Syntagmatic Productivity of MWE s in Scientific E nglish (2025)

Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of the syntagmatic productivity (SynProd) of different classes of multiword expressions (MWEs) in English scientific writing over time (mid 17th to 20th c.). SynProd refers to the variability of the syntagmatic context in which a word or other kind of linguistic unit is used. To measure SynProd, we use entropy. The study reveals that, similar to single-token units of various parts of speech, MWEs exhibit an increasing trend in syntagmatic productivity over time, particularly after the mid-19th century. Furthermore, when compared to similar parts of speech (PoS), MWEs show a more pronounced increase in SynProd over time.

## introduction in this paper, we examine the syntagmatic productivity of multiword expressions (mwes) in english scientific writing, focusing on diachronic changes from the mid-17th century to the present. the syntagmatic productivity of a word refers to its ability to combine with other words in various syntactic contexts to form meaningful and coherent expressions. we use entropy to measure how often and in which ways a word can appear in different syntagmatic (sequential) relationships within larger constructions. from a communicative perspective, multiword expressions play an important role in language efficiency because they are usually highly conventionalized. mwes consist of combinations of words that are mutually highly predictable and often processed as single chunks, providing a significant processing advantage for language users. their use in scientific writing is particularly noteworthy, given the high informational load typical of the scientific domain, where mwes function as tools to smooth the information density over a message @xcite . it has been shown that scientific writing becomes increasingly conventionalized over time (see e.g., @xcite and @xcite ), and that different classes of mwes exhibit distinct diachronic tendencies in terms of association measures @xcite and discourse functions @xcite . in this study, our aim is to use entropy as a measure to analyze changes in the syntagmatic productivity of different classes of mwes over time, comparing them to changes in individual tokens within similar parts of speech (e.g., compounds compared to nouns, and phrasal verbs compared to single-token verbs). our hypothesis is that, due to a conventionalization process regarding the usage of mwes, the syntagmatic productivity of these constructions presents a more pronounced increase over time when compared to their single-token counterparts. the remainder of the paper is organized as follows. in section 2, we discuss related work on the characterization of mwes in english scientific writing. sections 3 and 4 present our methods and results, respectively. we conclude with a summary of our findings and perspectives for future work in section 5. ## related work from a linguistic standpoint, numerous corpusbased studies have explored mwes across various registers, including the scientific domain (e.g., @xcite ; @xcite ; @xcite ). some of these studies provide lists of mwes used in academic texts, which are extracted using corpus-based methods such as frequency and mutual information (e.g., @xcite ). however, these studies primarily focus on synchronic analysis and provide valuable data for manuals aimed at improving writing skills. regarding nlp research, most studies focus on 1 the correct identification and extraction of mwes @xcite . the parseme initiative @xcite provides valuable corpora and guidelines for annotating mwes, however, their approach is restricted to verbal mwes and the available corpora concern only recent texts. a characterization of different classes of mwes in scientific english, based on dimensions of information (i.e., dispersion and association), was proposed by @xcite . the authors demonstrated that specific formulaic expressions commonly used in scientific writing exhibit a stronger diachronic tendency to increase the association between the units forming the mwes. moreover, @xcite demonstrated that different types of mwes, used for specific discourse functions (e.g., referential expressions and discourse organizers), exhibit distinct diachronic changes that are linked to the linguistic needs of different time periods. as shown by @xcite , the identification and evaluation of mwes can be highly problematic, especially when dealing with specific registers, as is the case in our study. the studies in the last two paragraphs demonstrate that the methods used in our analysis are quite robust for identifying mwes in a diachronic scientific corpus of english. regarding the syntagmatic productivity of different parts of speech in scientific writing, it has been shown that from 1660 to 1920, all parts of speech exhibit an increasing tendency, with a more pronounced slope starting around 1840 @xcite . however, in this study, mwes were not considered. ## conclusion and future work in this paper, we have presented an analysis of the syntagmatic productivity of different classes of mwes in scientific writing. our investigation reveals that, like other single-token units with comparable parts of speech, mwes exhibit an increasing tendency in synprod, especially after the mid-19th century, considering both left and right contexts. we have also shown that, when comparing each class of mwe with corresponding parts of speech, mwes tend to exhibit a more considerable increase in syntagmatic productivity over time. in most cases, the average synprod values for mwes are lower; however, over time, the delta decreases, or even reverses, as is the case for afl and fixed expressions. in future work, we intend to compare the tendencies regarding syntagmatic productivity of mwes to other information-theoretical measures such as paradigmatic variability (i.e., the sets of linguistic options available in a given or similar syntagmatic contexts) and typicality.