The Role of Syntactic Class, Frequency, and Word Order in Looking up English Multi-Word Expressions

Multi-word lexical units, such as compounds and idioms, are often problematic for lexicographers. Dictionaries are traditionally organized around single orthographic words, and so the question arises of where to place such complex lexical units. The user-friendly answer would be to include them prim...

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Autor principal:	Robert Lew
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	AF DE EN FR NL
Publicado:	Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal-WAT 2012
Materias:	multi-word expression mwe multi-word unit multi-word item dictionary dictionary consultation dictionary access lexicography english language polish learners Philology. Linguistics P1-1091 Languages and literature of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania PL1-8844 Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages PD1-7159
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/d18591b36f4d420f828c3d6828dccd54
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:d18591b36f4d420f828c3d6828dccd542021-12-03T06:58:18ZThe Role of Syntactic Class, Frequency, and Word Order in Looking up English Multi-Word Expressions10.5788/22-1-10061684-49042224-0039https://doaj.org/article/d18591b36f4d420f828c3d6828dccd542012-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://lexikos.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/1006https://doaj.org/toc/1684-4904https://doaj.org/toc/2224-0039Multi-word lexical units, such as compounds and idioms, are often problematic for lexicographers. Dictionaries are traditionally organized around single orthographic words, and so the question arises of where to place such complex lexical units. The user-friendly answer would be to include them primarily under the word which users are most likely to look up. But how do we know which words are likely to be looked up? The present study addresses this question by examining the roles of part of speech, word frequency, and word position in guiding the decisions of Polish learners of English as to which component word of a multi-word expression to look up in the dictionary. The degree of word frequency is found to be the strongest predictor, with less frequent words having a significantly greater chance of being selected for consultation. Then there is an independent part of speech-related preference for nouns, with adjectives being second, followed by verbs in third place. Words belonging to the remaining syntactic categories (adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, and pronouns) are hardly looked up at all. However, word placement within the multi-word expression does not seem to matter much. This study has implications for dictionary makers in considering how to list multi-word-expressions.Robert LewWoordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal-WATarticlemulti-word expressionmwemulti-word unitmulti-word itemdictionarydictionary consultationdictionary accesslexicographyenglish languagepolish learnersPhilology. LinguisticsP1-1091Languages and literature of Eastern Asia, Africa, OceaniaPL1-8844Germanic languages. Scandinavian languagesPD1-7159AFDEENFRNLLexikos, Vol 22, Pp 243-260 (2012)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	AF DE EN FR NL
topic	multi-word expression mwe multi-word unit multi-word item dictionary dictionary consultation dictionary access lexicography english language polish learners Philology. Linguistics P1-1091 Languages and literature of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania PL1-8844 Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages PD1-7159
spellingShingle	multi-word expression mwe multi-word unit multi-word item dictionary dictionary consultation dictionary access lexicography english language polish learners Philology. Linguistics P1-1091 Languages and literature of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania PL1-8844 Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages PD1-7159 Robert Lew The Role of Syntactic Class, Frequency, and Word Order in Looking up English Multi-Word Expressions
description	Multi-word lexical units, such as compounds and idioms, are often problematic for lexicographers. Dictionaries are traditionally organized around single orthographic words, and so the question arises of where to place such complex lexical units. The user-friendly answer would be to include them primarily under the word which users are most likely to look up. But how do we know which words are likely to be looked up? The present study addresses this question by examining the roles of part of speech, word frequency, and word position in guiding the decisions of Polish learners of English as to which component word of a multi-word expression to look up in the dictionary. The degree of word frequency is found to be the strongest predictor, with less frequent words having a significantly greater chance of being selected for consultation. Then there is an independent part of speech-related preference for nouns, with adjectives being second, followed by verbs in third place. Words belonging to the remaining syntactic categories (adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, and pronouns) are hardly looked up at all. However, word placement within the multi-word expression does not seem to matter much. This study has implications for dictionary makers in considering how to list multi-word-expressions.
format	article
author	Robert Lew
author_facet	Robert Lew
author_sort	Robert Lew
title	The Role of Syntactic Class, Frequency, and Word Order in Looking up English Multi-Word Expressions
title_short	The Role of Syntactic Class, Frequency, and Word Order in Looking up English Multi-Word Expressions
title_full	The Role of Syntactic Class, Frequency, and Word Order in Looking up English Multi-Word Expressions
title_fullStr	The Role of Syntactic Class, Frequency, and Word Order in Looking up English Multi-Word Expressions
title_full_unstemmed	The Role of Syntactic Class, Frequency, and Word Order in Looking up English Multi-Word Expressions
title_sort	role of syntactic class, frequency, and word order in looking up english multi-word expressions
publisher	Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal-WAT
publishDate	2012
url	https://doaj.org/article/d18591b36f4d420f828c3d6828dccd54
work_keys_str_mv	AT robertlew theroleofsyntacticclassfrequencyandwordorderinlookingupenglishmultiwordexpressions AT robertlew roleofsyntacticclassfrequencyandwordorderinlookingupenglishmultiwordexpressions
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The Role of Syntactic Class, Frequency, and Word Order in Looking up English Multi-Word Expressions

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