Systematic Exploration of Collocation Profiles

The central issue in corpus-driven linguistics is the detection and description of patterns in language usage. The features that constitute the notion of a pattern can be computed to a certain extent by statistical (collocation) methods, but a crucial part of the notion may vary depending on applications and users. Thus, typically, any computed collocation cluster will have to be interpreted hermeneutically. Often it might be captured by a generalized, more abstract pattern. We present a generic process model that supports the recognition, interpretation, and expression of the patterns inside and of the relations between clusters. By this, clusters can be merged virtually according to any notion of a 'pattern', and their relations can be exploited for different applications.