Monolingual collocation lexicography: State of art and new perspectives

In this paper we will outline a state of art of research in monolingual collocation lexicography. Our aim is to give the reader an overview of the main results attained by linguists and lexicographers in this domain, starting from the definition of collocation (Section 1), examining (semi)automatic extraction of collocation candidates useful to the lexicographic work (Section 2), and going through to the organization of a dictionary of collocations (Section 3), with its macro and microstructure (Sections 3.1 and 3.2). The last part of this paper (Section 4) will be devoted to the development of electronic dictionaries. Each topic will be dealt with by considering both lexicographic theory and practice, and relevant aspects for the development of future collocation lexicography will be particularly emphasized.