The Contextualized Representation of Collocation (2023)

Abstract: “Collocate list and collocation network are two widely used representation methods of colloca-tions, but they have significant weaknesses in representing contextual information. To solve thisproblem, we propose a new representation method, namely the contextualized representation ofcollocate (CRC), which highlights the importance of the position of the collocates and pins acollocate as the interaction of two dimensions: association strength and co-occurrence position. With a full image of all the collocates surrounding the node word, CRC carries the contextualinformation and makes the representation more informative and intuitive. Through three casestudies, i.e., synonym distinction, image analysis, and efficiency in lexical use, we demonstratethe advantages of CRC in practical applications. CRC is also a new quantitative tool to measurelexical usage pattern similarities for corpus-based research. It can provide a new representationframework for language researchers and learners.”

## introduction collocation is an important concept in the fields of linguistics and computational linguistics @xcite @xcite , which can be widely used in language teaching, discourse analysis and other fields. currently, there are two widely used representation methods of collocation, namely collocate list and collocation network. however, they are both flawed. collocate list takes the list of collocate words as the main form and generally provides the correlation strength, co-occurrence frequency, etc. between the node word and the collocate word 1 . sometimes a collocate list may also include information such as the total frequency of collocates, the frequency of appearing on the left and right sides, etc. ## contextualized representation of collocation (crc) while retaining the dimension of association strength, crc promotes the relative position of collocates to another major feature dimension, so that each collocate can present those two important attributes at the same time. therefore, the essence of the crc is a two-dimensional scatter plot. figure 2 is an instance of crc, which is based on the same data source as ## case study 2: crc in image analysis as an analytical tool, collocation is also widely used in other fields besides linguistic research. in the area of journalism and information communication, collocations are also used in assistance to discourse analysis, image analysis, and sentiment analysis @xcite . for example, @xcite inspected the verb collocates on the right side of we in the interpreting corpus of press conferences, so as to analyze the image construction strategy of the government. in the field of digital humanities, collocation could also facilitate the style analysis of writing and author @xcite @xcite , as well as the image analysis of characters in the literary works. we select an image analysis task in a literary work and use crc as an analyzing tool for research and discussion. we pick the classic fiction "lord of the flies" @xcite as our research subject, because the characters in this novel have distinctive characteristics and the language is simple and straightforward. its characters and images have been heatedly discussed through book reviews and literary interpretations @xcite , yet crc may reveal the character-building methods from a corpus perspective. this fiction narrates the story of a group of teenagers surviving on a desert island. the cooperation and confrontation among those children are interpreted as the epitome of human antagonism and political game. we select three main characters: ralph, jack and simon as research objectives. their right-side verb collocates are retrieved and described through crc (figure 6a , figure 6b and figure 6c ). before extracting collocations, the text is lower-cased and pos tagged. different thresholds of association strength are applied in order to show a similar amount of collocates. by comparing the three crc figures, it can be found that when describing different characters, different verbs are used to shape the image of the characters. from the sentiment of verbs used to describe the character, we can infer the author's tendency in the image-building of each character. ralph is the main positive leader in the fiction, representing civilization and democracy before and after world war ii. figure 6a shows many clues in favor of that description. verbs such as puzzle, sense, and shudder place ralph on the opposite side of chaos and violence; others like answer and nod depict ralph actively affirming and responding to others' opinions. these behaviors together shape ralph as a "democratic man, the symbol of consent" @xcite . jack is the representative of brutality and power. his unique behaviors include seize, snatch, clear, and ignore (figure 6b ), which show jack's tendency to command and enforce, in consistent with the evaluation by @xcite : "jack then, is authoritarian man ... like hitler and mussolini". simon is regarded as "the christ-figure, the voice of revelation" @xcite . from his unique behaviors lower, walk, speak, feel, etc. (figure 6c ), readers envisage a sanctified image with calm, c c l 2 0 2 3 ## case study 3: crc and efficiency in lexical use collocations could also play a role in second language acquisition and language teaching. the mastery of collocation is considered to be the decisive factor for the naturalness of a language learner's expression @xcite . one of the cases of collocation network illustrated by @xcite is the analysis and evaluation of different-level second language learners' expression. the selected corpus is trinity lancaster corpus (tlc) of spoken l2 english @xcite , a transcribed corpus of english interview responses. brezina divided the corpus into three sub-groups according to the speakers' language proficiency levels: pre-intermediate (b1), intermediate (b2) and advanced and proficiency (c1/c2). the most common collocates of the three verbs make, take and do used by students at these levels are shown with collocation graphs. figure 7 shows the situation of make, from which we can observe a rise in the richness of collocates as the proficiency level lifts. however, brezina pointed out that no such "clear relationship between increasing proficiency and a higher number of collocates" was found on take and do (p.73). this implies that the increase in c c l 2 0 2 3 figure 7 : collocation graphs of make for band b1, b2, and c1/c2 @xcite . the crc distances of b1-ns, b2-ns and c1/c2-ns are shown in nevertheless, the findings are basically in line with that of @xcite but in a more comprehensive and more precise manner. besides, the distances on word pairs disclose the most misused collocates of the node, which might be helpful in language evaluation and grammar correction. to be specific, crc could tell which collocates are most distantly distributed in the usage pattern of language learners and of native speakers, so as to improve the learners' worst-acquired collocation knowledge.