Collocations

Under construction.

The Collocates page helps you find words or tags that frequently appear near a chosen “node word” in your corpus. This is a powerful way to explore patterns of association and meaning.

What is a Collocation?

Important

A collocation is a pair or group of words (or tags) that tend to appear together more often than would be expected by chance. For example, “strong tea” and “make a decision” are common collocations in English.

What You Can Do

  • Search for words or tags that frequently occur near a chosen node word
  • Set the span (window) to the left and right of the node word
  • Filter results by tag
  • Choose the association statistic (NPMI, PMI, PMI2, PMI3)
  • Download your results as an Excel file

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Enter a Node Word

  • In the sidebar, enter the word you want to explore (the “node word”).
  • You can optionally anchor your search to a specific tag (POS or DocuScope) for the node word.

2. Set the Span

  • Choose how many words to the left and right of the node word to include in your search window.

3. Choose an Association Statistic

  • PMI (Pointwise Mutual Information): Measures how much more often two words appear together than would be expected by chance. It is very sensitive to rare co-occurrences, which can sometimes highlight spurious associations.
  • PMI2 / PMI3: Variations of PMI that are less sensitive to rare co-occurrences. These provide more stable results by reducing the influence of very infrequent pairs.
  • NPMI (Normalized PMI): Scales PMI between -1 and 1, making it easier to compare across different word pairs and reducing the impact of rare events.
Tip

If you want to avoid results dominated by rare word pairs, try PMI2, PMI3, or NPMI instead of standard PMI.

4. (Optional) Anchor by Tag

  • You can restrict your search to node words with a specific POS or DocuScope tag.
  • For POS, you can choose between general or specific tags.

5. Generate and Filter Results

  • Click the Collocations button to generate your table.
  • Filter the results by tag using the multiselect box above the table.

6. Download Your Results

  • Toggle Download to Excel? in the sidebar to enable download.
  • Click Download to Excel to save your results.

7. Create a New Collocations Table

  • Use the Create New Collocations Table button in the sidebar to reset and start a new search.

Understanding the Table

  • Each row shows a collocate (word or tag), its frequency, and the chosen association statistic.
  • Higher values indicate a stronger association with the node word.

Tips for New Users

Tip
  • Try different statistics to see which gives the most meaningful results for your data.
  • If you get unexpected results, try narrowing the span or anchoring by tag.
  • Download your results often so you can experiment without losing your work.

If You Get Stuck

Important
  • Make sure you have loaded and processed a target corpus.
  • If you see warnings, check your node word and tag selections.
  • Use the reset button on the Manage Corpus Data page if you need to start over.