English Collocation Studies The OSTI Report

This is the first published edition of John Sinclair, Susan Jones and Robert Daley's research on collocation undertaken in 1970. The unpublished report was circulated amongst a small group of academics and was enormously influential, sparking a growth of interest in collocation amongst researchers in linguistics. Collocation was first viewed as important in computational linguistics in the work of Harold Palmer in Japan. Later M.A.K. Halliday and John Sinclair published on collocation in the 1960s. English Collocation Studies is a report on empirical research into collocation, devised by Halliday with Sinclair acting as the Principal Investigator and editor of the resultant OSTI report. The present edition contains an introduction by Professor Wolfgang Teubert based on his interview with John Sinclair. The introduction assesses the extent to which the findings of the original research have developed in the intervening years, and how some of the techniques mentioned in the report were implemented in the COBUILD project at Birmingham University in the 1980s.

Preface

ix

Contributors

xi

Editor's Preface

xiii

Interview with John Sinclair conducted by Wolfgang Teubert

xvii

English Lexical Studies: Report to OSTI on Project C/LP/08

Acknowledgements

2

(1)

Steering Committee

2

(1)

Staff

2

(1)

Organisation of the Report

2

(1)

INTRODUCTION

3

(6)

Grammar Versus Lexis

3

(2)

Span

5

(1)

Lexical Items

5

(2)

Loose Ends

7

(2)

SECTION 1: BACKGROUND

9

(9)

1.1 Definition of Specialized Terms used in the Report

9

(1)

1.2 Brief History of the Project: Edinburgh

10

(1)

1.3 Brief History of the Project: Birmingham

11

(4)

1.4 Possibilities for Future Research

15

(3)

SECTION 2: TEXTS

18

(16)

2.0 Introduction

18

(1)

2.1 The Spoken English Text

18

(5)

2.2 The Brown University Text

23

(2)

2.3 The Scientific Text

25

(1)

2.4 Experiments in Obtaining Text from Informants

25

(4)

2.5 Literary Texts

29

(1)

2.6 Discussion of the Statistical Characteristics of Texts

29

(5)

SECTION 3: SIGNIFICANT COLLOCATION

34

(23)

3.0 Definitions

34

(1)

3.1 Population and Sample

34

(1)

3.2 Significance at a Span Position and Significance within a Span

35

(1)

3.3 Significance Tests Used

36

(5)

3.4 Level of Significance and Minimum Number of Occurrences

41

(1)

3.5 Test Decisions

42

(1)

3.6 Span

42

(6)

3.7 Prediction on the Left and on the Right

48

(3)

3.8 Point of Maximum Difference

51

(2)

3.9 Calculation of Expected Values and Variances

53

(2)

3.10 Methods Used in Section 3.6

55

(2)

SECTION 4: FREQUENT WORDS

57

(13)

4.0 Introduction

57

(1)

4.1 An Examination of Some Grammatical Items

58

(7)

4.2 Semi-Grammatical Items

65

(5)

SECTION 5: COLLOCATIONAL PATTERNS OF SELECTED LEXICAL ITEMS

70

(21)

5.0 Introduction

70

(1)

5.1 Selection of Data

70

(1)

5.2 Production of Collocational Information

71

(3)

5.3 Analysis of Collocational Information

74

(11)

5.4 Statistical Considerations

85

(6)

SECTION 6: IDENTIFYING LEXICAL ITEMS

91

(32)

6.0 Introduction

91

(1)

6.1 Multiword Items

91

(7)

6.2 Homographs

98

(15)

6.3 Paradigms

113

(10)

SECTION 7: DISCRIMINATION BETWEEN TWO TEXTS USING STRENGTH OF COLLOCATION AS A DISCRIMINANT

123

(16)

7.0 Introduction

123

(1)

7.1 Texts

124

(1)

7.2 Test Words

124

(1)

7.3 Discrimination using Bayes Theorem

125

(1)

7.4 Choosing the Prior Distribution of f

126

(2)

7.5 Discussion of the Use of Bayes Formula in Deriving Posterior Odds

128

(1)

7.6 Choosing the Collocates

128

(4)

7.7 The Disputed Text

132

(1)

7.8 Conclusions

133

(6)

APPENDICES (Edited for this publication)

139

(60)

Section 1

Appendix 1i: is Program Descriptions

139

(4)

Section 2

Appendix 2i: Words in text with 10 or more occurrences (Rank Order)

143

(1)

Appendix 2ii: Words in text with 10 or more occurrences (Alphabetical Order)

144

(1)

Appendix 2iii: Part of first synthetic text

145

(2)

Appendix 2iv: Significant collocates (second synthetic text)

147

(4)

Section 4

Appendix 4i: Collocational tables for grammatical items

151

(12)

Appendix 4iA: the, a

151

(5)

Appendix 4iB: and

156

(1)

Appendix 4iC: of in, and to

157

(4)

Appendix 4iD: I, you, it (spoken text only)

161

(2)

Appendix 4ii: Selection from the available collocation information for semi-grammatical items

163

(13)

Section 5

Appendix 5i: Collocations significant with only 2 occurrences

176

(1)

Appendix 5ii: Collocational patterns for selected lexical items

177

(6)

Section 6

Appendix 6i: Concordance of right with minority meanings marked

183

(1)

Appendix 6ii: Classified occurrences of way

184

(2)

Appendix 6iii: Collocates significant with come/came

186

(2)

Appendix 6iv: Classified occurrences of year/years

188

(1)

Appendix 6iv: Collocates significant with year/years

189

(2)

Appendix 6v: Classified occurrences of word/words

191

(1)

Appendix 6v: Collocates significant with word/words

192

(2)

Appendix 6vi: The "Red Herring" Results

194

(5)

APPENDIX: Sample from the Spoken English Text

199

(4)

REFERENCES

203

(2)

INDEX

205

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English Collocation Studies The OSTI Report

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