Classification of Grammatical Collocation Errors in the Writings of Learners of Spanish

Resumen

Arbitrary recurrent word combinations (collocations) are a key in language learning. However, even advanced students have difficulties when using them. Efficient collocation aiding tools would be of great help. Still, existing "collocation checkers" still struggle to offer corrections to miscollocations. They attempt to correct without making any distinction between the different types of errors, providing, as a consequence, heterogeneous lists of collocations as suggestions. Besides, they focus solely on lexical errors, leaving aside grammatical ones. The former attract more attention, but the latter cannot be ignored either if the goal is to develop a comprehensive collocation aiding tool, able to correct all kinds of miscollocations. We propose an approach to automatically classify grammatical collocation errors made by US learners of Spanish as a starting point for the design of specific correction strategies targeted for each type of error.