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Family collocation

Exploring relations between lexical families
  • Gregory Garretson
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Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture
This chapter is in the book Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept of ‘family collocation’, to address a problem with traditional methods of studying collocation: namely, that focusing on the co-occurrence in text of individual forms ignores connections between related forms that are likely to exist in the mental lexicon. For example, the phrases satisfactory conclusion, satisfactory conclusions, unsatisfactory conclusion, and satisfying conclusion are seen as completely unrelated according to some approaches to collocation, despite the likelihood of speakers seeing connections between them. While some corpus studies have grouped forms by lemma, this method goes one step further and groups related words into ‘families’. To demonstrate family collocation, a study is presented of the co-occurrence of 100 high-frequency word families in the British National Corpus. The results suggest that such co-occurrence is very frequent, creating complex sets of relations that should be taken into consideration. Three case studies demonstrate various implications of family collocation for corpus studies.

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept of ‘family collocation’, to address a problem with traditional methods of studying collocation: namely, that focusing on the co-occurrence in text of individual forms ignores connections between related forms that are likely to exist in the mental lexicon. For example, the phrases satisfactory conclusion, satisfactory conclusions, unsatisfactory conclusion, and satisfying conclusion are seen as completely unrelated according to some approaches to collocation, despite the likelihood of speakers seeing connections between them. While some corpus studies have grouped forms by lemma, this method goes one step further and groups related words into ‘families’. To demonstrate family collocation, a study is presented of the co-occurrence of 100 high-frequency word families in the British National Corpus. The results suggest that such co-occurrence is very frequent, creating complex sets of relations that should be taken into consideration. Three case studies demonstrate various implications of family collocation for corpus studies.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Contents V
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part I: Discourse contexts and cultures
  5. Patterns of discursive urban place-making in Brooklyn, New York 13
  6. The English of current Caribbean newspapers 43
  7. Corporate identity and its variation over time 75
  8. Applying Geographical Information Systems to researching historical corpora 109
  9. Corpus linguistics: Widening the remit 137
  10. Part II: Contexts of lexis and grammar
  11. Family collocation 165
  12. Factors influencing the translation of -ing participial free adjuncts 197
  13. The diachronic productivity of native combining forms in American English 223
  14. Advise against -ing: An emerging class of exceptions to Bach’s Generalization 253
  15. Subjective progressives in the history of American English 275
  16. Part III: Learner contexts
  17. A syntactic analysis of the introductory it pattern in non-native-speaker and nativespeaker student writing 307
  18. Phraseological teddy bears 339
  19. “Dear Man men and women madam, dear xxx sir” 363
  20. Marked themes in advanced learner English 387
  21. Phrasal verbs in the spoken and written modes of Norwegian L2 learner English 409
  22. Conversational gesture corpus analysis 437
  23. Corpus research for SLA 467
  24. List of contributors 483
  25. Index 487
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110489071-007

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Contents V
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part I: Discourse contexts and cultures
  5. Patterns of discursive urban place-making in Brooklyn, New York 13
  6. The English of current Caribbean newspapers 43
  7. Corporate identity and its variation over time 75
  8. Applying Geographical Information Systems to researching historical corpora 109
  9. Corpus linguistics: Widening the remit 137
  10. Part II: Contexts of lexis and grammar
  11. Family collocation 165
  12. Factors influencing the translation of -ing participial free adjuncts 197
  13. The diachronic productivity of native combining forms in American English 223
  14. Advise against -ing: An emerging class of exceptions to Bach’s Generalization 253
  15. Subjective progressives in the history of American English 275
  16. Part III: Learner contexts
  17. A syntactic analysis of the introductory it pattern in non-native-speaker and nativespeaker student writing 307
  18. Phraseological teddy bears 339
  19. “Dear Man men and women madam, dear xxx sir” 363
  20. Marked themes in advanced learner English 387
  21. Phrasal verbs in the spoken and written modes of Norwegian L2 learner English 409
  22. Conversational gesture corpus analysis 437
  23. Corpus research for SLA 467
  24. List of contributors 483
  25. Index 487
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