This study examines the use of one category of prefabricated language (restricted lexical collocations) in native and non-native academic English in the social sciences, in an attempt to throw light on a neglected aspect of learner competence. It first surveys the existing theoretical viewpoints on word combinations and then reviews experimental research into the psycholinguistic processing of prefabricated language, which suggest that the role of conventional expressions is to facilitate fluent production and rapid comprehension. A computer-based corpus of native academic writing is analysed to discover to what extent and how such collocations are used in formal written English. Conventionality of style, it is suggested, aids precision of expression, clearly a quality highly valued in academic argument. A corpus of non-native writing is then subjected to a similar analysis. While the collocational errors learners make do not on the whole seriously destroy intelligibility, they can lead to a lack of precision and obscure the clarity of expression required in academic communication. Pedagogical implications are then considered, and it is seen that for the most part published teaching materials have failed to recognize the nature of collocations in general and offer little help. The final part of the study examines the treatment of restricted collocations in both general and phraseological dictionaries for learners. These are evaluated on their selection and presentation of collocations shown by the preceding research to be problematic for advanced learners. The conclusion suggests that, for such learners, who are mostly studying the language independently, good reference works are needed in the form of specialist collocational dictionaries. The results of this research help to establish principles for the design of such dictionaries.

The corpus-based studies in this volume explore biomedical research writing in English from a variety of perspectives. The articles in this collection delve into the lexicographic issues involved in building an electronic database of collocations and lexical bundles, offer insight on the teaching and learning of prototypical multiword units of meaning in biomedical discourse, and view written scientific English through the lens of such diverse fields as phraseology, metaphor, gender and discourse analysis. The research presented in this book forms the theoretical and methodological foundation of SciE-Lex, a lexical database of collocations and prefabricated expressions designed to help scientists write scientific papers in English accurately. The concluding chapter on FrameNet addresses frame semantics, whose application to the cross-linguistic study of scientific language will open new and promising avenues of research in the study of specialized languages.

The field of lexicography is undergoing a major revolution. The rapid replacement of the traditional paper dictionary by electronic dictionaries opens up exciting possibilities but also constitutes a major challenge to the field. The eLexicography in the 21st Century: New Challenges, New Applications conference organized by the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics of the Université catholique de Louvain in October 2009 aimed to bring together the many researchers around the world who are working in the fast developing field of electronic lexicography and to act as a showcase for the latest lexicographic developments and software solutions in the field. The conference attracted both academics and industrial partners from 30 different countries who presented electronic dictionary projects dealing with no less than 22 languages. The resulting proceedings volume bears witness to the tremendous vitality and diversity of research in the field. The volume covers a wide range span of topics, including: -the use of language resources for lexicographic purposes, in the form of lexical databases like WordNet or corpora of different types - innovative changes to the dictionary structure afforded by the electronic medium, in particular multiple access routes and efficient integration of phraseology -specialised dictionaries (e.g. SMS dictionaries, sign language dictionaries) -automated customisation of dictionaries in function of users' needs -exploitation of Natural Language Processing tools - integration of electronic dictionaries into language learning and teaching

This book presents established and state-of-the-art methods in Language Technology (including text mining, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and natural language processing), and demonstrates how they can be applied by humanities scholars working with textual data. The landscape of humanities research has recently changed thanks to the proliferation of big data and large textual collections such as Google Books, Early English Books Online, and Project Gutenberg. These resources have yet to be fully explored by new generations of scholars, and the authors argue that Language Technology has a key role to play in the exploration of large-scale textual data. The authors use a series of illustrative examples from various humanistic disciplines (mainly but not exclusively from History, Classics, and Literary Studies) to demonstrate basic and more complex use-case scenarios. This book will be useful to graduate students and researchers in humanistic disciplines working with textual data, including History, Modern Languages, Literary studies, Classics, and Linguistics. This is also a very useful book for anyone teaching or learning Digital Humanities and interested in the basic concepts from computational linguistics, corpus linguistics, and natural language processing.

Translation, interpreting and translatology face major challenges today, as new technologies provide new ways of investigating our profession, analysing the process of performing these acts of linguistic mediation, or the outcome of our work, and even permit a fresh look at old data. However, aside from a certain improvement in terms of research possibilities, what else does the future hold for translation and interpreting? This volume proposes the label Translation 4.0, suggesting that contemporary translation should actually be understood as programmatic as expressions such as Industry 4.0 and Internet 4.0, which are often used to refer to the increasing application of Internet technology to facilitate communication between humans, machines and products. As the book shows, Translation 4.0 is at least undergoing a process of formation, if it is not already fully developed. The contributions here not only look into developments in translation and interpreting per se, but also explore the consequences of digitalisation for research in this field.

This book addresses the key role of phraseology in second language acquisition and instruction. It is divided into three main sections: Extracting and Describing Phraseological Units investigates the role played by native and learner corpora in the extraction and description of multiword units, two initial and crucial steps in informing language pedagogy; Learning Phraseological Units deals with the learning aspect, an oft-neglected yet essential dimension of phraseology in second/foreign language pedagogy, this section also addresses issues in new literacies; and Recording and Exploiting Phraseological Units focuses on pedagogical tools, notably monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and textbooks. This stimulating collection presents cutting edge research in the field and identifies major avenues for future theoretical and applied work. It is of particular relevance to researchers and teachers interested in the patterned nature of language.