This book re-examines the notion of word associations more precisely collocations. It attempts
to come to a potentially more generally applicable definition of collocation and how to best
extract identify and measure collocations. The book highlights the role played by (i)
automatic linguistic annotation (part-of-speech tagging syntactic parsing etc.) (ii) using
semantic criteria to facilitate the identification of collocations (iii) multi-word structured
instead of the widespread assumption of bipartite collocational structures for capturing the
intricacies of the phenomenon of syntagmatic attraction (iv) considering collocation and
valency as near neighbours in the lexis-grammar continuum and (v) the mathematical properties
of statistical association measures in the automatic extraction of collocations from corpora.
This book is an ideal guide to the use of statistics in collocation analysis and lexicography
as well as a practical text to the development of skills in the application of computational
lexicography.Lexical Collocation Analysis: Advances and Applications begins with a proposal for
integrating both collocational and valency phenomena within the overarching theoretical
framework of construction grammar. Next the book makes the case for integrating advances in
syntactic parsing and in collocational analysis. Chapter 3 offers an innovative look at
complementing corpus data and dictionaries in the identification of specific types of
collocations consisting of restricted predicate-argument combinations. This strategy
complements corpus collocational data with network analysis techniques applied to dictionary
entries. Chapter 4 explains the potential of collocational graphs and networks both as a
visualization tool and as an analytical technique. Chapter 5 introduces MERGE (Multi-word
Expressions from the Recursive Grouping of Elements) a data-driven approach to the
identification and extraction of multi-word expressions from corpora. Finally the book
concludes with an analysis and evaluation of factors influencing the performance of collocation
extraction methods in parsed corpora.
