The effect of time and dimensions of collocational relationship on phraseological accuracy: a study on Chinese learners of Italian

This study investigates if and to what extent time affects phraseological accuracy in Chinese learners of Italian. The longitudinal analysis focuses on lexical combinations within the adjectival modifier dependency (noun + adjective and adjective + noun) and the verb + direct object dependency. In addition, the effect on accuracy of different dimensions of collocational relationship is considered. To date, little empirical evidence has been made available about the degree to which some of these dimensions (the repetition, strength, exclusivity and directionality, represented by the measures of frequency, Mutual Information, logDice and DeltaP) affect phraseological accuracy. Results of a mixed-effect model show that time and logDice are significant predictors of phraseological accuracy, and that the time effect varies as a function of combination type.