INIKOL - Collocational Database for Learning C roatian as a Foreign Language (2024)

Abstract: This paper describes the ongoing work on the INIKOL project - the development of a collocation database for learning Croatian as a foreign language. The main goal of the project is to contribute to easier mastery of collocations as fixed phrases in Croatian as a foreign language.

## introduction collocations, which are multi-word expressions (mwes) with a fixed structure and meaning, are a challenge for non-native speakers of croatian who have difficulty understanding and using them in terms of: 1. recognizing the elements of a collocation and understanding their meanings (see @xcite @xcite , 2. recognizing the part of speech when selecting collocates and choosing the correct morphological form of the inflected word @xcite , 3. using the correct preposition with the appropriate case form of the noun, 4. linking individual words to other words within a phrase or sentence. the number of students learning croatian has been steadily increasing over the last two decades, so the need for high-quality manuals and an applied description of the croatian language is also growing. the groups of students learning croatian as a foreign language are extremely heterogeneous in terms of mother tongue, age, gender and previous knowledge; their motives for learning croatian are also different. foreigners who learn croatian as non-native speakers come from different language areas: many come from slavic countries as students of croatian studies and the croatian language, so the structure and vocabulary of croatian are close to them, but they also come from other language areas where the structure of croatian is unfamiliar and more difficult to learn. many participants come from south america and are descendants of croats who emigrated from croatia at the beginning or middle of the 20 th century. there are also many learners from other european countries who are in croatia for professional or private reasons and want to learn croatian. in recent years, the number of immigrants, i.e. workers from asian countries who need to learn croatian at a basic level, has also increased. textbooks and exercise books for learning and teaching croatian as a foreign language as well as the more recent basic croatian grammar for croatian language learners @xcite created in croaticum, the largest institution for teaching, research and description of croatian as a second and foreign language, offer non-native speakers a good insight into the structure and lexical potential of the croatian language from beginner to intermediate level. given the frequency of collocations in everyday use and all the above-mentioned challenges that non-native speakers face when learning croatian, the inikol project was developed to build a collocation database as an additional, publicly accessible resource that nonnative speakers can use as an online tool for inikol -collocational database for learning croatian as a foreign language goranka blagus bartolec foot_0 , gorana duplančić rogošić 2 , antonia ordulj 3 1 institute for the croatian language zagreb 2 faculty of economics, business, and tourism split 3 faculty of croatian studies zagreb gblagus@ihjj.hr, gduplanc@efst.hr, antoniasvetic@gmail.com searching, understanding and applying these expressions when learning croatian and when communicating in croatian in various contexts of use. ## about the inikol database the inikol database is part of two larger projects: mwe-cro: multiword expressions in croatian -lexicological, computational linguistic and glottodidactic approach, and viba: database of croatian mwes, which aim to build a complete, publicly accessible online platform for multi-word expressions in croatian, which will include: a) several monolingual databases, namely of idioms, proverbs and multiword expressions in general use and in languages for specific purposes, b) a multilingual database of verb collocations and c) a multilingual database of collocations in croatian as a foreign language (inikol). acquiring and understanding fixed word combinations in croatian, as in other languages, is a challenging and demanding task for non-native speakers, especially for non-slavic ones. the morphology of inflected nouns and verbs and the selection of the appropriate collocation are often a significant obstacle that makes it difficult for non-native speakers to learn and reproduce mwes in croatian. therefore, the basic aim of building inikol is to contribute to the easier acquisition and use of collocations in croatian as a foreign language. during the fouryear project period 1 , a total of 800 to 1,000 collocations from the basic vocabulary of croatian as a foreign language will be entered into the inikol database. the collocations entered into the database follow the croatian a2: descriptive framework of reference level a2 (grgić and gulešić machata, eds., 2017), which is based on the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) and the content of textbooks for teaching croatian as a foreign language at level a2. all collocations are grouped into thematic areas (e.g. man, education, living, traffic and travel, food and drink, shopping, services). the main entries in the database are nouns (e.g. family, school, house, train, city, language, sea, park, glass...) and verbs (e.g. to be, to go, to eat, to drink, to write, to study, ...). verbal and noun entries are key words under which collocations are listed in inikol. for example, the collocation biti gladan, eng. 'to be hungry,' is listed under the verb biti, eng. 'to be' as a verb entry, and the collocation obiteljska kuća, eng. 'family house' is listed under the noun house as a noun entry. other parts of speech, such as prepositions, adverbs, and adjectives, will also be included as entries in the inikol in the following phase. ## further work on inikol the inikol database is planned as a dynamic project that offers the possibility of updating existing data and entering new collocations according to user needs and changes in extralinguistic reality. the database will be expanded to include additional fields and a sound recording of the pronunciation of each collocation. collocations at advanced levels will be added to the inikol database, which in the first phase includes the basic vocabulary, as the ultimate goal is to include collocations from all cefr levels, with each collocation labelled with the level at which it is acquired. in addition to the english equivalents, the database will be expanded to include other languages from the countries from which non-native speakers who learn croatian come. in a further step, in addition to the macocu corpus, examples from the croltec -croatian learner text corpus (mikelić preradović et al., 2015) will be entered. croltec contains essays collected from learners of croatian as a second and foreign language (from a1 to c1 level). the inikol project will provide online tools for croatian as a foreign language and contribute to its visibility, prominence and use by non-native speakers. it will also help place croatian in line with other european languages that already have such tools in wider use such as english (e.g. oxford collocations dictionary; collins dictionary), spanish (dictionary of collocations -dice) or french (le robert).