Osuchowska, Dorota

English

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 79Z E S Z Y T Y N A U K O W E   UNIWERSYTETU RZESZOWSKIEGO  SERIA FILOLOGICZNA ZESZYT 6/2002   STUDIA ANGLICA RESOVIENSIA 1Dorota OSUCHOWSKA COMPILING A DICTIONARY OF COLLOCATION:  PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS  Introduction The  aim  of  this  paper  is  to  describe  some  practical  problems  met  and addressed  during  the  production  of  English  at  Work.  An  English-Polish Dictionary of Selected Collocations. Started in the spring of 1999, the book is primarily aimed at the constantly growing number of people who use English for work purposes. It is the first and so far the only English-Polish dictionary of such a specific kind and scope. For someone working in the English-speaking environment making mistakes is a luxury those professionals know they cannot afford. Firstly, it marks them out as  language  learners  (and  therefore  incompetent)  in  confrontation  with  their foreign employers, the majority of whom happen to be native speakers of English. Secondly, it presents a sharp contrast with the good command of English they have declared. Thirdly, they have spent years learning English, invested a lot of their time  and  money  in  it,  attended  Business  English  classes;  their  accent  and command of grammar may be irreproachable; and yet, without and sometimes in spite of long-time immersion in naturally occurring language, the English they produce differs substantially from English used by their foreign colleagues. Collocability and a non-native language user Although the theory of collocation has been dealt with in detail on numerous occasions1 and lies outside the scope of the present paper, we should, perhaps, try to single out a couple of factors that are, on the one hand, closely connected  1 For general discussion of collocations see Cowie (1981b), Mackin (1978), Mitchell (1971). For collocational restrictions, see Allerton (1984).  80with the very nature of this linguistic phenomenon and the way it is represented in modern lexicography but which are, on the other hand, also responsible for the difficulties an average learner encounters in incorporating them into his everyday use.  Let  us  first  look  at  the  way  collocational  information  is  represented  in pedagogical lexicography. It is true that, because of the growing awareness on the part of lexicographers and textbook authors of the potential problem collocability may pose to a non-native user, dictionary definitions in the new generation of dictionaries include typical collocates of a word, usually taken from the corpus of real language material. The introductory sections of learner-oriented monolingual dictionaries  abound  in  statements  emphasising  the  importance  of,  as  Sinclair (1999:viii) puts it the details of a natural use of a word.  Due to space restrictions, however, the most such dictionaries can offer is one, or perhaps two examples of the headword, not necessarily connected with the particular context a user is interested in, to say the least. In other words, the user will only find a dictionary helpful in the task of interpreting an English text. Now, the sheer number and diversity of lexicographic publications appearing every year clearly  shows  the  English  language  as  the  leader  among  languages  used  for international  communication  and  we  can  therefore  expect  that  more  and  more users will be interested in dictionaries helping them produce rather than interpret and, from the point of view of such a user, the information is simply not there.  Another  factor  responsible  for  the  learner’s  difficulty  in  dealing  with collocational information that can clearly be observed at both elementary and more  advanced  levels  is  what  the  late  DzierŜanowska  (1982:5)  calls  the interference  effect  of  the  collocations  in  his  own  language,  a  phenomenon meaning that collocational behaviour is carried over from the first language and translated into the target language. A Polish student, familiar with the phrase commit  murder/suicide  may  be  tempted  to  say  that  someone  has  committed a book/a song/a poem and see nothing wrong in it; social care system instead of welfare system; agricultural reform instead of land reform and other examples too  numerous  to  be  cited.  An  interesting  observation  frequently  made  and reported by colleagues with long-term classroom experience is that while most students gratefully and unquestioningly accept being corrected when the phrase in question is a grammatical collocation, especially one containing a preposition, they seem to instinctively reject being wrong in the case of lexical collocations. Phrases like make an estimation or hearty/hot regards sound perfectly normal to them and frequently become a bone of contention between the learner and the teacher, the former supporting his case with the fact that he had found it in a dictionary.2  Moreover,  a  learner  encouraged  from  an  early  stage  to  form  2 Stanisławski lists hearty as one of the English translation equivalents of serdeczny, but does not inform the user about the adjective’s combinatory potential.  81sentences by analogy is not readily going to accept the fact that the same does not apply to phrases; if smoking compartment or sleeping bag are possible, why should not teaching room be acceptable? The  third  important  factor  responsible  for  the  learner’s  failure  to successfully  produce  these,  as  Douglas  Kozłowska  (1998:13)  puts  it:  larger bricks of language that collocations are seems to be closely connected with the very commonness of many of these phrases. The very notion of being common can  be  understood  as  referring  to  how  frequently  the  phrase  in  question  is represented  in  the  learner’s  textbook  and  also  to  the  fact  whether  they  are capable of understanding the phrase without referring to a dictionary. The phrase golden beaches seems to be ideally suited to illustrate our point here since it appears  in  a  couple  of  reading  passages  on  tourism  in  intermediate  level textbooks and yet a learner is almost sure to remember its first component as gold.  Teachers  confirm  that  learners  display  this  tendency  to  dismiss  such common  phrases  in  favour  of  sometimes  highly  idiomatic,  eye-catching expressions that, statistically, they are much less likely to need. These three above mentioned factors, that is: a) lack of consequence or often the  utter  failure  in  representing  a  lexeme’s  combinatory  potential  in  the workplace  context  in  both  general-purpose  and  specialised  monolingual dictionaries; b) the difficulty in producing collocations due to the interference effect of one’s own language; c) the fact that a prevailing number of collocations are easily understood by the learners and, as a result, dismissed by them as not worth remembering, were the most important reasons for writing the book.  Collection of data The work started in June 1999 and was completed in December 2000. All headword data comes from materials privately collected by the author: authentic work resumes, letters of application, handouts, guidelines and brochures written for people first entering or re-entering the job market, notes of recordings of counselling sessions and workshops created for people temporarily out-of-work, transcripts  of  radio  and  television  programmes  as  well  as  newspaper  articles dealing with various issues connected with employment and finally, notes of recordings of actual job interviews. Thus, the underlying text corpus consists of materials created not with a learner in mind but by and for people whose first language  is  English  and as  such  ensures  the  user’s immersion in a language variety which is probably less patterned than the type found in the usual class situation.  The  endeavour  was  not  at  any  stage  supported  by  any  institution  or individual and the techniques of material collecting and recording available to the  author  must  appear  crude  when  compared  with  those  available  to  the  82established names in dictionary making these days. Nor is the size of the book comparable with unabridged learner’s dictionaries like Cobuild Collins English Dictionary or LDOCE. No attempt was ever made to critically look at the data being collected in order to detect and eventually correct potential faults in the data. On the contrary, it was a conscious decision from the very beginning that the original data was not to be in the slightest way distorted, adapted or tampered with, which includes spelling adoption or drawing a demarcation line between technical  terms,  idioms,  jargon  or  clichés  and  collocations.  I  decided  on  a pragmatic approach as opposed to a theoretical approach which meant that every phrase encountered was to be recorded in the same manner one would present it to  a  learner,  although  some  of  them  were  not  collocations  but  free  word combinations as is the case of aware of and be aware of.  Editorial process The headwords were recorded together with their collocates and arranged in alphabetical order. At this stage it became clear that, at least in the case of the source material gathered, certain verbs showed a greater collocational potential than other parts of speech and were probably going to constitute the core of the future  dictionary.  For  verbs  with  high  collocational  potential  their  noun  and adjective  counterparts  (if  existent)  were  added.  It  should  be  noted  that  all collocates  that  accompany  those  two  latter  categories  came  from  the  source material and not from other dictionaries; they were all at some stage encountered in the materials and added later. Simultaneously,  part-of-speech  labels  and  English  synonyms  were  being appended to the headwords. At this point the material was still being collected for the  author’s private  use  and  adding  the synonyms  was  primarily  seen as introducing,  as  Clark  (1988:x)  puts  it:  some  variety  to  relieve  what  would otherwise be a limited and ultimately boring vocabulary. In the spring of 2000 the material, which now constitutes the first part of the book, namely an alphabetical listing of key English words, identified as parts of speech, and their synonyms together with a list of their collocates was presented to Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN (henceforth PWN), who expressed their interest in  publishing  it  as  a  bilingual  English-Polish  dictionary  of  workplace-related collocations. From that moment on, all steps undertaken resulted from the co-operation between the author and the publisher. PWN suggestions included: 1. supplying the collocations with a Polish translation, since most of the English words have a number of meanings; 2. supplying the dictionary with a Polish index for ease and speed of access; 3. adding an English index to make it a bidirectional  dictionary  and  thus  potentially  useful  for  native  speakers  of English.  83A new user profile thus emerged: a relatively advanced learner of English, familiar with practically all the English words in the dictionary but unsure about their behaviour in the workplace context; someone either currently enrolled in a Business English course and wanting to extend the vocabulary offered by their regular coursebook; Polish teachers of BE for the reason given above; native speakers who teach BE and may need some guidance in terms of what poses the greatest  problem  for  their  students;  people  preparing  for  a  career  with  an English/American company, both in Poland and abroad and finally, professional people  already  working  in  an  English-speaking  environment.  This  new  user profile  was  instrumental  in  the  author’s  decision  to  include  some  extra information,  for  instance  concerning  certain  aspects  of  CV  writing  or  his contacts with a potential employer, in form of the Appendix.  A look at the book’s structure The book, in its final form consists of four parts: Part I: an A-Z bilingual dictionary, with entries organised in the following manner: 1. headword; 2. part-of-speech label; 3. synonyms; 4. list of collocates with the Polish translation accompanying each phrase. The following example from the dictionary may serve to illustrate this:  acquire verb syn. get, obtain, achieve, secure, amass zdobyć, nabyć, zyskać ~ experience – zdobyć doświadczenie ~ qualifications – zdobyć kwalifikacje ~ skills – zdobyć umiejętności ~ material – zdobyć materiał ~ property – nabyć/zakupić nieruchomość ~ a reputation – zyskać reputację (np. o producencie) ~ value – nabrać/zyskać na wartości  Part II: an A-Z English index. The way of presenting single lexical items (many words may appear as a collocate only and not be re-listed as independent entries) called for a dependable cross-reference index. Every important term in every phrase is cross-referenced, except for prepositions, pronouns and other less useful  items.  Verbs  and  derived  nouns  like  open  and  opening,  or  verbal adjectives like finished constitute separate entries but homonyms like open, verb and open, adjective do not. This system allows for maximum clarity and ease of access;  for  the  reader  who  wants  to  make  sure  about  for  example,  the  84grammatical  category  the  word  in  question  represents,  this  information  is included in Part I.  Part III: A totally different strategy was suggested by the publisher for The Polish index. It contains all the significant Polish translation equivalents of the English nouns, grouped in niches. To save space, niche lemmata are represented by a swung dash (~), cf. the following entry from the Polish index:   prawo: przestrzegać abide; obey; observe starać się o ~ transmisji bid surowe; twarde; restrykcyjne; popytu i podaŜy law ustanowić pass istniejące rule mądre; uniwersalne; leŜące u podstaw principle szanować respect przestrzegać poszano- wania; wprowadzić w Ŝycie enforce ~ wyłączności claim dać ~ delegate   Part IV: Appendix. Part IV includes a lot of culture-dependent information both new to the Polish users and yet crucial to their success in the original goal they  have  set  for  themselves:  functioning  in  the  English-speaking  working environment which on one hand entails performing flawlessly in English in a workplace context and on the other, understanding the reality underlying that context. Thus, the inclusion of the material, the preponderance of which shows a strong tendency to attract a range of collocates, comes from the firm belief on the part of the author that studying a foreign language should never be limited to the study of lexical items and the rules of grammar alone and a good learner-oriented dictionary must occasionally include information that we traditionally associate  with  other  types  of  publications,  for  example  course  books  of  a different kind. Final remarks Compiling  a  dictionary  is  a  mammoth  task;  long-term;  always  a  team effort,  with  the  participants  having  access  not  only  to  large  computerised corpora but assisted by sophisticated computer programs helping them select and organise the material in question. None of these assets were the author’s: it was  a  one-person  project  with  the  author  determined  to  have  the  complete product ready in a little more than a year and a computer was only used to type the  material.  It  was,  however,  clear  from  the  very  beginning  that  since,  as Sinclair (1987:143) points out, the normal use of language is to select more than one word at a time and to blend such selections with each other, it was to be a dictionary of collocations. It is only a matter of time before Poland becomes a member of the European Union, with a huge number of Poles – administrative workers at different levels, companies, community representatives, professional people  from  various  fields,  government  officials  to  name  just  a  few  –  85communicating in English on an everyday basis being a norm rather than the exception. The only way to prepare them for the task must be to start with the re-evaluation of existing curricula and, if need be, devising a range of teaching materials aimed at this specific audience – materials organised in such a way that (especially with the opportunities of today’s technology) not only a chosen word form but foremost the context that is currently of interest for the language user is just a click of the mouse away.   It is hoped that this book is a small step towards this goal. References Allerton, D.J. 1984. “Three (or four) levels of word co-occurrence restrictions”. Lingua. 63. 17-40. Cowie, A.P. 1981b. “The treatment of collocations and idioms in learners’ dictionaries”. Applied Linguistics. 2. 223-35. Mackin, R. 1978. “On collocations: Words shall be known by the company they keep”. In Honour of A.S. Hornby, ed. by P. Strevens. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press. 149-65. Mitchell, T.F. 1971. “Linguistic goings-on: Collocations and other lexical matters arising on the syntagmatic record”. Archivum Linguisticum. 2. 35-69. Sinclair,  J.  and  A.  Renouf.  1991.  “Collocational  frameworks  in  English”.  English  Corpora Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Ian Svartvik, K. Aijmer, B. Altenberg (eds). London & New York: Longman. 128–142. Lexicographic publications (The)  BBI  Combinatory  Dictionary  of  English.  1986.  Benson,  M.,  E.  Benson  &  R.  Ilson. Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary. 1995. J.M. Sinclair (ed.). London & Glasgow: Collins. English at Work. An English-Polish Dictionary of Selected Collocations. 2001. Osuchowska, D. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.  Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. 1980. A.S. Hornby (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. 1996. H. Bussman (ed.). Translated by K. Kazzazi and G.P. Trauth. London & New York: Routledge. Selected English Collocations. 1982. H. DzierŜanowska and C. Douglas Kozłowska. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.  Word  For  Word.  A  Dictionary  of  Synonyms.  1988.  J.O.E.  Clark.  London:  Clark  Robinson Limited. 

A Dictionary of Synonyms.

Compiling a dictionary of collocation : problems and solutions

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