The figurative nature of collocations : extent, knowledge and acquisition of duplex collocations by non-native speakers
As shown by research conducted in the fields of corpus linguistics, psycholinguistics and second language acquisition (SLA), formulaic sequences (e.g. collocations, idioms, phrasal verbs, lexical bundles etc.) form a crucial part of second language learnersâ language competence. One of the main characteristics of some of these multi-word combinations is their idiomatic nature and idioms have been widely researched as being the most compositional type. However, little is known whether collocations can be idiomatic too. Therefore, this thesis aims to fill that gap with a specific focus on statistically-derived collocations. Three studies have been carried out to this end. The first study examined the extent of collocations whose meanings were the sums of their component parts, those that were figurative (compositional or idiomatic) and finally, collocations that were polysemous, i.e. had both literal and figurative meanings. A corpus search was performed to find the most common V+N and Adj+N combinations and results showed that the majority of them had additive meanings (as reflected in traditional definitions of collocations), very few were completely opaque and a substantial percentage were those that allowed
Macis, Marijana
P Philology. Linguistics
The figurative nature of collocations : extent, knowledge and acquisition of duplex collocations by non-native speakers. As shown by research conducted in the fields of corpus linguistics, psycholinguistics and second language acquisition (SLA), formulaic sequences (e.g. collocations, idioms, phrasal verbs, lexical bundles etc.) form a crucial part of second language learnersâ language competence. One of the main characteristics of some of these multi-word combinations is their idiomatic nature and idioms have been widely researched as being the most compositional type. However, little is known whether collocations can be idiomatic too. Therefore, this thesis aims to fill that gap with a specific focus on statistically-derived collocations. Three studies have been carried out to this end. The first study examined the extent of collocations whose meanings were the sums of their component parts, those that were figurative (compositional or idiomatic) and finally, collocations that were polysemous, i.e. had both literal and figurative meanings. A corpus search was performed to find the most common V+N and Adj+N combinations and results showed that the majority of them had additive meanings (as reflected in traditional definitions of collocations), very few were completely opaque and a substantial percentage were those that allowed
figurative nature collocation extent knowledge_acquisition collocation non_native_speaker show conducted field corpus_linguistics psycholinguistics second_language_acquisition_sla formulaic sequence collocation idiom phrasal verb lexical bundle etc form crucial part second_language_learner language competence one_main characteristic multi_word combination idiomatic nature idiom widely research compositional type however_little known whether collocation idiomatic too therefore_aim fill_gap specific_focus statistically derived collocation study_carry end first study examine_extent collocation whose meaning sum component part figurative compositional idiomatic finally collocation polysemous literal figurative_meaning corpus search perform common combination show majority additive meaning reflect traditional definition collocation completely opaque substantial percentage allow