Semantic relations between collocations: A Spanish case study

Linguistics as a scientific study of human language intends to describe and explain it. However, validity of a linguistic theory is difficult to prove due to volatile nature of language as a human convention and impossibility to cover all real-life linguistic data. In spite of these problems, comput...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Olga Kolesnikova, Alexander Gelbukh
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2012
País:México
Institución:Instituto Politécnico Nacional
Repositorio:Redalyc-IPN
OAI Identifier:oai:redalyc.org:157021504003
Acceso en línea:https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=157021504003
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Lengua y Literatura
Collocations
machine learning
lexical functions
Descripción
Sumario:Linguistics as a scientific study of human language intends to describe and explain it. However, validity of a linguistic theory is difficult to prove due to volatile nature of language as a human convention and impossibility to cover all real-life linguistic data. In spite of these problems, computational techniques and modeling can provide evidence to verify or falsify linguistic theories. As a case study, we conducted a series of computer experiments on a corpus of Spanish verb-noun collocations using machine learning methods, in order to test a linguistic point that collocations in the language do not form an unstructured collection but are language items related via what we call collocational isomorphism, represented by lexical functions of the Meaning-Text Theory. Our experiments allowed us to verify this linguistic statement. Moreover, they suggested that semantic considerations are more important in the definition of the notion of collocation than statistical ones.