Building a Lexicon of Formulaic Language for Language Learners

Though the multiword lexicon has long been of interest in computational linguistics, most relevant work is targeted at only a small portion of it. Our work is motivated by the needs of learners for more comprehensive resources reflecting formulaic language that goes beyond what is likely to be codified in a dictionary. Working from an initial sequential segmentation approach, we present two enhancements: the use of a new measure to promote the identification of lexicalized sequences, and an expansion to include sequences with gaps. We evaluate using a novel method that allows us to calculate an estimate of recall without a reference lexicon, showing that good performance in the second enhancement depends crucially on the first, and that our lexicon conforms much more with human judgment of formulaic language than alternatives.