Riassunto esame Linguistica inglese, prof. Camaiora, libro consigliato Readings in English Lexicogrammar, Ulrych

EFL

(English as a Second Language), which are especially made for English learners.

ESL

These kinds f dictionaries give also information about the syntactic patterns formed by a specific word (for

example: “enter” + sb. as a member; + sb. at public school; + sth. in a diary).

Learners dictionaries have also adopted coding systems, which allow learners to check, for example, object­

complement relations, transitive/intransitive patterns, whether a noun is countable or uncountable or an

adjective or attributive, through the use of codes which correspond to different structures.

One main problem with such codings is that learners have to invest a considerable amount of time and effort in

mastering this complex system.

There are different problems a dictionary has to solve:

in the case of compounds and derivatives: each dictionary has to decide whether it’s better for

­ learners to have individual items for each compound or derivative, or to group complex forms together

because of spelling similarities;

in the case of idioms and fixed expressions: in English there are patterns which are more fixed and

­ other patterns which are instead more indeterminate; one of the most recent developments in

lexicographic description of fixed expressions in the Oxford Dictionary of Current

So it is complex to decide whether it is better for the learner to have numerous

Idiomatic English.

separate sub­entries or whether the learner in some cases can understand the meaning of the

expression from the context (es. break the ice).

We also have to consider the existence of clines, which are gradual differentiations among

expressions, in fact some expression can be more fixed and determined than others; we distinguish

among: collocational restriction: we go from unrestricted collocation to relatively restricted collocation;

o syntactic structure: from flexible to irregular;

o semantic opacity: from transparent to opaque.

o

For this reason we can distinguish between open and closed cline: if the collocation is open the

dictionary can’t get all the words;

in the case of monosemous and polysemous words: the main difficulty for lexicographers is in fact to

­ establish appropriate divisions between the various senses of words;

in ordering words in the entry: another difficult decision the lexicographer has to make deals with the

­ order in which the different senses of words have to be presented.

(most recent innovations)

The COBUILD

The COBUIL (Collins Birmingham University International Language Database) is one of the largest and most

ambitious lexical research projects ever undertaken.

It was first published in 1987.

The principal aim of the COBUILD is to investigate in as much details as possible how the English language is

actually used at a given moment in time in both speech and writing.

In fact the COBUILD doesn’t use made­up examples and citations of lexicographers, but it uses citations taken

from the most typical and sometimes even the most banal examples of language, taken from the real use of

English attested in actual usage.

The main innovations of this COBUILD are:

citations are examples of real English and don’t involve made­up examples;

­ linguistic and stylistic differences between spoken and written usage, between British English and

­ American English usage can be separately stored and marked accordingly in dictionary entries;

explanations are written in complete sentences, follow a strategy of clear, accessible language.

­

Through time, the corpus is being continually updated to include a wider variety of spoken forms and data from

other Englishes around the world.

CAP. 2 COLLOCATION

1. Two models of interpretation

In order to explain the way in which meaning in transmitted from language text, we have to use to different

principles of interpretation, because one isn’t enough.

These two principles are:

The OPEN­CHOICE PRINCIPLE

This principle sees language text as the result of a very large number of complex choices: this principle is

based on the operation of unlimited choices, selections.

This principle is often called a the text is seen as a series of slots (empty

“slot­and­filler” model:

spaces) which have to be filled from a lexicon which satisfies the grammatical restrains.

We talk about restrains, because the more we go on with the sentence, the more closed and limited the choice

becomes.

The IDIOM PRINCIPLE

We have to notice also that words don’t occur at random in a text and in fact we wouldn’t produce a normal text

by using only the open­choice principle: this principle can’t in fact explain all our choices.

We have in fact to consider three different levels:

language is conditioned by our experience and so two things which occur

physical reality:

- physically together have a stronger chance of being mentioned together.

For example contrasts or series, such as “black or white”, “husband and wife”, “coffee or tea”: we have

in mind these combinations thanks to our experience;

at this level we use cultural structures and slots become more and more limited in choice;

register:

- according to this principle we have groups of words which we think

cultural conventions:

- immediately together and the expression has to be analysed all together and not into segments for

example the expression “of course”: the two words “of” and “course” can’t be analysed separately as a

preposition and a noun, but we have to give the meaning of the entire expression.

These are the three levels of the idiom principle.

Some features of this principle are:

many phrases allow internal lexical variation even if the meaning remains the same: for example “in

- some cases” / “in some instances” or “set something on fire” / “set fire to something”;

many phrases allow internal lexical syntactic variation, so the changing of grammatical elements: for

- example “it’s not in his nature to…” where the verb “is” can vary to “was” and “not” could be replaced

by “hardly, scarcely”;

many phrases allow some variation in word order: for example “to recriminate is not in his nature” / “it

- is not in his nature to recriminate”;

many words and phrases attract other words in strong collocation (the position of a word next to

- another): for example “hard work, hard luck, hard facts”, where “hard” can be used either to express

physical hard or difficulty;

many uses of words and phrases show a tendency to co­occur with certain grammatical choices: for

- example the phrasal verb “set about” is followed by verbs in the –ing form (es. Set about leaving);

many uses of words and phrases show a tendency to occur in a certain semantic environment: for

- example the verb “happen” is associated with unpleasant things or accidents.

When we analyse a text we notice some features, such as:

there is a tendency for frequent words or frequent senses of words to have less independent and

- determined meaning than less frequent words or senses, because these words or senses are used so

often; this tendency can be seen as a progressive which is the progressive

dexicalisation,

reduction of the determinate meaning of a word (the meaning becomes less and less determined);

when words collocate significantly, which means when they are often found together, their presence is

- the result of a single choice: we use in fact words in groups with only one meaning;

the “core” meaning of a word, the one which first comes to mind for most people (es. “back” = the

- posterior part of the body”), is the less used: we know that the less we use a word, the more its

meaning is specific;

we have to consider words as groups of words, as the idiom principle says, according to which words

- that occur together are to be interpreted together and not separately (es. “of course”).

These two principles, the open­choice principle and the idiom principle, are incompatible with each other, they

are diametrically opposed: in fact they offer contrasting ways of interpreting the data and so two listeners or

readers will not interpret the text in the same way.

By the way the first principle we use is the idiom principle: in the case of phrasal verbs, for example, we have

to use the idiom principle because we can’t analyse the verb and the preposition separately, but we have to

consider them as a single unit to understand its meaning.

On the contrary, in some cases we have to use the open­choice principal: for example when lexical choices

which are unexpected in their environment are switched; in this case the open­choice principle occurs.

2. Collocation

Collocation is the position of a word next to another.

It illustrates the idiom principle: sometimes words appear to be chosen in pairs or groups and these are not

necessarily adjacent.

When two words of different frequencies are collocate significantly, which means that they are often found

together, the collocation has a different value in the description of each of the two words: if the word A is more

frequent than the word B, when these two words occur together this is more important for B than for A,

because B is rarer and we have t pay attention on the meaning of the word which occurs less.

We call the less frequent word, the one which is being studied (B).

node

We call instead any word that occurs in the specified environment of a node; this word is more

collocate

frequent.

We understand that each word in a text can be both node and collocate, but not at the same time.

There are two types of collocation: when a more frequent word A is collocated with a less frequent word B;

downward collocation:

- when a less frequent word B is node and a more frequent word A is

upward collocation:

- collocate.

Collocates can also be classified in this way:

those whose occurrence is over 115 % of the node frequency;

upward collocates:

- those whose occurrence is between 85% and 115% of the node frequency;

neutral collocates:

- those whose occurrence is less than 80% of the node frequency.

downward collocates:

-

Let’s take for example the word “back”.

It has upward collocates (words which are more frequent than “back”), such as prepositions, adverbs,

conjunctions (at, from, now, the, to, when), pronouns (her, him, she, them), possessive pronouns (her, his, my),

verbs (get, got).

It has downward collocates (words which are less frequent than “back”), such as verbs (bring, come, push,

look), prepositions (along, onto, toward), adverbs (forth, slowly), adjective (normal), nouns (camp, road, yard).

We can also notice the preponderance of past tense verbs to indicate something which has already happened.

CAP. 3 Standard english

A i