Web as Corpus, Google, and TESOL: A New Trilogy

Abstract

There is a kind of formulaic sequence pervasive in most genres of texts which has not been properly recognised and studied. They are not fixed in form and are usually lengthier than the relatively well studied two-word collocations and more irregular than fixed idioms. They appear in text as a package with a core collocation and some accompanying semantic, syntactic, or pragmatic features that influence the choices of words around the core. Stubbs (2002) proposed the term extended lexical unit for this kind of structure. In this article, the term extended collocation is used instead to better reflect its phraseological nature. It is argued that only the web itself is large enough to provide adequate instances for the investigation of extended collocations, and therefore the integration of phraseology into TESOL research and practice. Arguably the most difficult aspect of studying any formulaic sequences is the initial identification and validation of their phraseological status. This article proposes a reliable method of identifying extended collocations and other phraseological units via Google search. This method will be useful not only for research of phraseology but also for the teaching of English phraseology to speakers of other languages.

在大部分不同文類的文本中，有一種常見的既定順序的詞組，卻尚未受到適當的認識與研究。它們無固定的形式，而且比起常受研究的兩個字的同位語來的長，也比固定的俚語來的不規則。在文本中它們出現的形式是有一個中心搭配詞，然後還有附加上一些語意的、句法的、或是語用的特徵，而這些特徵會影響中心與周圍用字的選擇性。2002年Stubbs曾為這類的架構定義為延伸的字詞單位(extended lexical unit)。這篇文章採用的是延伸搭配詞一詞，以更佳地反現出其詞組的本質。強調的是唯有其自身的網絡涵蓋範圍夠廣才足可提供足夠的例子以探討延伸搭配詞，也因此才能融入詞組於TESOL研究與實踐中。研究任何既定順序的詞組最困難的部分，在於對其詞組最初的認識與鑑定。此文章提出一個可靠的方式，也就是透過搜尋Google網站，以達認識延伸同位語以及其它詞組。這個方法將不僅會在詞組的相關研究上有所助益，也會在教導其他語言的使用者英語詞組上相當的實用。