Linguistic Dictionary

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Collocations

Definition: The chances or high frequency levels of two words being side by side.

Notes: Examples: High heels, middle school, los angeles, etc. (e.g. construction grammar, frame semantics, UD label, NLP challenge)

Lexical proliferation problem

Type: Linguistic Term

Definition: Sag et al., (2002) critiques current MWE processing, saying that it creates too many separate pieces for the same idea. There are groups of constructions that share a similar pattern, like (take a walk, take a hike, take a flight, etc) called light verb constructions. They look different to a computer, but the meaning of take is the same. It is like programming for each individual color shirt someone wears in a sentence instead of just programming for the sentence, and the possibility that the person could wear any color shirt. Sag et al argue that computers need to be programmed to spot patterns, not memorize large amounts of data.

Semantic opaqueness:

Definition: Synonymous to non-compositional: its meaning cannot be derived from its parts.

Idiosyncratic

Type: INSERT TYPE OF UNIT HERE

Definition: Unique, individual

Semantic Decompositionality

Type: Process of breaking up a word into it’s individual parts. This overlaps with Construction Grammar Theory.

Literal meaning: “mother” is composed of “human” “female” “parent”)(Sag et al. 2002)