The shapes of collocation
Paul Baker
LAEL, Lancaster University
The tool GraphColl (Brezina et al 2015) allows collocational networks to be identified within corpora. With the creation of this tool, complex forms of collocation emerge, encompassing three or more words. This talk begins with an illustration of how GraphColl gives a more sophisticated collocational analysis than traditional methods, based on the interrogation of a corpus of news texts. I then illustrate some of the types of relationships that can appear when more than two words are considered, using Graph Theory to account for the collocational 'shapes' or graphs that can be formed within GraphColl networks. Finally, using the reference corpus, the BE06, I elicit examples of different types of graphs and then analyse them in order to make sense of the sorts of relationships between words that occur in particular shapes. The analysis indicates that different graphs tend to favour particular patterns relating, for example, to synonymy and/or lexical bundles or frames. It is argued that an understanding of the patterns embedded in different types of graphs will enable researchers to carry out more effective collocational analyses.
Brezina, V., McEnery, T. and Wattam, S. (2015) Collocations in context: A new perspective on collocation networks. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 20(2): 139-173.