Repulsion: The investigation of an organising force in text

物理学中的“吸引力”隐喻在语言学中得到了确立。它描述了一个词在文本中不是均匀或随机分布的情况，但是在某些文本位置上靠近它的首选词伙伴（或“同位词”）。在我们以前的工作中，重点一直是在哪些情况下，单词显着喜欢彼此的公司，无论是在相邻的配对（跨度1字左右）或不连续的短语或语法框架（例如跨度4字左右）。在AVIATOR项目中，我们为每个单词建立了一个“搭配档案”，并使用统计数据来识别最重要的搭配词。现在，我们希望测试一个假设，即存在另一种“力量”，我们称之为“排斥”，它以相反的方式作用于文本的构建。我们所说的排斥，是指一种常规语言使用的系统，它不鼓励某些成对的词出现在一起;例如，在英语中可以说“圣诞快乐”、“圣诞快乐”和“圣诞快乐”，但不能说“圣诞快乐”。这项研究的目的是研究这些例子以及更复杂的例子背后的原因，以确定这种力是否以及如何持续地起作用，以及它是否使两个词彼此保持可测量的距离。我们希望建立一个衡量标准来区分两个词的非共现，仅仅是因为它们没有特定的关联，以及实际的排斥。我们感兴趣的是发现斥力，而不仅仅是在可以预期的地方（例如，在适用常规规则的情况下），但在令人惊讶的情况下;在所有条件都相同的情况下，（例如，“Happy”和“Merry”是相当接近的同义词，所以我们可能已经预料到他们两个都被“星期一”所吸引）这个项目将揭示语言使用中一个未被探索但基本的和潜在的可利用的方面的事实，无论假设在多大程度上被证明是正确的，结果都将是重要的。这一新措施的信息技术应用将补充和补充搭配措施的使用。虽然搭配可以表明哪个词是给定语境下的正常（正确）选择，但“排斥”会选择不寻常（不正确）的词，作为文本作者和国际英语用户在草稿中识别错误和评估建议选择的工具。

The metaphor of 'attraction' from Physics is established in linguistics. It characterises the situation whereby a word is not evenly or randomly distributed across texts, but is found close to its preferred word partners (or 'col locates') in certain textual positions. In our previous work, the focus has been on the circumstances in which words significantly prefer each other's company, whether in adjacent pairings (span of 1 word to the left and right) or discontinuous phrasal or grammatical frameworks (e.g. span of 4 words to the left and right). In the AVIATOR project, we built a'collocational profile' for each word and used statistics to identify the most significant collocates.Now we wish to test the hypothesis that there is another 'force', which we shall call 'repulsion', that operates on the construction of text in the opposite way. By repulsion, we mean the system of conventional language use which discourages certain pairs of words from occurring together; for instance, it is possible in English to say 'Happy Christmas', 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy Birthday', but not 'Merry Birthday'. The goal of the study is to look at the reasons behind these and more complex examples; to establish whether and how consistently the force operates, and whether it holds two words at a measurable distance from each other.Absence of attraction is not the same as repulsion. We wish to establish a measure to differentiate between the non-cooccurrence of two words simply because they have no particular association, and actual repulsion. We are interested in discovering repulsion not just where it can be expected (e.g. where conventional rules apply), but where it is a surprise; where all things being equal, attraction might be expected (e.g. 'Happy' and 'Merry' are fairly close synonyms, so we might have expected both of them to be attracted by 'Birthday').This project will reveal facts about an unexplored but fundamental and potentially exploitable aspect of language in use, and the results will be important to whatever extent the hypothesis proves true. The IT applications for this new measure will complement and supplement the use of collocation measures. While collocation can indicate which word is the normal (correct) choice for a given context, 'repulsion' will pick up on unusual (incorrect) choices of words, serving as a tool to identify errors and evaluate suggested choices in drafts by writers of text and international users of English.