Table Of ContentThe (Ir)reversibility of English Binomials
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Volume 64
The (Ir)reversibility of English Binomials. Corpus, constraints, developments
by Sandra Mollin
The (Ir)reversibility
of English Binomials
Corpus, constraints, developments
Sandra Mollin
University of Heidelberg
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
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Cover design: Françoise Berserik
Cover illustration from original painting Random Order
by Lorenzo Pezzatini, Florence, 1996.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mollin, Sandra.
The (Ir)reversibility of English Binomials : Corpus, constraints, developments / Sandra
Mollin.
p. cm. (Studies in Corpus Linguistics, issn 1388-0373 ; v. 64)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Collocation (Linguistics) 2. Lexicology--Data processing. 3. English language--
Idioms. 4. Computational linguistics. 5. Corpora (Linguistics) 6. Semantics.
I. Title.
P325.5.C56I77 2014
425--dc23 2014022644
isbn 978 90 272 0372 4 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 6953 9 (Eb)
© 2014 – John Benjamins B.V.
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Table of contents
Abbreviations vii
Acknowledgments ix
chapter 1
Introduction 1
chapter 2
On binomials 7
2.1 Definition and terminology 7
2.2 Previous foci of research 10
2.3 The (ir)reversibility of binomials in previous research 14
2.4 Classifying binomials 16
chapter 3
The (ir)reversibility of binomials in the English language:
A corpus-based analysis 21
3.1 Corpus methodology 21
3.2 Binomials in the English language 23
3.2.1 General frequency in the corpus and collocative strength 23
3.2.2 Word class and register 28
3.2.3 Internal semantic structure and idiomaticity 34
3.3 The reversibility of English binomials 39
3.3.1 Corpus-based (ir)reversibility scores 39
3.3.2 Corpus correlates of binomial reversibility 45
3.4 Summary 58
chapter 4
Ordering constraints and the reversibility of English binomials 61
4.1 Ordering constraints in previous works 62
4.1.1 Early proposals for constraints governing binomial order 62
4.1.2 Cooper and Ross’s ordering constraints 64
4.1.3 Quantitative evaluations of ordering constraints 67
4.1.4 Experimental evaluations of ordering constraints 74
vi The (Ir)reversibility of English Binomials
4.2 An empirical study into the predictive power of ordering constraints 77
4.2.1 Rationale 77
4.2.2 Ordering constraints considered 78
4.2.3 The influence of ordering constraints on binomial order 87
4.3 Th e relationship between ordering constraint adherence
and binomial reversibility 98
4.4 Summary 107
chapter 5
The diachronic development of binomials and binomial reversibility 109
5.1 Binomials in the history of English 109
5.2 Pathways of change in the development of binomial reversibility 115
5.2.1 Hypothesising pathways of change in binomial reversibility 115
5.2.2 An empirical corpus-based study of diachronic changes
in binomial reversibility in Late Modern English 126
5.3 Summary 163
chapter 6
Binomial reversibility in the mental lexicon:
Native and non-native speakers’ judgments of degrees of reversibility 165
6.1 Binomial reversibility in native-speaker judgments 167
6.1.1 Previous work on binomials
in the native-speaker mental lexicon 167
6.1.2 Native-speaker judgments: Rationale and methodology 172
6.1.3 N ative-speaker judgments: Convergence
and divergence of corpus and judgment results 177
6.2 Binomial reversibility in non-native-speaker judgments 192
6.2.1 P revious work on binomials
in the non-native-speaker mental lexicon 192
6.2.2 Non-native-speaker judgments: Rationale and methodology 195
6.2.3 Non-native-speaker judgments: Convergence and divergence
of native-speaker and non-native-speaker intuitions 198
6.3 Summary and outlook 212
chapter 7
Conclusion 215
Appendix: Binomials analysed 223
References 239
Index 253
Abbreviations
* significant at a level of p < 0.05
** significant at a level of p < 0.01
ANOVA analysis of variance
BNC British National Corpus
CID Cambridge Idioms Dictionary
COCA Corpus of Contemporary American English
COHA Corpus of Historical American English
DeReKo Deutsches Referenzkorpus
L1 first language
LID Longman Idioms Dictionary
n.s. not significant
NNS non-native speaker
NS native speaker
ODI Oxford Dictionary of Idioms
OED Oxford English Dictionary
pos part of speech
pmw per million words
SLA Second Language Acquisition
Acknowledgments
This book could never have been written without the support of several institu-
tions and persons, which I am happy to acknowledge. Firstly, I would like to thank
the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for supporting major parts of the re-
search reported in this book in project MO 1756/4-1, providing me with student
research assistants and material expenses. My gratitude also goes to the University
of Heidelberg for granting me a scholarship in the Olympia-Morata-Programme
from 2012 to 2013 in order to complete my research project on binomials.
I would also like to thank my DFG-funded student research assistants, Katrin
Petermann, Rebecca Reiß, and Michele Dressel, for all their work. The following
colleagues in Heidelberg supported me morally and linguistically: Sonja Kleinke,
Beatrix Busse, Stefanie Vogelbacher and Nadja Nesselhauf.
Finally, I share my joy in having completed this work with the people who
matter most, Frieder, Julius, and Philine.
