Comparing collocations in translated and learner language

Abstract

This paper compares use of collocations by Italian learners writing in and translating into English, conceptualising the two tasks as different modes of constrained language production and adopting Halverson’s (2017) Revised Gravitational Pull hypothesis as a theoretical model. A particular focus is placed on identifying a method for comparing datasets containing translations and essays, assembled opportunistically and varying in size and structure. The study shows that lexical association scores for dependency-defined word pairs are significantly higher in translations than essays. A qualitative analysis of a subset of collocations shared and unique to either mode shows that the former set features more collocations with direct cross-linguistic links (connectivity), and that the source/first language seems to affect both modes similarly. We tentatively conclude that second/target language salience effects are more visible in translation than second language use, while connectivity and source language salience affect both modes of bilingual processing similarly, regardless of the mediation variable