Comparing Learners’ and Native Speakers’ Use of Collocations in Written Spanish

Abstract

[Abstract] This article compares the use of collocations in texts written by native speakers and advanced learners of Spanish. The collocations studied were first identified in the sample texts on the grounds of phraseological criteria and subsequently assigned frequency information corresponding to their occurrence in a reference corpus of Spanish. The distribution of collocations with different frequency of co-occurrence and mutual information scores in the texts of the two samples was then compared, as was their proportion in the collocation repertoire of native speakers and learners. The study revealed significant differences both in terms of frequency and mutual information.