The

table

in

Figure1

contains

a

few

examples

from

English,

French

and

German.The

sublanguageexamples

may

be

feltto

be

differentinnaturefrom

those

given

for

general

language:wewillcome

back

tothislater(see

Section

2.3.3).

language general

language

sublanguage

English pay

attention,

want

sth.

adly

meritedpraise

closely

related

stophe

onveyor

overlayingock

expensive

nabour

French

oprer

tinchoix

une

dception

amre

perdument

amoureux

crer

un

fichier

lution

gredue

ressources

renouvelables

German eine

ereinbarung

treffen

starker

Raucher

tiefbeeindruckt

(jmdn)

hart

treffen

eineForderungabtreten

Abwassereinleiten

anstehende

Kohle

Dateien

bgleichen

Figure1.Afewexamples

of

generalandsublanguagecollocations

Anumber

of

criteria

have

been

discussedin

the

literature

to

distinguish

collocationsfromfreecombinationsontheonehandandfromidiomsonthe

other,

or,

rather,

toarrangeexamples

of

certain

typessomewhere

on

the

scalebetweenhesewoextremes.Thesecriteria

nvolve

hesyntactic,

semanticand

pragmatic

descriptionoflexemes.

2.2 Syntactic

properties

2.2.1Combinatory phenomenavs.phrasestructure

Mostcombinatory

phenomena

followtherulesofsyntax;noparticular

syntacticrules

are

necessary

to

describe

combinatoryphenomena.

But

not

all

of

them makeupconstituents.

Selectional

phenomenacan

be

observedbothwithinconstituentsand

withinthesentence:theexamplesgiven

above

(

grow ,

eat )

concern

the

interactionbetween

a

subject

noun phraseand

the

main

verbal

predicate

of

the

sentence.

Similarly,

we

observe

selection

phenomena

between

verbs

and

their

subcategorized

complements,

e.g.objects,

prepositional

objects,etc.,

but

also

with

adjuncts,

or

withinother

constituents

than

VPs,forexamplein

adjectivephrases(noun+

attributive

adjective).


5/32

230

Euralex

1994

Collocations

can

be

classified,

at

eastoranguagesike

English,

he

Germanic,

Romance

and

Slaviclanguages,

according

to

thecategoryoftheir

elements,into

noun-verb,

noun-adjective,noun-noun

collocations,as

well

as

erb-adverb

nd

djective-adverb.

oun-verb

ollocations

an

e

further

subclassified

according

o

he

grammatical

unction

ofthe

noun

phraseontributing

he

oun

art

f

he

ollocation:

ubject-verb-,

verb-complement-,erb-adjunct-collocations.

4

ollowingausmann

(1979),

Hausmann(1985)and

Hausmann

(1989),we

have

classified

afew

examplesin

theillustration

inFigure2.

NOUN

+

adjective confirmed

bachelor

eingefleischter

Junggeselle

clibataire

ndurci

NOUN+

verb

(Subj)

his

anger

falls

Zorn

erraucht

laolre apaise

NOUN

+

verb

(Obj)

to

withdraw

money

Geldabheben

retirerde

argent

VERB+adverb

it

s

aining

heavily es

regnet

in

Strmen

ilpleut erse

ADJ

adverb

seriouslyinjured

schwer

verletzt

grivement

bless

VERB+adverb

tofailmiserably klglich

ersagen

NOUN+

noun

agust

of

anger Wutanfall

un ebouffe

e

olre

Figure

2.

Types

of

collocationsin

terms

of

the

category

of

their

compo-

nents,following

Hausmann

(1989)

This

notion

ofcollocationdoes

not

assume

that

all

collocations

makeup

phrases:

n+adj-collocations

may

do

so,

ifthe

adjective

is

used

attributively,

asin

EN

heavyrain,ENunquenchablethirst,DEstarker

Raucher,

FR

regrets

amers,FRremords

ardifs,

etc

owever,

we

till

want

o

consider

he

combination

of

EN

unquenchableandhirst

ascollocational,whenhe

adjective

ssedredicatively

His

hirst...was...unquenchable.).

his

implies,

among

others,

that

computational

toolswhich

would

just

look

for

combinations

of

adjacent

exemes,

5

wouldnot

etrieve

ll

combinations

which

fall

under

thesyntactic

definition

givenabove.

The

noun

which

participates

in

ann+v

collocationcan

also

be

located

in

an

adjunct

(cf.

DE

es

regnet

in

Strmen,

etc.);

such

cases

are

difficult

to

treat

in

a

strictly

valency-based

model

or

in

a

formal

account

which

makes

use

of

subcategorizationinformationonly.

To

ourknowledge,

not

much

work

has

so

far

beendone

on

(lexically)typical

adjuncts .

As

observed,combinatoryphenomena

are

oftenorthogonal

with

phrase

structural

or

valency-based

grammatical

rules

in

the

widestsense).

This

property

is

problematic

forexample

forlexicalchoice

in

naturallanguage

generation;

inearlyapproaches,theorderinwhichlexemeswere

selected

in

aentenceo

e

enerated,

asetermined

by

elationships

between

syntactic

heads

and

modifiers,

or

nodes

of

a

valency

representation

and

their

dependents

(rule:

lexical

heads

first ).

This

works

outforverb-adverb-

or

adjective-adverb-collocations

andforsome

noun-adjective-collocations

as

well,

butnotfornoun-verb-collocations(e.g.in

the

verb-object

case:

the

object

nounmust

bedetermined

first,only

then

a

collocationally

adequate


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Theway

words

work

together

/combinatorics

3 1

verb

can

be

selected).

Researchers

in natural

language

generation

werefirst

to

discuss

problems

ofcollocation:some

of

the

work

on

lexical

choice

s

aimedt

ringing

ollocationalnd

yntactic

constraints

ogether

nd

controlling

their

interaction

in anadequateway

(cf.

e.g.Nirenburg

et

al.

1988,

etc.).

Andditionalroblem

f

he

nteraction

etween

yntactic

nd

collocational

descriptionisthe

recursive

nature

of

collocational

properties:

thecomponents

of

a

collocation

can

again

be

collocational

themselves:next

toheGermancollocation

ltigkeithabenn+v),

we

haveallgemeine

Gltigkeit

haben,

with

llgemeine

Gltigkeit,

ollocationn+a),s

component.

These

cases

have

sometimes

been

analyzed

as

differentfrom

collocations,

but

thereisnoreasonfor

suchtreatment.However,a

formal

account,

e.g.

for

machine

translation,

would

have

to

be

able

to

account

for

such

cases.

2.2.2

Problems

ofth e

syntactic

description

ofcollocations-

th e

case

of

support

verb

constructions

Syntacticianshave

observed

some

irregularities

in

thesyntacticbehaviour

ofollocations,n

articular

fupport

erb

onstructions

Funktionsverbgefiige ,

constructions

verbesupport ):examples

are

FR

avoir

peur,

avoirfaim,prendreun

bain,

poser

une

question,

oprer

un

choix,

ENbein ahabit,

takeabath,pay

attention,

delivera

speech,DEAngsthaben,

ein

Bad

nehmen,eine

Frage

stellen,

zur

Anwendung

kommen.

Many

of

the

syntactic

operationspossiblewith verbphrasesarenot

or

only

in

part

possiblewith

support

verb

constructions;

such

operations

(often

used

as tests)includepassivization,pronominalization,

the

possibilityof

taking

the

nominal

part

up

with

an

anaphoric

pronoun,

thepossibility

of

modifying

the

noun

e.g.

with

adjectives,

genitives,

relativeclauses,

etc.),

the

choice

between

different

kinds

of

determiners,

etc.

The

most

frozen (or

as

Cruse

(1986:41) says,

bound )

collocations

are

closeto

typicalexamplesof

idioms,

insofar

as

no

modifications

are

possible.

Other

support

verbconstructions

participate

nsome,butnot

ll

of

the

processesmentioned

bove:

E

ine

Frage

tellen

canbemodified

r

pronominalized,whereasDE

zur

Ausfhrunggelangenoesnotallow

pronominalizationor

modification:

Hanshateine

kluge

Frage

gestellt,

Josef

hatieeantwortet;dasrogrammelangtuinerollstndigen

Ausfhrung;

das

Programm

gelangt

zur

Ausfhrung:

*sie

mu

korrektsein.

Apparently,pronominalizationor

pronominalanaphoricreferenceand

the

possibility

of

modification

of

the

predicative

noun are

somehowrelated.

Similar

data

to

those

for

German

have

been

observed

for

Danish

(cf.

e.g.

Dyhr1980),

utch

cf.

inderdael

980)

nd

French

cf.

ross

986,

Gross/Vives1986).Inmanyarticles

about

support

verb

constructions,

just

some

suchfacts

aredescribed

(

anecdotically ),and

we

arestillnotaware

of

a

more

comprehensive

treatment

oraformalaccount.

It

seemsthat

the


7/32

232 uralex

1994

twotypesof lexicalized

and

non-lexicalized support

verbconstructions

observedyelbig1984)

oughly

orrespondo

ases

here

he

predicative

noun

isstill

available

asareferent( non-lexicalized case)

as

opposed

to

referentially

blocked

cases

(

lexicalized ):

ongoing

work

by

Kuhn(1994)shows

that

the

testusedtodistinguishthesetwotypesare

all

based

on

referential(un-)availability.

Similarly,thesyntactic(e.g.valency)

behaviour

of

lexical

combinations

(includingbothcollocations

and

dioms)

has

notbeendescribedinvery

muchdetail

soar

n

dictionaries.

We

only

know

ofprojects

for

foreign

language

learners'

idiomdictionarieswhichaimatcomingupwithadetailed

syntacticdescription.

Nouncompoundingis

often

not

looked

at

from

thepoint

of

view

of

lexical

combinatorics;

but

a

collocational

view

is

most

relevant,

e.g.

for

contrastive

workn

omance

s.ermanic

anguages.

el'chuk's

xamplesf

expressionsfor

groups

ofanimals(ENflock

of

seagulls,

pack

of

dogs,school

offish,

cf.Fontenelle

(1994b)

for

more

examples),

but

also

technicalterms

like

those

describedand

analyzedby

Seelbach

(1994)

(IT

acque

di

rifiuto

DE

Abwsser,

IT

stazionedi

depurazione

-

DE

KlranlageIT

perditadi

sostanze

liquide-DEFlssigkeitsverlust)

are

cases

npoint.

Knowledge

about

collocationally

adequate

combinations

of

nouns

n

compounds

or

nounphrases

is

most

important

fortranslation.

Soler/Marti

(1994)

discuss

this

problem

in

detail,giving

examples

from

Spanish-Englishtranslation.

2.3

Semant ic

properties

2.3.1

Combinatory

phenomena

and

compositionality

Syntactic

propertiesdo

not

seem

to

have

muchdiscriminatorypower,

as

far

scollocations

and

dioms,heirborderline

and

he

borderline

with

normal

constructions

areconcerned.Fortestsandcriteriaofclassification,

we

thus

have

to

relyon

(lexical)

semantics.

A

ew

general,

broad

distinctions

seem

to

be

commonly

accepted:

he

meaningof idioms

is

not

derivable

from

the

meaningof

thelexemes,

word

forms

which

make

upthe

idiom:

idioms

arenon-compositional.

On

theother

hand,

what

hasbeencalled freecombination

by

Hausmannandothers,i.e.

the

normal

case ,is

fully

compositional:themeaningofEN tobuyabook

is

derivable

bytheusual

processes

from

the

meanings

of

EN

buy

andEN

book.

Collocationsare

anintermediate

case

between

the

two:the

meaning

of

EN

buy

somebody's

argumentisnot

fully

compositionallyderivable

from

the

meanings

of

argumentandbuy.However,themeaningof

argument

is

present

in

(and

used

in

the

meaning

description

of)

buy

sb's

argument,

it

is

only

buywhich

does

not

have,

in

thiscollocation,

the

meaningit

has

in

buy

a

book.

This

partialcompositionalityofcollocations

has

ledHausmannto

describecollocationsas

polar

combinations,

consistingof

abase

(the

item


8/32

Theway

words

work

together

/

combinatorics

233

which

has

its

fulllexical

meaning,in

our

exampleabove:argument)

and

a

collocate

6

(withmodified

or

reduced meaning:buy).

Mel'chuk,

in

a

talkabout

collocations

atthe

1990conferenceofEuralex,

7

has

most

clearly

summarized

the

differences

in

compositionality

between

free,

collocational

andidiomatic

combinations,

and

we

schematizethesein

Figure

3 ,

followingMel'chuk'spresentation.

A

B

regular

compositional

-c

M

C

ll

c

n

A=

c

n

B

full

id ioms

non-coapositional

A

Dn

A

Dn

collocations

partially

cojapoaitionll

Figure

3 .

Types

of

lexical

combinations

interms

ofcompositionality

(following

Mel'chuk)

When

constructing

semantic

epresentations,

we

can

apply

he

usual

procedures

for

compositional

cases

to

free

combinations;we

can

assign

a

single

semantic

epresentation

o

an

dioms whole.Dobrovol'skij

s

examples

DE

denKopfhngen

lassen

or

etw.

ndie

Wege

leiten

could

be

described

as

denoting resignation

orstartup

of

an

activity respectively,

and

we

could,dependingonthegranularity

of

descriptionweaimat ,describe

DEjemand

ltden

Kopfhngenin

a

similarwayas jemandist

deprimiert

or

jemandistresigniert,

or

aswell

jemand

leitet

etwasin

die

Wege

similarly

to

jemand

beginnt

etwas,

jemand

leitetetwas

ein.

A

ore

difficult

problem

s

he

ollowing:

ollocations

ike

DE

ur

Anwendung

gelangen( tobeapplied )can,asitseems,

be

representedby

the

same

device

as

the

idioms

above:

at

a

certainlevelof

specificity,

we

can

considersuchcollocationsasquasi-synonymouswithverbs(DE

anwenden,


9/32

234 uralex

1994

inthis

case)

and

use

the

same

representation

for

DE

angewendet

werden

and

zur

Anwendunggelangen,only

with

an

aspectualdifference.

Butwhat

about

he

cases

where

he

predicativenounseferentially

available,

as

in

the

example

discussed

above,

in

Section

2.2.2:

DE

Hans

hat

eine

rage

estellt.

Max

atsieeantwortet.

nhisase,e

eed

representation

hich

ould

reserve

n

ntecedent

or

he

naphoric

pronoun.f

he

emantic

epresentation

s

ust

he

ame

s

hat

f

two-place

verbal

predicate

ask :

DE

fragen,

in

the

case

ofeine

Frage

stellen),no

hook

to

serve

as an

antecedent

fortheanaphoric

pronoun

is

available.Thesame

way,

no

easonable

semantic

epresentation

of

the

modifier

in

DE

erhat eineklugeFrage

gestellt

would

be

possible

then.

If

we

treat

the

referentially

available

cases

separately,

doweneeddifferent

representations

for

DE

Verkauf

in

zum

Verkauf

stehen

(no

referent)

and

einen

Verkauf

ttigen

(referent

available)?

Thisproblem

comes

up

when

one

triestogiveaslightlymoreformalaccountofsupportverbconstructions,

e.g.

in

ead

riven

hrasetructurerammar,

PSG

see

.g.

ork

f

Erbach/Krenn

1993),

or

inany

other

framework

usable

in

NLP.

It

also

comes

upin

translation:

Thurmair

(1990)

discusses

cases

like

the

translationofEN

tolaunch(a

product)

byDE(ein

Produkt)

auf den

Marktbringen;if we

use

a

compact

semantic

representation

or

he

collocation,

.e.

one

which

wouldbe

similar

oridenticalwith

that

ofthe verb,w e

would

beintrouble

to

translate

backfromDE(einProdukt)aufdenberfllten

Markt

bringen

into

English.

Other,moredetailedsemantic

representations

seem

necessary.

W e

have

o

sk

urselves,

hen,

owever,

ow

ar

e

hould

o

n

decomposing the

meaning

ofcollocations,

derivatives

and

of

one-word

lexemes .

2.3.2Towards

a

semantic

classification

of

collocations?

Mel'chuk's

lexical

functions

Theeaning= >

ext-Model

MTM),

r:

eaning-Text

heory,

developed

by

Igor

A.

Mel'chukand

his

collaborators

includes,

among

many

other

things,

asemanticclassificationof

lexicalcombinationphenomena.

The

approach

is much broader

thanjust

a descriptionof

thesemanticclasses

into

which

collocations

can

be

subdivided:it

is

a

whole

theory

of

language,

conceived

as a

model

ofhowmeanings can

be

realized

in

language.

Itis impossible

to

giveafullandadequatecharacterizationofMTMin

the

frameworkof

the

present

article.

Itissufficient,here,

to

recalla

fe wof its

most

important

aspects:

-

TM

equally

supports

analysis

and

generation

of

text,

but

its

primary

goalisanaccount ofgeneration,i.e.

the

problemofhowmeaningsget

realizednexts

hence

he

ame

Meaning

= >Text-Theory ).

Consequently,

the

description

ofparaphrasing,

ofquasi-synonymy,

of


10/32

The

way

words

work

together/

combinatorics

23 5

the

hading

f

eaning,

epending

n

ommunicativend

text-structural

phenomena,

etc

are

important

to

MTMresearchers;

MTMisamodularand

stratified

approach.tdistinguishesseveral

strata,roughlycorresponding

to

thetraditionallevelsof

description

and

epresentation

semantic,

deep

nd

urface

yntactic,

morphological

andphonological);

-TM

yntax

s

ependency-based;

escriptions

f

verbs

n

he

dictionaryincludeaninventoryoftherelevantactants

and

of

their

syntacticrealization

(e.g.

as

phrase

structural

constructs);

this

is

a

basis

for

the definition ofa

syntax-semantics

interface,

and italsoallows

to

link

the

descriptionof

collocations

to

thisinterface.

8

MTM

describes

collocations

by

means

of

lexical

functions .

These

can

be

seen

as relations

between

one

ormorewords

or

wordcombinations

on

the

one

hand

and

partialsemantic

description

onhe

ther.

he

partial

semantic

descriptionconsistsof

akeyword

and

an

abstractsemantic

operator

applied

to

thiskeyword;thedifferentkindsof

operators

are

the

different

types

of

collocations.

9

The

number

of

lexical

unctions

simitedo

around

60 ;

heycan

be

combined(see

e.g.

Ramos/Tutin

1992,

workbyMel'chuk, etc.).Outof

these

60exical

unctions,about

dozen

play

n

mportant

ole

o

describe

collocations

of

indoeuropean

languages.

10

The

table

inFigure4contains

a

fewexamplesof

lexical

functions,

along

with

the

name

ofthe

LFs

and

our

very

roughdescription

of

the

meaning

expressedbyeachoftheoperators.

Meaning lexical

unction

examples

French,

English)

Intensifier MAGN

bruitinfernal,

interdireabsolument

Quantity

electors

MULT

SING

un

e aim

d'abeilles

ungrain

de

riz,

ak eofsoap

Evaluate*

VER

sharp

knife,

meritedpraise

semantically

almost)

emptystylistic

figures

EPIT

GENER

FIGUR

ocanimmense

unsentiment

de

joie

un

rideaudefume

points

ina

process

GERM

CULM

seed

of

hope

paroxysme

de

joie

semantically

almost)

empty

support

verbs

OPERl

OPERj

porter

plainte,pousserun

cri,

mener

unelutte

sth.formsanoffer,th .

onstitutes

an

offer

Figure4.

Examples

oflexical

functions

The

Meaning

< = >

Text-Model

is

not

only

a

framework

forthe

description

and

semantic

classification

of

collocations:

Mel'chuk

andhis

collaborators

have

lso

orked

ut

roposals

or

ery

etailed

ictionaries,

he

ExplanatoryandCombinatory

Dictionaries

(ECD);theseproposals

11

have


11/32

236

Euralex

1994

been

moststimulating

for

bothlexicographycf.the

dictionary

of

Cohen

(1986),thethree

volumesof

French

ECDs,

as

well

as

ECD

fragments

of

Russian

and

studies

towards

ECDs

of

English

(Steele1988),

and

German)

and

atural

Language

Processing

cf.

ork

by

Nirenburg

et

l.

988,

Heylen/Maxwell

994,eid/Raab

989).

tillsomeeficitsave

been

identified,

such sheact

hat

he

evelof

granularityof

the

semantic

description

f

exical

unctions

ay

ot

e

ully

ufficient

or

semantics-basedNLP(cf.

Heylen/Maxwell

1994)

or

the

lack

ofa grammar

forcombininglexical

unctions

among;

hislatter

gap

hasbeen

filled

by

Ramos/Tutin(1992).

If

onecompares

he

MTM

approach

o

collocationswith

he

work

of

Hausmann

and

otherlexicographers,as Cop(1990)and

Heid

(1992)have

done,

quite

some

overlap

is

found,

despite

differences

in

terminology.

The

tableinFigure5comparativelysummarizes

the

relevantterminology

used

in

Mel'chuk'sand

Hausmann's

work.

Compared

Who?

components/properties

Terminlogy

H.

Base

Collocate

M.

Keyword

Value

of

LF

Semantic

H.

autonomous

dependent,

properties

non-autonomous

M.

compositionally

not

fully

describable

compositionally

Implication

H. collocations

musl

be

learned

fo r

treatment

separately

of

collocations

M.

collocations

must

be

stored

explicitly

n

theECD

Figure5.

Comparing

terminologyofMTMandHausmann

Collocation-related

esearch

opics

n

TMnclude

he

ctual

integration

of

a

collocational

componentinto

implementations,as

well

as

workon

the

relationship

between

semanticsandcollocation(seeSection

2.3.3below).

2.3.3Correlating semantic

classes

and collocationalbehaviour

It

has

been

stated

that

collocationsand

collocational

lexical

choice

are

completelylexicallydetermined

(cf.

Mel'chuk/Polgure1987)and

thus

need

tobememorized,byforeignlanguagelearners

(cf.

Hausmann1984)or

in


12/32

Theway

words

work

together/

combinatorics

3 7

dictionaries,

be

t

orhumanuseor

for

NLP.

On

he

otherhand,

some

researchhasbeengoingon,over

he

past

ew

years,

aboutcorrelations

between

emanticlassifications,

exical

ields,

tc .ndollocational

behaviour.

Heid/Raab

(1989) have

observed

that

theFrenchnouns

denoting

personalattitudes

whicharedescribedinthefirst

volume

oftheECD(cf.

Mel'chuket

al.

1984

)selectsimilar

collocates,for

certain

lexical

functions:

foradozenof

semanticallyrelated

nouns,

12

aparallel

behaviour

in

collocate

selection

for

thelexical

functions

OPERI,CAUSOPER,INCEP

FUNC,

INCEP

OPER,

FIN

OPER,

..

wasobserved.

Inthe

field

of

lexical

acquisition,

it

has

been

triedtoconstitute

lexical

semantic

lasses

oromain

lasses?)

yonsideringollocational

behaviour:

the

assumptionisthatbaseshaving

the

samecollocatesbelongto

the

same

ield.

ustejovsky

et

l.

1993)

have

sed

his

assumption

n

terminology-relatedcorpus

exploration.

Muchmorematerial

is

nowanalyzed

n

studies

by

Meyer/Mackintosh

(1994)

and

inparticularby

Mel'chuk/Wanner

(1994).

While

the

first

ison

sublanguagecollocations,

the

second

deals

with

general

language,

coming

back

to

the

fieldofemotionnouns,

subdivided,

for

that

purpose,

into

(in

part

overlapping)

subsets,

according

to

inherent

propertiesof

emotions,as

they

aredescribedin

psychology:

positive

vs .negativeemotions,moderatevs .

intense,temporaryvs .permanent,etc.Foreachsuch

subset,

thecollocate

selection

behaviour

of

a

few

prototypical

German

base

nouns

and

selected

lexical

functions

isanalyzed.

Theesults

are

of

wo

ypes:

onheone

hand

ndeed,

a

numberof

collocations

appear

withmostor

al l

of

the elements

of

the

field

or

ofa

given

subset;

on

the

other

hand,

a

non-negligible amount

of

exceptions

is

noted

as

well.

Mel'chuk/Wanner1994)ake

his

esults

starting-point

or

proposal

for

thereorganizationof

the

ECDentriesfor

emotion

nouns.

The

proposalis

tointroduce

a

common

public entryfor

the

whole

class

of

nounswhich

wouldstipulate

the

values

of

certain

lexical

functions,

either

for

all ofthe

class

members,or

in

function

of

the

presence

ofoneormore

of

the

subclass-definingriteria.

he

esults

o

ot

mmediately

ead

o

hierarchy;

the

domain

model

usedis

not

hierarchical

neither.

Whatcomes

out

reather

mplications

etween

he

resence

fcertain

emantic

propertiesand

the

collocation

behaviour.

Meyer/Mackintosh

(1994)observethat,

for

thesublanguage

of

technical

documentationofCD-ROM

devices,

afew

collocational

generalizations

are

possible,

which

can

be

modeled

in

aninheritancehierarchy.Maybe

in

part

theifferences

etween

el'chuk/Wanner'sndeyer/Mackintosh's

resultshave

to

do

withthe

fact

that

terminologicaldomains,

especially

when

denoting

oncrete

bjects,

an

ore

asily

e

odeled

hemselves

n

taxonomies

than

domains

ofabstract

notions,

as used

in

general

language.

Theesult

snteresting

n

heightofMartin's

otionofconceptual

collocation':

Martin

(1992) observesa

correlation

between

the

semantic

and

conceptual

description

of

items

ofa

(technical)

domainandthe

collocational


13/32

238

Euralex

1994

behaviour.

He

observes

a

subtypeof

n+adj-andn+n-collocations

which

j

ust

denotesspecialized)subtypesof

the

objectsdenoted

by

hebasenoun.

Similarly,hepoints

out

thatn+v-collocations denote what

one

cantypically

do

with

(or

to)

the

object

denoted

by

the

base

noun.

13

W ehavemadeafew experiments

on

this

problem

ourselves,usingCohen's

descriptionofcollocationsofthe

sublanguage

ofthestock

market

s

starting

point(Cohen

1986).

14

W e

have

looked

up

theentries

for

nouns

which

share

certain

collocational

properties.Onetypeofquestion

we

askedwastoknowwhichsubsetsof

nouns

share

one

or

more

collocate

expressing

the

INCREASE

or

DECREASEof

theprocess

denoted

by

thebasenoun,bothwith

subject-

andobject-

taking

verbs.Onesuchgroupconsistsof

:

all

hese

nouns

share

he

collocates


14/32

Theway

words

work

together/combinatorics 239

Theresult

ofthis

exploration

shows,

among

otherthings,

the

following:

some

collocateverbs

are

passe-partout ,like


15/32

240 uralex

1994

in

such

smallgroups

of

nouns

is significantandmostlikely

can

berelated

with

properties

relevant

forthe

semanticorconceptualdescription

ofthe group

of

nouns.

Terminologists

and

lexicographers

might

usefully

explore

in

more

detail

the

elationship

etween

onceptual

r

emantic

escription

nd

collocational

behaviour.

AsMartin(1992)

states,

resultsof

acollocational

analysisfurnish

input

fordefinition

construction

and

vice

versa,definitions

(in

ermsframes,

or

xample)

an

e

sed

s

ackground

or

collocational

expectation

patterns.

With

the

availabilityofcorpus

processing

tools,

such

analyses

become

less

expensive.

ohenid

ot

xplicitely

roup

he

ouns

reated

n

er

dictionary,

althoughthis

would

be

possible,as

our

experimentsshowandas

the

ork

f

el'chuk/Wanner

1994)

nd

eyer/Mackintosh

1994)

suggest.

uch

tructuringoulde

elpful

oredagogicalurposes.

Knowles/Roe

(1994)dealwith

the

pedagogical

use

of

collocationalmaterial

extracted

from

textsofspecializedlanguage;someofthetoolsdescribedby

Grefenstette

(1994)

are

helpfulfor

technically

doingthejob.Tools,methods,

applications

and

descriptiveworkcome

ogether

at

his

point:

affaire

suivre.

2.4

Pragmaticpropert ies

The

ragmatic

escription

f

ollocations

nvolves

he

otion

f

collocations

as

conventionalized

expressions.

Generallanguage

collocations

are

thenormalway ofexpressingagivenmeaning(cf.sichdieZhne

putzen/*biirsten

s.

e

rosser/*nettoyeres

ents).

ausmannalls

collocations

semi-finished

products

of

language( Halbfertigprodukte

der

ede ).

his

s

hy

ollocationally

orrectexts

re

erceived

s

fluent ,

hereasexts

ith

rong

ollocates

rith

ompositional

expressions

where

collocational

alternatives

would

exist,are

perceivedas

unnatural;

his

property

ofcollocations

n

urn

otivates

much

of

he

pedagogical

interest

they

attract.

In

addition,individualcollocations canpertain

to

diasystematiclanguage

varieties,

thesamewayas

one-word

lexemescan(cf.SwissGerman

einen

Entscheid

fllen

for

German

eineEntscheidung

treffen;

East

German

eine

Bestellung

auslsen

vs .eine

Bestellung

aufgeben).

3.

Lexicographic

treatment

of

combinatory

phenomena

-

access

to collo-

cations

We

ave

o

ar

entioned

ew

roblems

fhe

escription

f

collocations.In

addition,

the

properties

ofcollocations

lead

to

a

numberof

particular

roblems

oncerningheresentationn

ictionaries

f

collocational descriptions.

Here,

wecapitalize onthe organization oflexical

entries

and

the

access

tocollocational

information

indictionaries.


16/32

The

waywordsworktogether/combinatorics

41

Although,

from

a

semantic

point

ofview,

twouldprobablybe

a

good

solution

tohaveindividuallexical

entries

for

collocationsand

idioms

(and

to

make

themaccessibleasawhole),thisisnotpracticalwithinsemasiological

dictionaries.

This

is ,

however,

what

happens

in

onomasiological

dictionaries,

suchas the Longman

Language

Activator

(LLA)

orthedictionary

of

idioms

plannedby

Dobro

vol'skij(1994).

3.1 The

organization

ofcollocationand id iom

dictionaries

Lexicographers

have

muchdiscussedtheaccesstoidiomsandcollocations

inmonolingualandbilingualdictionaries;inparticularthequestion

where

to

lphabetize

ultiword

xpressions:hisroblemmustbeolved

n

different

ways,

depending

on

he

distinctions

between

monolingual

and

bilingual

dictionaryandbetween

encoding

(textproduction)

anddecoding

(text

understanding)

seof

he

ictionary.

roductiondictionaries

will

favour

the

accessto

collocational

informationvia

the

base,

whereasin

a

decoding

dictionary

we

can

not

be

sure

thatthe

reader

of

a

text

is

able

to

figure

outwhetherornotawordformbelongstoacollocation,

and,

access

viaboth,

bases

and

collocates,

or

via

the

collocation

as

a

whole

wouldbe

ideal.

15

Thisiseasierto

realize

online;

an

experiment

of

thistypehasbeenmade

in

a

lexicaland

terminological

database

designedtoholdsingleword

items

as

well

as

collocations,

which

has

been

designed

by

Heid/Freibott

(1991).

The

ollowing

roblems

f

ccess

o

ombinatory

nformation

n

dictionaries

have

beendiscussedintheliterature.

For

idiomatic

expressions,theproblemisparticularlyhard,sinceusually

none

of

the

word

forms

whichmake

up

theidiom

isa

clear

candidate,

on

semanticgrounds,

to

serve

asan

entry

word.

For

collocations,Hausmann(1988)

has

suggested

tosortthemunder

the

bases.

This

is

what

happensconsistently

in

Ilgenfritz

et

al.

(1989)(cf.theentry

for

respect

inFigure9).

This

sorting

procedureisin

line

withthetraditionof

stylistic

dictionaries,

such

as

Lacroix

(1956)

and

others.

An

example

of

an

entry

fromLacroix

(1956)

is

reproducedinFigure8.

It

liststheverbal

and

ad j ectivalcollocates

ofthe

entry

word,sortingthemin part

accordingto

their

subcategorizationproperties.

TheBBIcombinatorydictionaryofEnglish

(Benson

et

al.1986)

also

organizesits

macrostructure

by

the

bases

treated,

listing

the

collocates

in

thebody

of

theentry.

Respect.prouver,

ressentir,

montrer,

marquer,

tmoigner,

manifester,

devoir,porter,professer,affecter,feindredu

respect.

Inspirer,provoquer,

commander,forcerle respect.Manquerderespect. Adresser

ses respects.

tre

entour

d'un

certain

respect.

Rappeler

au.

QUAL.:

profond,

filial,

sincre,craintif,gnral,unanime,universel.

Figure8.The

entry

s.v.respectinthecollocation dictionaryby

Lacroix

(1956)


17/32

242 uralex1994

respect

m

Respekt,

Achtung

avoir,ressentirdu~

envers,pour,

l'gardde

qnj-m

Achtungentgegenbringen:Nous

ressentons

du

~

envers

Monsieur

votre

pre.

/

devoirle

~

qn

j-m

Respektschulden:Nous

devons

le ~

no s

professeurs.

/

forcer

le

~

de

qn

j-n

Achtung

bntigen:

on

omportement

a

forc

mon

~.

/

mposer,

nspirer,

commanderle

~

Achtungeinflssen:Cette

personne,

bienqu'ellesoit

trs

petite,inspire le

~.

/manquer

de

~

(envers

qn)

es

an

der

notwendigenAchtung

fehlen

lassen(gegenber

j-m:)

Jetrouve

qu'il

manque

de

~

envers

se s

parents.

/tmoigner,montrer

du

~

,

envers,pour,

l'gardde

qn

j-m

Respekterweisen:

Les

enfants

d'aujourd'huinetmoignentplus

tellement

de

~

aux

personesges.

Figure

9.

The

entry

s.v.

respect

inIlgenfritz

et

al.(1989)

A

quite

detailed

syntactic

account

of

collocations

similar

to

our

proposals

in

Figure2isgiven

in

Laine

(1993):

this

dictionary

(specialized

vocabulary

of

CAD/CAM

French/English)

distinguishes

subject-verb-,

verb-object-,

and

oun-adjective-collocations,

s

well

s

ollocational

oun

hrases

involving

PPs

(compound

nouns).

Below,

we

reproduceanexampleofan

entry.

t

onsists

f

wo

olumns,

neofwhich

ontains

he

yntactic

classificationsed

n

heictionary,

he

ther

he

elevant

exical

combinations.

ordonnancement scheduling

~

V.

V.~

~

Adj.

~

Prp)(Art)N

N(Prp)(Art)

~

~

connatre

les

ordres

lancs

choisir

~,dfinir

~ essayer

~,rgles]gouverner

~

~

assist

par

ordinateur,

~

dynamique,

~

nformatis,

~

multiconvergent,

~

optimal

~

butsmultiples,

~

pardates

croissantes,

~parvaleurs

croissantes

des

marges

libres

l'artde'~,

coefficient

d'~,fonction

~,

mthode

d'~

(de

production),rebouclagesur/'~,echnique


18/32

The

way

words

work

together

/

combinatorics

43

(glossed)

examples,

as

wellas

subentries.

Similarly,Cobuildhascollocations

in

its

definienda,as

well

asin

its

examples.

Amongilingualictionaries,heollins/Robertnglish/French

dictionaries

and

the

Collins/Klett

English/German

ones

are

a

remarkable

exception:

hey

ave

articular

evices

o

enote

+v-collocations,

distinguishing

even

whether the

noun

is

the

subject

or

a

complement

of

the

verb.

Thesedictionaries

have

been

collocationallyexplored

and

described

in

detail

yontenelle

1992a)

tc.:n

op

fheir

ell-structured

representation

of

collocations,they

are

a

remarkably

richsourceforthis

type

ofexicalnformation.nother

articular

eviceor

he

reatment

f

collocationshasbeenusedin theVan Dalebilingualdictionaries.

They

follow

theidea

of

a

categorialdescription

of

the

component

partsof

collocations

and

indicate,

for

example,

verbal

collocates

of

a

noun

in

a

special

part

of

the

entry,

using

a

numeric

code

opoint

o

he

categoryof

the

combination

partner.

16

A

sample

entry

from

theFR->

NLdictionaryis

reproduced

in

Figure

11.

respect0.1r6'eerf= hoog)achting,ontzag,reaped0.2erbieding=

naveling

0.3

beiuigingen

van

hoogachiing

O2.1~humainvrees

voor

watmenervandenken,

zeggenal2.3m es respects

votre

emmede

groeien

aa n

uw

rouw;

m esespects

3.1voirdu

~

pour

qn.

achting,

espect

voor

em .

hebben;

commander,

imposer,

nspirer

le

~

ontzag

nboezemen,

espect

afdwingen;

manquer

de

~,

enversqn.

zieh

tegenover

iem.

onbehoorlijk,

niet

correctgedragen;

manquer

de~

une

emmeiehvrijpostiggedragenegenover

een

vrouw;montrer,moignerdu~

,nvers,pour

qn .

em.

chting

betonen,

eiuigen;garder,enir

qn .

n~em.'nbedwang

houden,em.

onder

schot

houden

3.3prsenterses

respects

an.

em.degroetendoen4.1

~

de

soi

zelrespect6.1

sauf

le~qu evousdois,sauf

votre

~

metuw

verlof,metuuiwelnemen,

metaileespect.

Figure

11.

Theentrys.v.respect

intheVanDaleFR/NL dictionary

3.3TheECDs:access

v ia

semantic criteria

The

bove

ictionaries,pecializedndeneral,

onolingual

nd

bilingual,

se

yntactic

riteria

or

he

rganization

f

ollocational

information.

Theonly

dictionaries

we

are

aware

ofto

base

their

organization

on

emantic

riteriasell,

re

he

xplanatoryndombinatory

dictionaries

which

have

been

publishedby Mel'chukandhis research

group,

such

as

Mel'chuketal.(1984),etc.Theaccesstocollocationsis

via

thebase

entry

and

the

lexical

functions

applicable

tothe

base

entry(seeSection

2.3.2

andnote

9).

A

small

part

of

the

entry

s.v.

respect

is

given

in

Figure

12.

17


19/32

244

Euralex

1994

Operi

avoir,

prouver

ART

~

[Toute

la

population

n

profond

respect

pource t

artiste

mrite]

continuel-

lement

Operi

vivre

[dans

le~

]

[Cette

famillevit

an s

le

espectde

se s

anctres]

ContOperi

garder

[ART~

]

[Malgrlespropos

diffamatoires

es

journalistes

envers

ce

put,

se s

prochescollaborateurs

ont

gardunprofondrespectpour

lui]

FinOperi

perdre

[ART

~

/out

~

]

[Lesdirigeants

ont

perdu

tout

respectpour

ces

artistes]

Caus/

3

\

Operi

inciterN

ART

~

]

[Les

parents

les

incitent

au

espect

es

valeurs

morales;

L'honnte

e

Louise

ncitePaul

etJean

au

espect

de

ette

femme]

nonOperi

ignorer

tout

~

[Jean

gnore

toutrespectpour

se s

parents]

Oper

jouir

de

ART~

],avoir[le

~

[Pierrejouitdu

espectde

se s

subordonns]

ContOper

conserverle

~

[Malgr

lespropos

diffamatoires

es

journalistes

envers

e

put,

ce

dernieraconservlerespectese s

proches

collaborateurs]

FinFunco

disparatre

[L e

respect

du

publicpourceministre

disparu]

CauSFunco

se

mriter

[ART

~

[Parso ntravailconsciencieux,

l

semritale

respect

de

se s

collgues

Figure12.

A

fragment

ofthe

collocation

partof

the

entry

s.v.respectinthe

ECD

An

application

of

the

ECD

description

echnique

s

found

n

Cohen's

dictionary

Cohen

1986)

of

collocations

of

the

sublanguage

of

economy

(stock

market

and

conjuncture).

18

Instead

of

using

lexicalfunctions,

she

uses

paraphrases

ofa

elevant

subsetofthese;given

hat

manyofthe

tems

serving

as

entrywordsin

Cohen's

dictionary

denote

processes,the

dictionary

indicates

phases

of

the

processes,

likethe

start,increase,

decrease

and

end.

We

reproduce

inFigure13a partof

the

entryforFRempruntas anexample.


20/32

The

way

words

worktogether/combinatorics 245

emprunt

nouns

( sub

j.

of)

verbs

(obj .

of)

verbs

adjectives

START

mission

lancement

mettre

lancer

INCREASE

accroissement

augmentat ion

s'accrotre

augmenter

monter

accrotre

augmenter

considrable

lev

gros

UNDETERMINED

DECREASE

baisse

diminut ion

rduction

baisser

diminuer

rduire

restreindre

petit

END clore,l iquider

rembourser

restituer

Figure

13 .

The

entry

s.v.

emprunt

in

the

dictionary

by

Cohen

(1986)

The

two-dimensional

presentationof

the

materialin

Cohen

(1986)supports

access

viadifferent

ways:the

userstarts

with

abase

lemma

and

then

can

eitherlook

up

collocations

in

terms

of

the phases

of

the

process

denotedby

thenoun,selecting

hereafter

headequategrammaticalealization,or,

alternatively,

by

jointly usingboth,semanticandgrammaticalproperties.

3.4

Summary,

new

proposa ls

The

tablein

Figure

14

contains

anexemplary

summary

ofthetypesof

information

we

canfindin

dictionaries

andof

thewayshow

this

information

can

be

accessed.

Information

given

n

dictionaries

Example

cited

Access

via

...

Example

cited

acollocation

is

used:

it

isattested

any

definitions,

examples,

etc.

any

collocation

related

with

a

given

reading

of

thebase(explicitely)

VanDale

bilinguals

base

+

reading

(number)

VanDale

bilinguals

category

of

base

andcollocate

Van

Dale,

[Ilgenfritze.a.

1989]

[Laine1993]

base+

reading+

cat.code VanDale

fo rN-V

collocations:

gramm.function

of

N

Robert/Collins

[Cohen1986]

base+

r.,

+position

(markup)

Robert/Collins

semanticclassification

of

collocations

ECDs,

[Cohen1986]

base+r.,

lexicalf.

ECDs,

[Cohen

1986]

Figure14.MainFeatures

of

collocation

treatment

andaccess

in

dictiona-

ries


21/32

246

uralex

1994

New

proposalsorsimplynewpracticalsolutionscome

up

indictionaries

which

cons istently

followan

onomasiological

view.Thisis

discussed,

with

a

view

to

the

plans

fo ra

Russian/English

idiom

dictionaryin

the

paperby

Dobrovol'skij

(1994).

The

author

uses

a

set

of

local

(or:

partial)

conceptual

hierarchies,inspired

by

prototypetheory,

to

organize

th e

backbone

of the

dictionary,

an dhe

thenlinks th e

idioms

described

in

the

articles

to

the

nodes

of

hesehierarchyrees.

imilar

pproachsollowednhe

LongmanLanguageActivatoranonomasiologicaldictionaryfo r

language

production.

The

LLA

has

collocations,

idiomsandnormal

single

word

lexemes as entries,all

related

by

a

semantic

superstructurespanning

up

small

hierarchies,fo rabout1,000topics .Collocationsandidiomsare

treated

here

on

a

parwithotherlexemes.Accessisby

the

meaningofthe

multiword

item

as

a

whole.

Other

proposalsfo r

dictionary

structureare

madein

Oubine's(Oubine

(1994)

ilingual

ussian-English

ictionaryf

exical

ntensifierscf.

Mel'chuk's

lexical

function MAGN).

Given

thatabilingual

dictionary

is

aimed

at, andthatnot forallcollocationsfullequivalencecanbe

stated,

the

author

optsfor

keeping

the

twolanguagesseparate,pointingfrom

bases

of

one

languageto

their

equivalentsin

the

otherlanguage;

the

base

entriescontain

alphabetical

listsof

intensifiers,each

with

examples

and,

optionally,

usage

notes.

Access to

collocations

is

normally

givenviathebases,

a

reverse

part

can beaccessed

by

th eintensifiersthemselves,

leading

toan indexof

bases

modifiable

bya

given

intensifier.

Another

Russian/English

collocational

dictionary is

described

inBenson(1994).

Collocationseem

o

equire ultidimensionalescription

(syntactic,semantic,

pragmatic,

relation

withthedomainmodel,

etc.).

Representing

this

information

and

making

it

accessible,

also

indifferent

'adhoc'combinations,makes

a

flexible

dictionary

structure

necessary,

as it

is

best

achieved

with

computational

tools.

Definingthe

structure

of

a

computational

collocation

dictionary

in

a

way

goingbeyondth e

simple

encoding

in

Heid/Freibott

(1991)

is

an

interesting

task.

19

4.

Acquisit ionand

application

of

collocational

information

4.1

Acquiringcollocationalinformationfromtext

Much

of

the

linguisticand

lexicographic

discussion

about

collocations has

long

been

based

on

a

few

examples,

mostly

made

upby

linguists

for

the

purpose

of

exemplification.

Researchers thus

felt

that

there

isaneed

for

lists

of

ollocationsollectedromextualmaterial.Others,ike

Fontenelle

(1992a),

Fontenelle

(1992b)

have

developed

and

used

computational

tools

to

identify

collocationcandidatesindictionaries

and

toextractcollocation

listsfrom

machine

readabledictionaries.


22/32

Theway

words

work

together

/

combinatorics

47

Onthe

otherhand,

practicalexicographers

hemselves

need

ools

for

corpusnalysishichouldiveccessoollocationandidates:

collocationaldescriptionindictionariesisanareawherestill

improvements

are

possible

nd

necessary,

nd,

on

he

other

hand,

he

availability

of

collocationlistsextracted

from

texts

is

a

great

advantage

for

thesemantic

descriptionof

lexical

items.

Some

of

the

ools

or

extracting

collocationsrom

exts

are

basedon

statistical

methods.

A

few

statistical

measures

of

similarity

havebeen

used

to

identify

how

often

wordsappear

together

and

how

similar

the

contextsare

wherethese

words

appear.The

measures

mostfrequentlyusedare

mutual

information ,

t-score

and

z-score .Thereare

as

wellothersimilarity

measureswhichhavebeenappliedintoolsforcorpusexploration.

20

We

can

not,

in

the

framework

of

this

article,

discuss

the

different

statistical

toolsinalldetail,and

we

willthusrestrict

ourselves

to

an

informalaccount

oftheworkingsofthemostsimplestatisticaltools;adiscussionof

the

choices

which

exicographers

nd

omputational

inguists

ave

o

ake

hen

applyingstatisticaltoolswitha

view

tothe

retrieval

of

collocation

candidates

fromtext.

On

hat

basis,wecandentifyafewasks

or

both

esearch

and

ool

development:

essentially

the

mpression

s

hat

he

combination

ofboth

statistical

easures

nd

inguisticnformation

e.g.rom

re-

nd

post-analysissteps)is

a

successful

practical

way

forward.

4.1.1

Simple

statistical

measures

Themost

prominent

statistical

measuresused,mplementations

of

whichare

available

tomanylexicographers,arethe

mutualinformation

index

andthe

t-score test.

21

4.1.1.1Mutualinformation

The

mutual

nformation

ndex

MI,

or

short)

s

used

o

measure

he

association

between

twowords;for

a

givencorpus,wecan count howoften

a

givenword

occursinthat

corpus

(frequency).

W e

can

dosuch

statistics

for

allword

forms

ina

corpus

(and

useforexampletheinformationonvery

frequent

orveryare

ordso

decide

whetherhey

houldgo

nto

dictionary

builtfor

that

corpus).Bydividingthefrequency

of

a

word

form

by

the

numberof

word

formsinthecorpus,wegetthe

lexical

probability

of

thewordform

(how

often,inrelationtothe

overall

number

of

word

forms

inthecorpus,does

it

appear?).

When

easuring

utual

nformation,

e

o

ot

nly

bserve

he

probability

of

single

word

forms,butalsothe

probability

of

combinations

of

twowords

(

bigrams ).This

leads

to

threeprobability

values

whichcan

be

compared:


23/32

248 uralex

1994

-

he

probabilityofthe

first

word form,w\:

P(w\);

heprobability

ofthe

second

word

form,wg

P(w-i);

heprobability

of

a

pair(w\,wj)builtupofthetwoword

forms:

P

(Wl,

W2)).

These

three

values

are

compared:

theprobabilitythat

wjand

H > 2

cooccur

(e.g.

nexttoeachother)isdividedby

the

product

of

the

individual

probabilities

ofH I

and

W 2 each.

22

WhencomputingMI,the

window

(or:

span )within

whichthewordformshavetoappearto

be

takenascooccurring can

be

defined

bythe

user.

We

maylookjust

at

adjacentwordforms

or

at

word

formswhichareatupto5,3,4,...

word

forms

distance

oneofeachother.

Itis

quite

evident

what

the

comparisonwill

tell

us :the

MI

valueishigh,

whenmostof

the

occurrences

ofagivenitemareinfact

cooccurrences

with

the

second

item

selected:

if

we

compare

MI

for

a

set

of

pairs

of, say,

noun

and

adjective,

by

keeping

the

nounconstant,the

adjectives

which

mosttypically

cooccurwith

our

noun

willhave the highestMIindex Typically means:if

the

adjectiveisusednexttoanounatall,

it

isverylikely

that

it

isthenoun

for

which

theMI

is

high.The

famous

clibataireendurcishould

be

easy

to

detect

in

texts thisway.

MIis

dependent

on

the

frequency

of

wordforms.

IfwecalculateMI

for

a

list

ofadjectives,collocating

with

anoun,wedo not see,

however,

in

the

MI

values,

whether

theadjectives

arefrequentornot.

With

MI,

wehave

toface

the

sparse

data

problem :

given

hat

MI

s

similarity

or

ypicality)

measure,

it willyieldhigh

typicality

valuesincaseswhere

an

itemisrarebut

cooccurs

by

chanceorby

ule)with

notherone,n

each

oftsare

occurrencesin

thetext.Rareitems

maythus

be

rankedmuchhigher

than

one

wouldintuitively likethem

to

be .

4.1.1.2

T-score

Thisproblem

of

high

ranking of

rare

forms

can

be

remedied

byuseof

thet-test.Thet-test

operates

onpairs

of

words.

It

finds

thoseadditional

words

which

are

more

likely

to

cooccur

with

one

of

the

two

words

from

the

pair

hanwithhe

other.

Theesultsof

the-test

comes

positive

and

negative

values.

Thehighestandheowestvaluesaresignificant:hey

indicatestrong

association

with

one

or

the

other

word.T-score

is

also

not

reliable

for

low

frequencies.

It

tends

to

indicate

thefrequentwordsthatcooccur

with

the

target

words,

and

it

allows

to

separate

near

synonyms

by

showing

frequentcombination

partners.Churchetal.(1991)haveappliedittodiscriminate

EN

strong

and

powerful

by

findingout

nouns

which

frequently

cooccur

withone

ofthese

adjectives.


24/32

Thewaywords

work

together/

combinatorics

49

4.1.2

Choices

in

applying

statistical

measures

fo r

identifying

collocations

Thestatisticalmeasuresdescribed

above,

as

well

as

modificationsthereof,

are

often

used

to

identify

collocation

candidates

in

texts;

such

use

depends

ofcourse

on

a

number

of

assumptions

and

choices.

he

distance

of

itemscompared.

MI

and

t-score

can

becalculated

on

immediately

adjacent

tems

or

on

tems

occurringwithin

certain

window orspan (cf.

the

terminologyofSinclair

1991,

Clear1994).

heimpactof textstructure.Themeasurescanbecalculatedonbigrams

within

or

across

sentence

boundaries.Usually,

we

wouldassumethat

limitingourselves

to

occurrences

within

one

sentence

wouldlead

to

more

relevant

results

than

ignoring

sentence

boundaries.

23

he

mpact

f

emmatization

nd

ategorial

nformation.

he

discussion

above,inSection2.2

led

to

the

assumptionwecandescribe

collocations

n

erms

fcategory

ombinations

n+v,

+n,

+adj,

adj+adj,

v+adv),

in

part

evenof

partial

syntactic

structures,such

as

verb+object ,

verb+subject ,

noun+attributive

adjective ,etc.

Mostof

theworkdone sofarinusingMI

and

t-scorewas

performed

onEnglishmaterial.Theimpactofword fromvariation

there

isnotas

important

as

with

inflecting

languages,like

German

or

the

Romance

languages.

Fortheseitseemsusefultohaveanoption,instatistical

programs

o

calculate

he

measures

or

emmas

ather

han

word

forms.oreover,tanesefulo

arry

ut

hetatistical

computationonlyon,say,adjectivesappearingnexttoanoun,oron

verbs

and

heir

nominalobjects,

tc.,

24

.e.

oestrict

search

and

statistical

computation

according

to

syntactic

environments.

There

is

arangeofchoices

in

theapplicationofthestatistical

tools,

andthe

axisonwhichthesechoicescanbearrangedbasically

has

to

dowith

the

amountof

linguistic

informationwhichiskepttrackof,eitherbypre-or

postprocessing:

The

statistical

measures

may

be

applied

to

material

selected

according

o

certain

inguistic

criteria

e.g.

y

use

of

concordances),

or

relevant

material

is

selectedaccording

to

linguisticcriteriafrom

the

set

of

data

extracted

by

statistical

processing.

Proposals

for

tool

building

in view

of

collocation

extraction

hus

should

be

staged

along

with

he

amount

of

information

available

alongwith

the

corpus

text:

-

rawtext,possiblywithsentenceboundaries,

-

textwith

part-of-speech

annotations,

-

lemmatized

andmorphosyntactically

annotated

text,

-

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27_Euralex_Ulrich Heid - On Ways Words Work Together - Topics in Lexical Combinatorics