Multi-word term variation
Prepositional and adjectival complex nominals in Spanish
Complex nominals (CNs) are frequently found in specialized discourse in all languages, since they are a productive
method of creating terms by combining existing lexical units. In Spanish, a conceptual combination may often be rendered with a
prepositional CN (PCN) or an equivalent adjectival CN (ACN), e.g., demanda de electricidad vs. demanda eléctrica [electricity
demand]. Adjectives in ACNs – usually derived from nouns – are known as ‘relational adjectives’ because they encode semantic
relations with other concepts. With recent exceptions, research has focused on the underlying semantic relations in CNs. In
natural language processing, several works have dealt with the automatic detection of relation adjectives in Romance and Germanic
languages. However, there is no discourse studies of these CNs, to our knowledge, for the goal of establishing writer
recommendations. This study analyzed the co-text of equivalent PCNs and ACNs to identify factors governing the use of a certain
form. EcoLexicon ES, a corpus of Spanish environmental specialized texts, was used to extract 6 relational adjectives and,
subsequently, a set of 12 pairs of equivalent CNs. Their behavior in co-text was analyzed by querying EcoLexicon ES and a general
language corpus with 20 expressions in CQP-syntax. Our results showed that immediate linguistic co-text determined the preference
for a particular structure. Based on these findings, we provide writing guidelines to assist in the production of CNs.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Theoretical background
- 2.1Complex nominals in specialized texts
- 2.2Variation in complex nominals
- 3.Materials and methods
- 3.1Materials
- 3.1.1The EcoLexicon Spanish corpus
- 3.1.2The Spanish Web corpus 2018 (esTenTen18)
- 3.1.3Sketch Engine and CQL
- 3.2Methods
- 3.2.1Extraction of a list of equivalent adjectival and prepositional complex nominals
- 3.2.2Co-textual and internal analysis
- 3.2.2.1Extraction of complex nominals modified by adjectives
- 3.2.2.2Extraction of complex nominals postmodified by prepositional phrases
- 3.2.2.3Extraction of complex nominals as prepositional modifiers
- 3.2.2.4Extraction of complex nominals coordinated with other complex nominals
- 3.2.2.5Extraction of other internal elements
- 3.2.3Analysis of preference for adjectival or prepositional complex nominals with esTenTen18
- 4.Variation in complex nominals: Adjectival modification vs. prepositional modification
- 4.1General trends in EcoLexicon ES
- 4.2Modification by additional adjectives and prepositional phrases
- 4.2.1Modification of CNs by additional adjectives
- 4.2.2Modification of CNs by additional prepositional phrases
- 4.2.3Semantic-constrained preference for interpositional or postpositional modification
- 4.2.4Dependency analysis
- 4.3Complex nominals as postpositional modifiers
- 4.4Coordination with other complex nominals
- 4.5Sentence length and type
- 5.Recommendations of use
- 6.Conclusions
- Notes
-
References
References (70)
Baldwin, T., & Kim, S. N.
(
2010)
Multiword
Expressions. In
N. Indurkhya &
F. J. Damerau (Eds.),
Handbook
of Natural Language Processing, Second
Edition (pp. 267–292). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bally, C.
(
1909
[1951])
Traité de stylistique
française. Heidelberg: C. Winter.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bally, C.
(
1965)
Linguistique
génerale et lingustique française. Bern: Francke Verlag.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bocanegra-Valle, A., Lario de Oñate, M. C., & López Torres, E.
(
2008)
English
for Specific Purposes: Studies for Classroom Development and
Implementation. Cádiz: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cádiz.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bowker, L.
(
1998)
Using
Specialized Monolingual Native-Language Corpora as a Translation Resource: A Pilot
Study.
Meta,
43
(4), 631–651.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cabezas-García, M., & Faber, P.
(
2017)
A
Semantic Approach to the Inclusion of Complex Nominals in English Terminographic
Resources. In
R. Mitkov (Ed.),
Computational
and Corpus-Based Phraseology,
Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
10596 (pp. 145–159). Cham: Springer.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cabezas-García, M., & León-Araúz, P.
(
2018)
Towards
the Inference of Semantic Relations in Complex Nominals: a Pilot
Study. In
N. Calzolari et al. (Eds.),
Proceedings
of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC
2018) (pp. 2511–2518). Miyazaki, Japan: ELRA.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cabezas-García, M., & León-Araúz, P.
(
2019)
On
the Structural Disambiguation of Multi-word Terms. In
G. Corpas Pastor &
R. Mitkov (Eds.),
Computational
and Corpus-Based Phraseology,
Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
11755 (pp. 46–60). Cham: Springer.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Carrió-Pastor, M. L., & Candel-Mora, M. A.
(
2012)
Corpus
analysis: a pragmatic perspective on term variation.
Revista Española de Lingüística
Aplicada,
25
(1), 33–50.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Carrió-Pastor, M. L., & Candel-Mora, M. A.
Cartoni, B.
(
2008)
De
l’incomplétude lexicale en traduction automatique : vers une approche morphosémantique
multilingue. PhD. Université de Genève.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cartoni, B.
(
2009)
Lexical
morphology in machine translation: A feasibility
study. In
Proceedings of the 12th Conference of the European Chapter
of the ACL (EACL
2009) (pp. 130–138). Athens: Association for Computational Linguistics.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Christ, O., Schulze, B. M., Hofmann, A., & König, E.
(
1999)
The
IMS Corpus Workbench: Corpus Query Processor (CQP) – User’s Manual. Institute for Natural Language Processing. Stuttgart: University of Stuttgart.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cowie, A. P.
(
1981)
The
Treatment of Collocations and Idioms in Learners’ Dictionaries.
Applied
Linguistics,
2
(3), 223–235.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cruse, D. A.
(
1986)
Lexical
Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Daille, B., Dufour-Kowalski, S., & Morin, E.
(
2004)
French-English
Multi-word Term Alignment Based on Lexical Context Analysis. In
M. T. Lino et al. (Eds.),
Proceedings
of the Fourth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC
2004) (pp. 919–922). Lisbon: ELRA.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Downing, P.
(
1977)
On
the Creation and Use of English Compound
Nouns.
Language,
53
(4), 810–842.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Escandell Vidall, M. V.
(
1995)
Cortesía,
fórmulas convencionales y estrategias indirectas.
Revista Española de
Lingüística,
25
(1), 31–66.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Evert, S., & Hardie, A.
(
2011)
Twenty-first
century Corpus Workbench: Updating a query architecture for the new
millennium. In
Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics 2011
Conference (pp. 1–21). Birmingham: University of Birmingham.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Faber, P., León-Araúz, P., & Reimerink, A.
(
2014)
Representing
Environmental Knowledge in EcoLexicon. In
E. Bárcena et al. (Eds.),
Languages
for Specific Purposes in the Digital Era. Educational
Linguistics,
vol.
19
1 (pp. 267–301). Cham: Springer.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Faber, P., & León-Araúz, P.
(
2016)
Specialized
knowledge representation and the parameterization of context.
Frontiers in
Psychology,
7
(196).
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Fernández Fuertes, R., Álvarez de la Fuente, E., Parrado Román, I., & Muñiz Fernández, S.
(
2008)
La
“bici pirata” se convierte en “pirate bike” o en “bike pirate”: la composición nominal en datos de adquisición de
niños. In
L. Pérez Ruiz,
I. Pizarro Sánchez, &
E. González-Cascos Jiménez (Eds.),
Estudios
de metodología de la lengua inglesa
(IV) (pp. 421–438). Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gagné, C. L.
(
2000)
Relational-Based
Combinations Versus Property-Based Combinations: A Test of the CARIN Theory and the Dual-Process Theory of Conceptual
Combination.
Journal of Memory and
Language,
42
1, 365–389.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gangemi, A., Pisanelli, D. M., & Steve, G.
(
2000)
Understanding
Systematic Conceptual Structures in Polysemous Medical
Terms. In
M. J. Overhage (Ed.),
Proceedings
of the AMIA Symposium
2000 (pp. 285–289). Philadelphia, PA: Hanley & Belfus.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Geeraerts, D., Grondelaers, S., & Bakema, P.
(
1994)
The
structure of lexical variation. Meaning, naming, and context. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gledhill, C., & Pecman, M.
(
2018)
On
Alternating Pre-Modified and Post-Modified Nominals Such As Aspirin Synthesis Versus Synthesis of Aspirin: Rhetorical and
Cognitive Packing in English Science
Writing.
Fachsprache,
1
(2), 26–48.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Haralambous, Y., & Lavagnino, E.
(
2011)
La
réduction de termes complexes dans les langues de spécialité.
Traitement Automatique des
Langues
(TAL),
52
(1), 37–68.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Harastani, R., Daille, B., & Morin, E.
(
2013)
Identification,
alignement, et traductions des adjectifs relationnels en corpus
comparables. In
Vingtième conférence du Traitement Automatique du
Langage Naturel 2013 (TALN
2013) (pp. 313–326). Sables d’Olonne, France: ATALA.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Kilgarriff, A., & Renau, I.
(
2013)
EsTenTen,
a vast web corpus of Peninsular and American Spanish.
Procedia Social and Behavioral
Sciences,
95
1, 12–19.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Kilgarriff, A., Rychlý, P., Smrz, P., & Tugwell, D.
(
2004)
The
Sketch Engine. In
G. Williams &
S. Vessier (Eds.),
Proceedings
of the 11th EURALEX International
Congress (pp. 105–115). Lorient: EURALEX.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Langacker, R. W.
(
2008)
Cognitive
Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lees, R. B.
(
1960)
The
Grammar of English Nominalizations. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press/The Hague: Mouton.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Levi, J. N.
(
1978)
The
Syntax and Semantics of Complex Nominals. New York, NY: Academic Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Liceras, J. M.
(
2001)
La
teoría lingüística y la composición nominal del español y del
inglés. In
P. Fernández Nistal &
J. M. Bravo (Eds.),
Pathways
of Translation
Studies (pp. 229–248). Valladolid: S.A.E. University of Valladolid.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Liceras, J. M., Díaz, L., & Salomaa-Robertson, T.
(
2002)
Processing
versus representational difficulty in the acquisition of Spanish N-N
Compounding. In
A. T. Pérez-Leroux &
J. M. Liceras (Eds.),
The
Acquisition of Spanish
Morphosyntax (pp. 209–237). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
López Hernández, F., & Bernardos Galindo, S.
Lorente Casafont, M., Martínez Salom, M. A., Santamaría-Perez, I., & Vargas-Sierra, C.
(
2017)
Specialized
collocations in specialized dictionaries. In
S. Torner Castells &
E. Bernal (Eds.),
Collocations
and other lexical combinations in Spanish: theoretical, lexicographical and applied
perspectives (pp. 200–222). London/New York: Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lyons, J.
(
1995)
Linguistic
Semantics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mairal Usón, R., & Cortés Rodríguez, F. J.
(
2000)
Semantic
packaging and syntactic projections in word formation processes: the case of agent
nominalizations.
RESLA,
14
1, 271–294.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Maniez, F.
(
2009)
L’adjectif
dénominal en langue de spécialité: étude du domaine de la médicine.
Revue française de
linguistique
appliquée,
14
1, 117–130.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Maniez, F.
(
2014)
Implantation
of English Terms Including the -ING Morpheme in French, Spanish and Italian: A Corpus-Based Study of the Debates of the
European Parliament. In
P. Dury et al. (Eds.),
La
néologie en langue de spécialité : détection, implantation et circulation des nouveaux
termes (pp. 189–201). Lyon: Travaux du CRTT.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Martín Arista, J.
(
1997)
La
representación subyacente de los compuestos nominales en una gramática funcional del
inglés.
Atlantis,
19
(2), 169–175.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mélis-Puchulu, A.
(
1991)
Les
adjectifs dénominaux: des adjectifs de
relation.
Lexique,
10
1, 33–60.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Murphy, G. L.
(
1988)
Comprehending
complex concepts.
Cognitive
Science,
12
1, 529–562.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Murphy, G. L.
(
1990)
Noun
phrase interpretation and conceptual combination.
Journal of Memory and
Language,
29
1, 259–288.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nakov, P.
(
2013)
On
the Interpretation of Noun Compounds: Syntax, Semantics, and Entailment.
Natural Language
Engineering,
19
(3), 291–330.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nakov, P., & Hearst, M.
(
2006)
Using
Verbs to Characterize Noun-Noun Relations. In
J. Euzenat &
J. Domingue (Eds.),
Artificial
Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, and Applcations. AIMSA
2006 (pp. 233–244). Berlin: Springer.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nastase, V., & Szpakowicz, S.
(
2003)
Exploring
Noun-Modifier Semantic Relations. In
Fifth International Workshop on
Computational
Semantics (pp. 285–301). Tilburg: IWCS.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Padró, L., Collado, M., Reese, S., Lloberes, M., & Castellón, I.
(
2010)
FreeLing
2.1: Five Years of Open-Source Language Processing Tools. In
N. Calzolari,
K. Choukri,
B. Maegaard,
J. Mariani,
J. Odij,
S. Piperidis,
M. Rosner, &
D. Tapias (Eds.),
Proceedings
of the Fourth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC
2010) (pp. 931–936). La Valletta: ELRA.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Palacios Martínez, I.
(
2014)
Variation,
development and pragmatic uses of innit in the language of British adults and
teenagers.
English Language and
Linguistics,
19
(3), 383–405.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Postal, P. M.
(
1969)
Anaphoric islands. In
R. I. Binnick et al. (Eds.),
Papers from the Fifth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 209–239). Chicago: University of Chicago.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rodríguez-Juárez, C.
(
2017)
Accounting
for the Alternating Behaviour of Location Arguments from the Perspective of Role and Reference
Grammar.
ATLANTIS, Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American
Studies,
39
(2), 169–189.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rosario, B., Hearst, M., & Fillmore, C.
(
2002)
The
Descent of Hierarchy, and Selection in Relational Semantics. In
P. Isabelle (Ed.),
ACL
’02 Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational
Linguistics (pp. 247–254). Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Sager, J. C., Dungworth, D., & McDonald, P. F.
(
1980)
English
Special Languages: Principles and Practice in Science and
Technology. Wiesbaden: Oscar Branstetter Verlag KG.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Sinclair, J.
(
1991)
Corpus,
Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Smith, J., Durham, M., & Richards, H.
(
2013)
The
social and linguistic in the acquisition of sociolinguistic
variation.
Linguistics,
51
(2), 258–324.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Štekauer, P., Valera, S., & Kőrtvélyessy, L.
(
2012)
Word-Formation
in the World’s Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Vanderwende, L.
(
1994)
Algorithm
for Automatic Interpretation of Noun Sequences. In
M. Nagao (Ed.),
COLING
’94 Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computational
Linguistics (pp. 782–788). Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Warren, B.
(
1978)
Semantic
Patterns of Noun-Noun Compounds. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Wisniewski, E. J.
(
1996)
Construal
and similarity in conceptual combination.
Journal of Memory and
Language,
35
1, 434–453.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (1)
Cited by 1 other publications
Chambó, Santiago & Pilar León Araúz
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. 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.