3. A unified approach to semantic frames and collocational patterns

The aim of this chapter is to show that frames cannot only offer advantages in explaining the meaning of words (as is usually claimed), but also in clarifying their combinatorial behaviour. In order to do so, different kinds of frames are presented, ranging from the more language-oriented ones à la Fillmore to the more knowledge-in-general oriented ones à laMinsky to finally end up with what I call ‘conceptual semantic frames’. The latter do not only serve as a background for definitions but for word combinations and more particularly collocations as well. In the frame-based approach presented here I try to show that the more the collocator is, conceptually speaking, type-bound and the more it is, lexically speaking, token-bound, the more we are dealing with a collocation that forms a conceptual and lexical unit and therefore qualifies as a lexical collocation.