Collocation, Co-collocation, Constellation... Any Advances in Distributional Semantics?

This paper takes issue with the traditional notion that collocation is a binary combination. Theoretical and methodologically, the study is informed by the Lexical Constellation Model (LCM). This model has shown that the strength of syntagmatic attraction between two words in a collocation can be determined by associative relations involving more than two words. Therefore, the LCM proposes to complement the node-collocate distinction by incorporating the notion of co-collocate. In this study we examine evidence suggesting that the distinction between collocates and co-collocates can contribute to gaining a better understanding of the relations between meaning and context. The data analyzed consist of co-occurrences of face and decision/choice in the enTenTen12 corpus.