Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

International Conference on Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology

EUROPHRAS 2019: Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology pp 1–14Cite as

The Grammatical Environment of Intensifier-Noun Collocations: Insights from Lexical Priming Theory

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

  • 781 Accesses

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11755))

Abstract

A recurrent topic in collocational research is the idiosyncratic distribution of intensifiers with nearly equivalent meanings. So far, this phenomenon has been mostly investigated from the perspective of the control exerted by the lexical context. In the case of adjective–noun collocations, this implies an almost exclusive focus on the nominal head. In this paper, we draw the attention towards the role that colligation –i.e. preferences for particular grammatical contexts– exerts on the selection of intensifying adjectives. Drawing on insights from Hoey’s lexical priming theory –in particular, the concept of nesting–, we conducted two corpus-based case studies involving collocations of intensifying adjectives with two different nouns in English (attention and fear). The results suggest that the selection of intensifier is sensitive to the interplay of lexical collocation and grammatical context.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Hoey, M.: Lexical Priming. A New Theory of Words and Language. Routledge, London (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Hoey, M.: Corpus-driven approaches to grammar: the search for common ground. In: Römer, U., Schulze, R. (eds.) Exploring the Lexis–Grammar Interface, pp. 33–47. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Pace-Sigge, M., Patterson, K.J.: Introduction. In: Pace-Sigge, M., Patterson, K.J. (eds.) Lexical Priming. Applications and Advances, pp. 11–23. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Sinclair, J.: Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Hunston, S., Francis, G.: Pattern Grammar. A Corpus-driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (2000)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  6. Hausmann, F.J.: Collocations in the bilingual dictionary. In: Hausmann, F.J., Riechmann, O., Wiegand, H.E., Zgusta, L. (eds.) Wörterbücher, Dictionaries, Dictionnaires: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Lexikographie/An International Encylopedia of Lexicography/Encyclopédie internationale de lexicographie, vol. 3, pp. 2775–2778. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin (1991)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Partington, A.: Patterns and Meanings. Using Corpora for English Language Research and Teaching. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (1998)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  8. García-Page, M.: Cuestión capital, error garrafal, fe ciega, etc. El intensificador en las colocaciones léxicas N + A. Verba. Anuario galego de filoloxía, Anexo, vol. 48, pp. 156–170 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Koike, K.: Colocaciones léxicas en el español actual: estudio formal y léxico-semántico. Universidad de Alcalá/Takushoku University (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Hausmann, F.J.: Un dictionnaire des collocations est-il possible? Travaux de Linguistique et de Littérature Strasbourg 17(1), 187–195 (1979)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Hausmann, F.J.: Was sind eigentlich Kollokationen? In: Steyer, K. (ed.) Wortverbindungen – mehr oder weniger fest (Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache), pp. 309–334. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Hausmann, F.J.: Lexicographie française et phraséologie. In: Haag, E. (ed.) Collocations, phraséologie, lexicographie: Études 1977–2007 et Bibliographie, pp. 121–153. Shaker, Aachen (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Mel’čuk, I.: Collocations and lexical functions. In: Cowie, A.P. (ed.) Phraseology. Theory, Analysis and Application, pp. 23–53. Clarendon, Oxford (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Mel’čuk, I.: Lexical functions. In: Burger, H., Dobrovol’skij, Kühn, P., Norrick, N.R. (eds.) Phraseology. An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, vol. 1, pp. 119–131. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Mel’čuk, I., Clas, A., Polguère, A.: Introduction a la lexicologie explicative et combinatoire. Duculot, Louvain-la-Neuve (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Sinclair, J., Jones, S., Daley, R.: English lexical studies: report to OSTI on project C/LP/08; final report for period January 1967-September 1969. Department of English, University of Birmingham (1970)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Jones, S., Sinclair, J.: English lexical collocations. A study in computational linguistics. Cahiers de lexicologie 24, 15–61 (1974)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Mason, O.: Parameters of collocation: the word in the centre of gravity. In: Kirk, J.M. (ed.) Corpora Galore. Analyses and Techniques in describing English, pp. 267–280. Rodopi, Amsterdam (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Evert, S.: Corpora and collocations. In: Lüdeling, A., Kytö, M. (eds.) Corpus Linguistics. An International Handbook, vol. 2, pp. 1212–1248. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Pecina, P.: Lexical association measures and collocation extraction. Lang. Resour. Eval. 44, 137–158 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Uhrig, P., Proisl, T.: Less hay, more needles – using dependency-annotated corpora to provide lexicographers with more accurate lists of collocation candidates. Lexicographica 28, 141–180 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Uhrig, P., Evert, S., Proisl, T.: Collocation candidate extraction from dependency-annotated corpora: exploring differences across parsers and dependency annotation schemes. In: Cantos-Gómez, P., Almela-Sánchez, M. (eds.) Lexical Collocation Analysis. QMHSS, pp. 111–140. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92582-0_6

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  23. Alonso Ramos, M.: Hacia una definición del concepto de colocación: de J. R. Firth a I. A. Mel’čuk. Revista de lexicografía 1, 9–28 (1994–1995)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Corpas Pastor, G.: Manual de fraseología española. Gredos, Madrid (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Bartsch, S.: Structural and Functional Properties of Collocations in English: A Corpus Study of Lexical and Pragmatic Constraints on Lexical Co-occurrence. Gunter Narr, Tübingen (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Hausmann, F., Blumenthal, P.: Présentation: collocations, corpus, dictionnaires. Langue Française 150, 3–13 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Sánchez Rufat, A.: Apuntes sobre las combinaciones léxicas y el concepto de colocación. Anuario de Estudios Filológicos 33, 291–306 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Siepmann, D.: Collocation, colligation, and encoding dictionaries. Part I: lexicological aspects. Int. J. Lexicogr. 18(4), 409–443 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Tummers, J., Heylen, K., Geeraerts, D.: Usage-based approaches in cognitive linguistics: a technical state of the art. Corpus Linguist. Linguist. Theory 1(2), 225–261 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Arppe, A., Guilquin, G., Glynn, D., Hilpert, M., Zeschel, A.: Cognitive corpus linguistics: five points of debate on current theory and methodology. Corpora 5(1), 1–27 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Ellis, N.C., Frey, E., Jalkanen, I.: The psycholinguistic reality of collocation and semantic prosody (1): lexical access. In: Römer, U., Schulze, R. (eds.) Exploring the Lexis-Grammar Interface, pp. 89–114. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Aitchison, J.: Words in the Mind. An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon. Blackwell, Oxford (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  33. De Deyne, S., Storms, G.: Word associations: norms for 1,424 Dutch works in a continuous task. Behav. Res. Methods 40(1), 198–205 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. De Deyne, S., Storms, G.: Word associations: network and semantic properties. Behav. Res. Methods 40(1), 213–231 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Church, K.W., Hanks, P.: Word association norms, mutual information, and lexicography. Comput. Linguist. 16(1), 22–29 (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Sinclair, J.: The search for units of meaning. In: Sinclair, J., Carter, R. (eds.) Trust the Text. Language, Corpus and Discourse, pp. 24–48. Routledge, London (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Sinclair, J.: The lexical item. In: Sinclair, J., Carter, R. (eds.) Trust the Text. Language, Corpus and Discourse, pp. 131–148. Routledge, London (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Cantos-Gómez, P., Almela-Sánchez, M.: Colligational effects of collocation: lexically conditioned dependencies between modification patterns of the noun cause. In: Pace-Sigge, M., Patterson, K.J. (eds.) Lexical Priming. Applications and Advances, pp. 231–249. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  39. Stefanowitsch, A., Gries, S.: Collostructions: investigating the interaction of words and constructions. Int. J. Corpus Linguist. 8(2), 209–243 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Schmid, H.-J., Küchenhoff, H.: Collostructional analysis and other ways of measuring lexicogrammatical attraction: theoretical premises, practical problems and cognitive underpinnings. Cogn. Linguist. 24(3), 531–577 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Gries, S.: 50-something years of work on collocations… what is or should be next. Int. J. Corpus Linguist. 18(1), 137–165 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Sketch Engine. https://www.sketchengine.eu/ententen-english-corpus/

  43. MacIntosh, C. (ed.): Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  44. Rundell, M. (ed.): Macmillan Collocations Dictionary for Learners of English. Macmillan, Oxford (2010)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Depto. Fil. Inglesa, Fac. Letras, University of Murcia, 30001, Murcia, Spain

    Moisés Almela-Sánchez

  2. University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    Pascual Cantos-Gómez

Authors
  1. Moisés Almela-Sánchez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Pascual Cantos-Gómez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Moisés Almela-Sánchez .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Malaga, Malaga, Spain

    Gloria Corpas Pastor

  2. University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Ruslan Mitkov

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Almela-Sánchez, M., Cantos-Gómez, P. (2019). The Grammatical Environment of Intensifier-Noun Collocations: Insights from Lexical Priming Theory. In: Corpas Pastor, G., Mitkov, R. (eds) Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology. EUROPHRAS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11755. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30135-4_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30135-4_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-30134-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-30135-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation