Comparative Analysis of Spanish Collocation Dictionaries

Abstract

In recent decades, Spanish lexicography has been enriched with collocation dictionaries, such as the Combinatorial Dictionary of Contemporary Spanish (REDES) and the Practical Combinatorial Dictionary of Contemporary Spanish (PRÁCTICO), both compiled by Ignacio Bosque in 2004 and 2006 respectively. Collocations can present difficulties to learners of Spanish as a foreign language because they require not only learning the lexicon, but also the restrictions that the lexical elements that are combined impose on each other, and because of the frequent divergence of combinatorial patterns between languages. The dictionaries that record lexical collocations mentioned above represent high-quality reference works, but they are not aimed primarily at learners of Spanish and do not always meet their needs. Therefore, they do not systematically include entries for the basic lexicon of the language, nor do they represent the combinatorial patterns exhaustively. The present study aims to compare some entries from the PRACTICAL Dictionary with those of the “Pedagogical dictionary of lexical combinations for learners of Spanish as a foreign language” (DAELE combinatorio), which is the project in which this study is framed, approved and subsidized by the Bureau for Research, International Exchange and Postgraduate Studies, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. More specifically, words designating the meals of the day will be analyzed to explore differences between two dictionaries with respect to the registration of such lexical units of the basic lexicon and their collocates. I will seek to show that the differences are due, on the one hand, to a lexicographic methodology in the local project that prioritizes work in lexical domains to ensure systematicity in the representation of the lexicon of each domain, as well as of the lexical combinations common to the domain and distinctive of each lexical unit, and, on the other, to the pedagogical interest of this dictionary.