Vocabulary connections Multi-words items in English

A collocation consists in two or more words that often go together.

Structural patterning of lexis COLLOCATION Structural patterning of lexis (Sinclair) Two Principles OPEN CHOICE PRINCIPLE Is a way of seeing language text as the result of a very large number of complex choices. IDIOM PRINCIPLE Is that a language user has available to him or her a large number of semi-preconstructed phrases that constitute single choice.

A vocabulary item which consists of a sequence of two or more words MULTI-WORD ITEM A vocabulary item which consists of a sequence of two or more words This sequence of words semantically and/or syntactically forms a meaningful and inseparable unit.

Three important criteria which help distinguish holistic multi-word item. Institutionalisation Fixedness Non-compositionality The degree to which a multi-word item cannot be interpreted on a word-by-word basis, but has a specialised unitary meaning. The degree to which a multi-word item is conventionalised in the language. The degree to which a multi-word item is frozen as a sequence of words.

Types of multi-word item Prefabs Fixed phrases Idioms Phrasal verbs Compounds The largest and most tangible group. Combination of verbs and adverbial or prepositional particles. They have holistic meanings which cannot be retrieved from the individual meanings of the component words. Very general term to cover a number of multi-word items Prefabricated routines or ready- made units.

Models of multi-word items Semantic-based models They attempt to differentiate between categories of multi-word items according to degrees of compositionality, and they aim to identify the irreductible semantic building-blocks of the lexicon. Syntax-based models Take grammatical well-formedness as their starting-point.

Variability in multi-word items Some of the principal kinds of variation are represented in the following:

SECOND-LANGUAGE LEARNING PERSPECTIVES Multi-word items Are typically presented as a problem in teaching and learning a foreing languages Are language-specific and they have particular sociocultural connotations and associations. Are generally considered ‘difficult’ .

Teaching multi-word items The use of short dialogues. Pedagogical techniques for the acquisition of multi-word items. A pragmatic classification of multi-word items. Classifying multi-word items according to subject areas. Multi-word items should be carefully chosen on the basis of frequency, need, transparency, and syntactic and semantic simplicity