Cover not available
Article published In:
Bridging the Methodological Divide: Linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches to formulaic language
Edited by Stefanie Wulff and Debra Titone
[The Mental Lexicon 9:3] 2014
► pp. 401–418

Words that go together

Measuring individual differences in native speakers’ knowledge of collocations

| Northumbria University

Although formulaic language has been studied extensively from both a linguistic and psycholinguistic perspective, little is known about the relationship between individual speakers’ knowledge of collocations and their linguistic experience, or between collocational knowledge and other aspects of linguistic knowledge. This is partly because work in these areas has been hampered by lack of an adequate instrument measuring speakers’ knowledge of collocations. This paper describes the development of such an instrument, the “Words that go together” (WGT) test, and some preliminary research using it. The instrument is a multiple choice test consisting of 40 items of varying frequency and collocation strength. The test was validated with a sample of 80 adult native speakers of English. Test-retest reliability was 0.80 and split-half reliability was 0.88. Convergent validity was established by comparing participants’ scores with measures expected to correlate with language experience (print exposure, education, and age) and other linguistic abilities (vocabulary size, grammatical comprehension); divergent validity was established by comparing test scores with nonverbal IQ. The results of the validation study are then used to compare speakers’ performance on the WGT with corpus-based measures of collocation strength (mutual information, z-score, t-score and simple frequency); however, no statistically reliable relationships were found.

Keywords: language testing, formulaic language, collocation, frequency, age, individual differences, psychological reality
Published online: 23 January 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.9.3.02dab
References
Acheson, D.J., Wells, J.B., & MacDonald, M.C
(2008) New and updated tests of print exposure and reading abilities in college students. Behavior Research Methods, 401, 278–289. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arnon, I., & Snider, N
(2010) More than words: Frequency effects for multi-word phrases. Journal of Memory and Language, 621, 67–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barlow, M., & Kemmer, S
(2000) Usage-based models of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bley-Vroman, R
(2002) Frequency in production, comprehension and acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 241, 209–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boers, F., & Lindstromberg, S
(2008) Structural elaboration by the sound (and feel) of it. In F. Boers & S. Lindstromberg (Eds.), Cognitive linguistic approaches to teaching vocabulary and phraseology (pp. 329–353). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bybee, J
(2006) From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition. Language, 821, 711–733. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010) Language, usage and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, J.L
(2013) Usage-based theory and exemplar representation. In T. Hoffman & 
G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of construction grammar (pp. 49–69). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N
(1981/1993) Lectures on government and binding: The pisa lectures. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Church, K.W., Gale, W., Hanks, P., & Hindle, D
(1991) Using statistics in lexical analysis. In 
U. Zernik (Ed.), Lexical acquisition: Using on-line resources to build a lexicon (pp. 115–164.). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Church, K.W., & Hanks, P
(1990) Word association norms, mutual information, and lexicography. Computational Linguistics, 161, 22–29.Google Scholar
Conklin, K., & Schmitt, N
(2008) Formulaic sequences: Are they processed more quickly than nonformulaic language by native and nonnative speakers? Applied Linguistics, 291, 72–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dąbrowska, E
(2009) Words as constructions. In V. Evans & S. Pourcel (Eds.), New directions in cognitive linguistics (pp. 201–223). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dąbrowska, E. (in press). Individual differences in grammatical knowledge. In E. Dąbrowska & D. Divjak (Eds.) Handbook of cognitive linguistics Berlin De Gruyter Mouton DOI logo
in preparation). Grammar, vocabulary and collocations.
Dennis, S.F
(1965) The construction of a thesaurus automatically from a sample of text. In M. E. Stevens, V.E. Giuliano & L.B. Heilprin (Eds.), Proceedings of the symposium on statistical association methods for mechanized documentation (Vol. 2691, pp. 61–148). 
Washington, DC: National Bureau of Standards Miscellaneous Pubcation.Google Scholar
Douglas-Kozłowska, C., & Dzierżanowska, H
(2004) Selected English collocations. Warszawa: PWN.Google Scholar
Dunn, L.M., & Dunn, L.M
(1997) Peabody picture vocabulary test (3rd ed.). Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Durrant, P., & Doherty, A
(2010) Are high-frequency collocations psychologically real? Investigating the thesis of collocational priming. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 61, 125–155. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durrant, P.L
(2008) High frequency collocations and second language learning. (Ph. D.), University of Nottingham. Retrieved from [URL].
Ellis, N.C., & Simpson-Vlach, R
(2009) Formulaic language in native speakers: Triangulating psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and education. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 51, 61–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Erman, B., & Warren, B
(2000) The idiom principle and the open choice principle. Text, 201, 29–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evert, S
(2004) Computational approaches to collocations. Retrieved 8 February 2014, from [URL].
(2005) The statistics of word cooccurrences: Word pairs and collocations. (Ph.D.), University of Stuttgart. Retrieved from [URL].
Gries, S.T
(2011) Phonological similarity in multi-word symbolic units. Cognitive Linguistics, 221, 491–510. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herbst, T
(1996) What are collocations: Sandy beaches or false teeth? English Studies, 771, 379–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, J.M
(1991) Informational constraints on pre-lexical priming. Language and Cognitive Processes, 61, 169–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hunston, S
(2002) Corpora in applied linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R.W
(1988) A usage-based model. In B. Rudzka-Ostyn (Ed.), Topics in cognitive linguistics (pp. 127–161). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2000) A dynamic usage-based model. In M. Barlow & S. Kemmer (Eds.), Usage-based models of language (pp. 1–63). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Nation, P., & Beglar, D
(2007) A vocabulary size test. The Language Teacher, 31(7), 9–13.Google Scholar
Pinker, S
(1997) Words and rules in the human brain. Nature, 3871, 547–548. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1999) Words and rules. The ingredients of language. London: Weidenfeld and 
Nicolson.Google Scholar
Schmitt, N., Grandage, S., & Adolphs, S
(2004) Are corpus-derived recurrent clusters psycholinguistically valid? In N. Schmitt (Ed.), Formulaic sequences: acquisition, processing and use (pp. 127–151). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shipley, W.C., Gruber, C.P., Martin, T.A., & Klein, A.M
(2009) Shipley-2 manual. Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services.Google Scholar
Sinclair, J
(1991) Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2004) Trust the text: Language, corpus and discourse. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Siyanova-Chanturia, A., Conklin, K., & van Heuven, W.J.B
(2011) Seeing a phrase “time and again” matters: The role of phrasal frequency in the processing of multi-word sequences. Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 371, 776–784. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tremblay, A., Derwing, B., Libben, G., & Westbury, C
(2011) Processing advantages of lexical bundles: Evidence from self-paced reading and sentence recall tasks. Language Learning, 611, 569–613. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tremblay, A., & Tucker, B.V
(2011) The effects of N-gram probabilistic measures on the recognition and production of four-word sequences. The Mental Lexicon, 61, 302–324. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ullman, M.T
(2006) The declarative/procedural model and the shallow structure hypothesis. Applied Psycholinguistics, 271, 97–105.Google Scholar
Verneau, M., van der Kamp, J., Savelsbergh, G.J., & de Loozem, M.P
(2014) Age and time effects on implicit and explicit learning. Experimental Aging Research, 401, 477–511. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weir, C.J
(2005) Language Testing and Validation: An Evidence-based Approach. New York: Palgrave Mac. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wray, A
(2002) Formulaic Language and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 18 other publications

Dunn, Jonathan
2018. Finding variants for construction-based dialectometry: A corpus-based approach to regional CxGs. Cognitive Linguistics 29:2 ► pp. 275 ff. DOI logo
Dąbrowska, Ewa
2018. Experience, aptitude and individual differences in native language ultimate attainment. Cognition 178 ► pp. 222 ff. DOI logo
Dąbrowska, Ewa
2019. Experience, Aptitude, and Individual Differences in Linguistic Attainment: A Comparison of Native and Nonnative Speakers. Language Learning 69 ► pp. 72 ff. DOI logo
Garibyan, Armine, Achim Schilling, Claudia Boehm, Alexandra Zankl & Patrick Krauss
2022. Neural correlates of linguistic collocations during continuous speech perception. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Gibbs, Raymond W.
2022. Important challenges in the study of metaphors. In Figurative Thought and Language in Action [Figurative Thought and Language, 16], ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
González-Márquez, Mónica, Michele I. Feist & Liane Ströbel
2017. Converging on a theory of language through multiple methods. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40 DOI logo
Herbst, Thomas
2018. Collo-Creativity and Blending: Recognizing Creativity Requires Lexical Storage in Constructional Slots. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 66:3 ► pp. 309 ff. DOI logo
Liu, Yu
2019. Disfluency in L2 Chinese Academic Oral Presentations and Formulaic Language Instruction. In Chinese for Specific and Professional Purposes [Chinese Language Learning Sciences, ], ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Llompart, Miquel & Ewa Dąbrowska
2020. Explicit but Not Implicit Memory Predicts Ultimate Attainment in the Native Language. Frontiers in Psychology 11 DOI logo
McConnell, Kyla & Alice Blumenthal-Dramé
2021. Usage-Based Individual Differences in the Probabilistic Processing of Multi-Word Sequences. Frontiers in Communication 6 DOI logo
McConnell, Kyla & Alice Blumenthal-Dramé
2022. Effects of task and corpus-derived association scores on the online processing of collocations. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 18:1 ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Rastelli, Stefano
2019. The discontinuity model: Statistical and grammatical learning in adult second-language acquisition. Language Acquisition 26:4 ► pp. 387 ff. DOI logo
RICHES, Nick, Carolyn LETTS, Hadeel AWAD, Rachel RAMSEY & Ewa DĄBROWSKA
2022. Collocational knowledge in children: a comparison of English-speaking monolingual children, and children acquiring English as an Additional Language. Journal of Child Language 49:5 ► pp. 1008 ff. DOI logo
Schäfer, Roland
2018. Abstractions and exemplars: The measure noun phrase alternation in German. Cognitive Linguistics 29:4 ► pp. 729 ff. DOI logo
Tachihara, Karina & Adele E. Goldberg
2020. Cognitive accessibility predicts word order of couples’ names in English and Japanese. Cognitive Linguistics 31:2 ► pp. 231 ff. DOI logo
Voelkel, Svenja & Franziska Kretzschmar
2021. Introducing Linguistic Research, DOI logo
Vulchanova, Mila, Valentin Vulchanov, Antonella Sorace, Cristina Suarez-Gomez & Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes
2022. Editorial: The Notion of the Native Speaker Put to the Test: Recent Research Advances. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. References. In Foundations of Familiar Language, ► pp. 386 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 may 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.