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Article published In: Cumulative Knowledge Building in Learner Corpus Research
Edited by Tove Larsson and Douglas Biber
[International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 11:1] 2025
► pp. 217–244

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Phraseological sophistication as a multidimensional construct

Exploring the relationship between association, register specificity and frequency of word combinations

ORCiD logo with link | Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique & Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, UCLouvain
ORCiD logo with link | Centre for Natural Language Processing (CENTAL), UCLouvain
Published online: 29 October 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.23033.paq
Abstract
Since (2019). The phraseological dimension in interlanguage complexity research. Second Language Research, 35(1), 121–145. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, several unresolved issues have persisted regarding the operationalization of phraseological sophistication in L2 complexity research. One of the most crucial concerns relates to the extent to which the commonly used measures of phraseological sophistication (MI scores) fully represent the intended construct. In this study, we draw upon insights from L2 phraseological research to reexamine the conceptualization and operationalization of phraseological sophistication. We conduct new analyses on the learner corpus used in (2019). The phraseological dimension in interlanguage complexity research. Second Language Research, 35(1), 121–145. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, using alternative operationalizations of phraseological sophistication that represent different dimensions of sophistication (based on the register specificity of word combinations and their frequency). Results show that measures representing the dimensions of association (MI scores) and register specificity (ratios of academic collocations) correlate with each other. Frequency-based measures, however, pattern very differently, which we attribute to some issues in the way we operationalized frequency of co-occurrence.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Statistical collocations, lexical bundles, n-grams and dimensions of phraseological L2 phraseological studies
    • 2.1The more advanced the learners, the more strongly associated their collocations
    • 2.2The more advanced the learners, the more register-specific their recurrent sequences of words
    • 2.3Frequency matters too
    • 2.4Cumulative research point to the need for a multidimensional approach to phraseological knowledge
  • 3.Data and method
    • 3.1Learner corpus
    • 3.2Operationalization of phraseological sophistication
      • 3.2.1Phraseological sophistication by register specificity
      • 3.2.2Phraseological sophistication by frequency
    • 3.3Statistics
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Phraseological sophistication by register specificity
    • 4.2Phraseological sophistication by frequency
    • 4.3Shared patterns of variation
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Open Data badge
  • Notes
  • References
References (68)
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