The contextual behaviour of specialised collocations: typology and lexicographic treatment

Abstract A corpus-based analysis of specialised phraseology can shed light on the role of phrasal context in terminology. This contribution describes the behaviour of constituents of simple and complex specialised collocations in technical texts and the way in which these are distributed in different contexts ranging from the immediate surroundings of a node to the inclusion of a much larger portion of text. The contextual behaviour of specialised collocations is exemplified by English and Italian terms in the domain of photovoltaic technology. This contribution aims to identify and classify specialised collocations along their formation modalities and contexts, as well as to discuss the impact of these phenomena on their representation in LSP lexicographic resources. Issues and options concerning the extraction of collocations and contexts are also addressed.