Towards a Bilingual Collocation Dictionary

Collocations are recurrent, usage- rather than §semantically based word combinations. The fact that §they are largely language-specific - even with §respect to languages as closely related as German §and English - suggests the need for a bilingual §collocation dictionary. This need is proven by §analysing a representative selection of §comprehensive present-day general bilingual §dictionaries as well as by evaluating outputs from §machine translation tools, both online and §commercial. The doctoral thesis starts with an §outline of the different concepts, methods, sources §and applications as regards collocations in both the §contemporary and historical perspectives. Next, §collocations are discussed in the contrastive§(English-German) light. Before embarking on the §discussion of the methods I have tested with a view §to compiling such an English-German adjective-noun §dictionary, I outline the main principles of §bilingual lexicography at large. By way of §conclusion, the applicability of such a dictionary is§tested along with the hypothesis as to the expansion §possibility of the adjective-noun dictionary to §other collocational structures.