Preface.Rmd

Preface

It all started back in 1982, when I attended a summer course by Prof.
Charles J. Fillmore named "Conventionality in Language", at the
University of Maryland. I had just finished by Master's comparing the
verbs 'to do' and 'to make', which was based on his article *The case
for case* (1968).

His course was a turning point in my academic career and gave rise to my
PhD dissertation *Levels of Conventionality and the Translator's Task*
(1987) in which I already pointed out that verbal collocations lacked
adequate lexicographic material.

This was confirmed by a survey to investigate how nine English verbal
collocations and their Portuguese equivalents were treated in nine
standard dictionaries, both monolingual English and bilingual
English-Portuguese and in three Brazilian dictionaries, two bilingual
and one monolingual. It showed that they did not receive systematic
treatment.

Most of them were listed under the verb, only a few under the noun.
Although it might be appropriate to list a verbal collocation under the
verb in a dictionary aimed at the comprehension of language, it is not
so in one aimed at production. Usually, a speaker or writer knows the
noun, the referential lexeme, but might not know the verb that goes with
it. For that reason, verbal collocations should come under the noun, as
Hausmann (1985) has already claimed, for the noun is the base in a
verbal collocation. In addition, verbal collocations were rarely listed
as an entry in their own right. Mostly, they were either listed as a
subentry, or in the definition or still as part of an example, but
sometimes not highlighted in any form.

So I made it my goal to produce a bilingual
English-Portuguese/Portuguese-English Dictionary of Verbal Collocations
aimed at the production of language. I presented a model for an entry in
my post-doctorate thesis (Tagnin, 1998).

Put simply, a collocation is the cohesive combination of two or more
words that have been conventionalized as a lexical unit. The structures
addressed in the dictionary are the following:

> V (Det) N~\[object\]~ -- *make trouble, make an impression*
>
> N~\[noun\]~ + V -- *river flows, nose runs*
>
> V + Prep + N -- *come into force, keep in touch*
>
> V + Adj -- *get rich, go wrong*

Below I will discuss decisions that had to be made and which will make
the notion of collocation clearer.

For instance:

\(1\) *Is this a collocation?*

*Answer*: For a combination to be considered a collocation it must
present some type of lexical restriction: *give a book* is not a
collocation because *give* in this sense means to hand something over to
someone and it can combine with any object, such as *give a book, give a
pencil, give a present, give a dress* etc. However, *give a paper* at a
conference has a very specific meaning and is thus considered a
collocation.

\(2\) *Is frequency the only criterion for a combination to be
considered a collocation?*

*Answer*: Frequency is not always the sole criterion, exclusivity
(Brezina, McEnery, & Wattam, 2015, p. 140) is equally relevant. The
Portuguese word for *doubt,* 'dúvida', collocates with 'esclarecer'
(*clarify*) 2730 times in the *Corpus do Português: Web/Dialect*
(Davies, s.d.) but only 321 with its synonym 'dirimir'. Nevertheless,
DÚVIDA is the most common collocate of DIRIMIR, which qualifies the
combination as a collocation. The same may be said for FURL which,
though not a frequent verb, combines mostly with some type of sail:
*Scouts untied lines, **furled sails**, dropped anchor. I went aloft to
**furl the mainsail** in a blow.*

\(3\) *Is this collocation too specialized to be included in a general
dictionary?*

*Answer*: This can be a tricky question, but we have decided to only
include specialized collocations which are known to the general public
or, as the editors of the *Oxford Collocations dictionary for students
of English* have put it, to the "educated non-specialist" (2002, p. ix).
So, for instance, *score a goal* has been included, while *jump offside*
has not. By the same token, everyday legal collocations such as
*file/settle/dismiss a lawsuit* are also listed.

\(4\) *Is this a good example, does it make the meaning clear?*

*Answer*: We have attempted to use examples that make the meaning clear
because the dictionary does not include definitions. For instance, *Tom,
you bring up a point that I brought up a few weeks back* does not offer
enough context for the user to infer the meaning of *bring up a point*,
whereas *While I doubt this is true, it does bring up a point I want to
discuss* does.

\(5\) *How can we find a good equivalent?*

*Answer*: Finding a good equivalent can be difficult at times for
various reasons: the collocation in language A is not translated by a
similar collocation in language B. Whereas *crash a party* is a V + N
collocation, its Portuguese equivalent, 'entrar de penetra numa festa'
is not actually a collocation as we have defined it. Some collocations
are translated by a single verb, like *go sour* whose equivalent is
simply 'azedar'. More often than not nouns are quite different across
languages: *make arrangements* becomes 'tomar providências' in
Portuguese. In such cases one has to rely on one's own knowledge of both
languages or resort to searches in monolingual or even bilingual
parallel corpora (Tagnin, 2007).

\(6\) *Should cognate verbal collocations be included?*

*Answer*: We have opted to include cognate verbal collocations because
they may differ in their inclusion or not of a determiner, for instance.
*Make a difference* requires some kind of determiner, while in the
Portuguese translation, 'fazer (uma) diferença', the determiner is not
compulsory.

\(7\) *How do we account for verbal collocations for which the
equivalent is not a collocation?*

*Answer*: Because this is a bidirectional dictionary, the verbal
collocation will only be listed in the source language, that is, if it
is a verbal collocation in English but not in Portuguese, there will be
an entry for it in the English-Portuguese direction, but not in the
reverse direction. For example, *go sour* will have an entry in the
English-Portuguese direction with its equivalent 'azedar', but 'azedar'
will not be an entry in the other direction as it is not a verbal
collocation.

Although the initial idea was to publish the dictionary on paper, it
became increasingly clear that with the development of the internet and
the cost of paper editions, an online publication would be the only
plausible solution.

Therefore, I am very happy to be able to bring to light the first part
of the dictionary, that is, the English-Portuguese direction as part of
the project NEH-funded project *Democratizing Digital Lexicography*,
coordinated by Dr. Ligeia Lugli. Nevertheless, it is still work in
progress -- are't all dictionaries? - as there are collocations for
which there are no examples yet. Also, some examples may still be
inadequate and will be replaced by better ones.

References

Brezina, V., McEnery, T., & Wattam, S. (2015). Collocations in context -
a new perspective on collocation networks. *International Journal of
Corpus Linguistics, 20:2*, pp. 139-173.

Davies, M. (s.d.). *Corpus do Português: Web/Dialects*. Fonte:
https://www.corpusdoportugues.org/:
https://www.corpusdoportugues.org/web-dial/

Fillmore, C. J. (1968). The Case for Case. Em E. B. (eds.), *Universals
in Linguistic Theory* (pp. 1-88). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Hausmann, F. J. (1985). Kollokationen im deutschen Wörterbuch - ein
Beitrag sur Theorie des lexikographischen Beispiels. Em H. Bergenholtz,
& J. Mugdan (Eds.), *Lexikographie und Grammatik. Akten des Essener
Kolloquiums zur Grammatick im Wörterbuch* (pp. 118-129). Tübingen:
Niemeyer.

*Oxford Collocations Dictionary.* (2002). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Tagnin, S. E. (1987). *Levels of Conventionality and the Translator\'s
Task.* São Paulo, São Paulo: FFLCH / USP.

Tagnin, S. E. (1998). Convencionalidade e Produção de Texto: um
dicionário de colocações verbais inglês-português / português-inglês.
*Tese de Livre Docência - USP-FFLCH - Departamento de Letras Modernas*.
São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil.

Tagnin, S. E. (2007). A identificação de equivalentes tradutórios em
corpora comporáveis. *Anais do I Congresso Internacional da ABRAPUI.*
Belo Horizonte: UFMG.