Phonological Conditioning of Adjective–Noun Collocations: A Study of Naturalness in Selection
A Study of Naturalness in Selection
Abstract
This study investigates the role of phonological conditioning in shaping the perceived naturalness of adjective–noun collocations in English. Drawing on a data-driven approach, this paper examines whether phonological properties such as syllable structure, stress patterns, and phonotactic constraints influence speakers’ preferences for certain collocational pairings over semantically equivalent alternatives. Using a combination of corpus-based analysis and acceptability judgments, the study analyzes competing adjective–noun combinations (e.g., strong tea vs. powerful tea, heavy rain vs. strong rain) to determine whether phonological well-formedness contributes to their distribution and perceived naturalness. The findings suggest that phonological conditioning operates as a secondary but systematic constraint on collocation selection, interacting with frequency and semantic factors (Bybee, 2021). This study contributes to ongoing discussions in corpus linguistics and phonology by proposing an integrative model of collocational naturalness that incorporates phonological considerations alongside traditional lexical and semantic explanations (Pierrehumbert, 2022).
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