Remarks on the Elaboration of an English – Spanish Word-combination Dictionary

Through a focus on word-combination analysis in bilingual dictionaries, this article presents the epistemological and methodological background for an ongoing research and editorial project aiming to produce an English–Spanish dictionary of multi-word combinations. After a discussion of the treatment of word combinations as a phenomenon in different types of dictionaries, the lexicographic process guiding the elaboration of the dictionary is described. In addition to the preliminary plan and the fieldwork undertaken for this dictionary-making project, a detailed account is given of the principles determining the inclusion of entries and their presentation within the dictionary. The typology of word combinations included in the dictionary and the structure of entries is accordingly dealt with prior to making some remarks regarding the final presentationand-revision stage currently being carried out. Because this article is based on current research intending to compile an English–Spanish dictionary of multi-word expressions, emphasis is constantly laid on a usage context where the source language is English and the target language Spanish. By considering the potential users of the English–Spanish word-combination dictionary examined here, some concluding remarks are made with regard to the educational implications of this kind of dictionary primarily aimed at intermediateto advanced-level Spanish-speaking EFL learners.


Introduction
Taking word-combination analysis in bilingual dictionaries as a case in point, this article presents the epistemological and methodological background underlying a research and editorial project aiming to produce an English-Spanish dictionary of word combinations.After a discussion of the treatment of word combinations as a phenomenon in different types of dictionaries, the lexicographic process guiding the elaboration of the dictionary is described.An account is accordingly made of the principles determining the inclusion of entries and their presentation within the dictionary.Given that this article is based on current research aiming to build an English-Spanish dictionary of multi-word expressions, emphasis will be laid at all times on a usage context where the source language is English and the target language is Spanish. 1 After the potential users of the English-Spanish word-combination dictionary here presented have been considered, some final remarks are made about the educational implications of such a dictionary primarily aimed at intermediate-to advanced-level Spanish-speaking EFL learners.

Word combinations and lexicographic analyses: a focus on collocations and idioms
Within the domain of lexicology, phraseology is progressively passing through a certain process of segregation as a separate branch of linguistics.While lexicology has to do with words and their meanings, phraseology focuses on such collocations of words (i.e.'phraseologisms', 'phraseological units', 'collocations' or 'idioms'), where the meaning of the whole is different from the sum of the literal meanings of the words, comprising a phraseological unit.'Phraseological units', which are the object of study of phraseology, happen to be stable wordgroups with partially or fully transferred meanings.According to Gläser (1998: 125), a 'phraseological unit' may be conceived of as a lexicalized, reproducible, bilexemic or polylexemic word group in common use, which has relative syntactic and semantic stability, may be idiomatized, may carry connotations, and may have an emphatic or intensifying function in a text.
As major types of phraseological units, 'collocation' and 'idiom' are familiar terms for users of English monolingual and bilingual dictionaries having achieved a certain linguistic proficiency.Such linguistic phenomena are often conceived of as 'multi-word combinations' (Ilson 2002: 333) whose meaning is more than the sum of the meaning of their components.As Benson, Benson and Ilson maintain in their approach to this lexical phenomenon, 'word combinations' come into being when "certain words regularly combine with certain other words or grammatical constructions" (1997: ix).To a great extent, when exploring the word combinations of a language, both collocations and idiomatic expressions are at some point examined. 2 The notion of 'collocation' refers "to the tendency for certain words to occur together.The term itself comes from the verb collocate, meaning 'to go together'" (Finch 2000: 152). 3It is common practice for monolingual dictionaries to include information about units 'above' the word level, such as "units including more than one complete word, i.e. compounds and idioms like blackbird, bank on, give up, night owl, hammer and tongs, at all, kick the bucket" (Ilson 2002: 333).As substantiated by Ilson's investigation of lexicographic practices, most dictionaries generally incorporate syntagmatic information about the use of items in forming sentences, which may include notes on complementation and, which is the case in point here, information on "collocation with specific words or types of words ([e.g.] fond of vs fondness for; [or] the association of capsize with boats or ships)" (2002: 335).
According to Bussmann, collocations are characteristic word combinations "which have developed an idiomatic semantic relation based on their frequent co-occurrence" (1996: 81; emphasis added).Consequently, collocations are semantically and syntactically close to such lexico-grammatical units as 'idioms', that is, "a sequence of words which is semantically and often syntactically restricted, so that they function as a single unit.From a semantic viewpoint, the meanings of the individual words cannot be summed to produce the meaning of the idiomatic expression as a whole" (Crystal 2003: 225-226).
Idiomatic expressions are semantically related to collocations to such an extent that, as Crystal underlines, "an alternative terminology refers to idioms as 'habitual collocations'" (2003: 226).In fact, collocations and idioms may be taken to partake of the same stock of prefabricated units which, following the Russian tradition of phraseology, various authors have labelled 'word combinations' and also 'phraseological units' or 'phrasal lexemes' to delineate the "ready-made memorized combinations in written and spoken language" (Cowie 1998: 1), comprising both "'word-like' units, which function syntactically at or below the level of the simple sentence, and 'sentence-like' units, which function pragmatically as sayings, catchphrases, and conversational formulae" (Cowie, 1998: 4). 4 Studies on the phraseology of English like that of Altenberg (1998: 120 et passim) likewise acknowledge idioms and collocations to be types of word-combinations.Indeed, Cowie himself highlights that "collocations of words in familiar literal senses are at one end of a broad spectrum of word combinations in English.At the other are idioms: combinations whose constant re-use in a fixed form has led to a radical change of meaning" (1988: 131).

3.
A project in context: English-Spanish word-combination lexicographic analysis As Cowie asserted at the end of the last decade, there is now a "wider recognition of the crucial part that ready-made memorized word combinations "play in first-and second-language acquisition and adult language production […] native-like proficiency in a language depends crucially on a stock of prefabricated units, 'prefabs', varying in complexity and internal stability (1998:1).Textbooks for EFL learners often examine collocations and idioms as fundamental aspects of vocabulary learning.This is also the trend in specific vocabulary-learning manuals for students of EFL (e.g.Thomas 1991;Redman 1997;McCarthy 2001McCarthy , 2002)).There are various monolingual dictionaries of idioms for EFL learners.A few examples of a long list that would be impossible to include exhaustively here are the Longman Dictionary of Idioms (Long 1979); the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of English Idioms (Warren 1994); and the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Idioms (1995).Monolingual dictionaries of phrasal verbs as a special category of idiomatic expressions are also widely available on the market, for instance, the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (1989), including a workbook by Goodale (1993); the Oxford Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (Cowie 1993) or the Longman Phrasal Verbs Dictionary (2000). 5There are likewise various monolingual dictionaries of collocations, including Selected English Collocations (Kozłowska 1993); A Dictionary of English Collocations (Kjellmer 1994); The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations (Benson, Benson and Ilson 1997); and the Oxford Collocations Dictionary (2004).Current monolingual dictionaries for learners of English similarly incorporate information on collocations and idioms.Again, an exhaustive list could not possibly be included here, some well-known examples being the Longman Language Activator (1993); the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1995); the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Hornby 2000); and the Collins COBUILD New Student's Dictionary (2002).However, bilingual sources of English word combinations for Spanish learners of English in the form of userfriendly dictionaries are rather limited.Ordinary English-Spanish/Spanish-English dictionaries often include information on idioms and, to a lesser extent, collocations.Representative cases are the Gran diccionario español-inglés, English-Spanish (García-Pelayo y Gross 1993); the Cambridge Word Selector, Inglés-Español (1995); the Diccionario Oxford avanzado para estudiantes de ingles, españolinglés inglés-español (1996);El Diccionario Oxford español-inglés, inglés-español (2001); the Diccionario de inglés contemporáneo para estudiantes: English-Spanish, español-inglés (Sánchez Benedito and Gámez Gámez 2001); and the Collins Dictionary: Español-Inglés, English-Spanish (2003).
Although there exist English-Spanish dictionaries of phrasal verbs as a fundamental subcategory of idiomatic expressions like that of Khalaili and Marina (1984), comprehensive bilingual dictionaries of idiomatic expressions and collocations are almost non-existent.Thus, exceptions like the phraseological dictionaries of Carbonell Basset (1971Basset ( , 1995Basset ( , 1996) ) tend to lay a strong emphasis on proverbs and other idiomatic expressions, so that, in addition to disregarding a great deal of English idioms which are not proverbs, they do not on the whole take collocations into account.As substantiated by this overview of the literature on English-Spanish word-combination analysis, a thorough lexicographic examination of English-Spanish word combinations needs undertaking.Such a dictionary would be particularly useful for EFL learners whose mother language is Spanish.In fact, it is somewhat surprising that such a project should not have been contemplated to date, considering that wordcombination dictionaries have already been produced which explore English phraseology from the viewpoint of languages with considerably fewer speakers than Spanish, for example, Polish (Osuchowska 2001).

4.
Steps towards an English-Spanish dictionary of word combinations Bearing in mind the above-mentioned lack of lexicographic resources providing translations of English word combinations into Spanish, we proceed to describe the approach followed for the elaboration of an English-Spanish dictionary of such phraseological units.Admittedly, this procedural account may serve as a basis for further lexicographic work exploring English multi-word combinations from the viewpoint of other target languages.The following subsections present the lexicographic process undertaken for the research and editing process leading to an English-Spanish dictionary of word combinations.

Lexicographic process
The project is consistent with the basic principles of contemporary lexicographic practices, thereby comprising all four stages of successful lexicographic work as mentioned by Hartmann (2001: 14-20), namely 'planning', 'fieldwork', 'description' and 'presentation.'The last stage includes final revision as well.

Preliminary plan
Hartmann stresses that "to be successful, lexicography as dictionary making requires careful planning and implementation of the compilation process on the basis of market research and the specification of the potential users' reference needs to be met" (2001: 20).As discussed above, an examination of the current availability of bilingual English-Spanish dictionaries gives evidence of a significant lack of specific dictionaries dealing with word combinations.Therefore, a dictionary of this kind including collocations and idioms seemed to be a must, and, given the specificity of word combinations in every language, it seemed that the project would be beneficial for EFL learners as well as translators. 6After some preliminary work had been carried out through some local university-and regionally-funded research, the positive attitude of the Spanish Department of Education in granting funding on a national competitive basis confirmed the expected positive results of the project. 7

Fieldwork
Further to the initial planning stage of the dictionary-making process, the first step in the research is to produce a thorough database of word combinations in English that might be used as a basis or 'macrostructure' for the alphabeticallyordered dictionary 'entries' in English, including Spanish equivalents, usage examples and other information within the English-Spanish dictionary of word combinations. 8The macrostructure of lexical entries has thus been completed on the basis of existing English monolingual dictionaries of multi-word expressions including The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations (Benson, Benson and Ilson 1997) or the Oxford Collocations Dictionary (2004), plus various other current English-Spanish dictionaries such as El Diccionario Oxford español-inglés, inglés-español (2001), and general-use monolingual English dictionaries like the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Hornby 2000).Specialised dictionaries of English idioms, such as the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Idioms (1995), have been consulted as well to build a macrostructure of word combinations in English consisting of collocations and idioms.Rather than come up with a new repertoire of English multi-word expressions defined in English, the main focus of the project was to provide Spanish equivalents for word-combination compilations in English, fieldwork therefore mainly relying on 'secondary sources'. 9 The BNC (British National Corpus) (2001) has been adopted as a key source of information for the usage examples of the entries in the dictionary.Examples are easily retrieved through SARA, a PC-based concordance programme available on the commercial CD-based version of the BNC.The BNC has been chosen on grounds of its relevance for its present world-wide Englishrelated lexicographic analyses: "the BNC has been used for the dictionaries of Oxford University Press, Longman and Chambers, the three publishers who contributed to its compilation" (Leech 2002: 91). 10 However, when usage examples are absent in the BNC, other English-language corpora are consulted, for example, the Collins COBUILD English Collocations on CD-ROM (1995).The Internet is drawn upon as a last resource for usage contexts when no examples are found within existing language corpora.Again, equivalents in Spanish for the word combinations in the macrostructure of the dictionary are provided on the basis of existing bilingual Eng-lish-Spanish general-use dictionaries.A wide range of such bilingual dictionaries have been consulted in this regard.The list includes, but is not limited to, dictionaries like the Diccionario Oxford avanzado para estudiantes de ingles, español-inglés ingles-español (1996); the Gran diccionario español-inglés, englishspanish (García-Pelayo y Gross 1993); El Diccionario Oxford español-inglés, inglésespañol (2001); the Diccionario de inglés contemporáneo para estudiantes: English-Spanish, español-inglés (Sánchez Benedito and Gámez Gámez 2001); the Collins Dictionary: Español-Inglés, English-Spanish (2003); or the Cambridge Word Selector, Inglés-Español (1995).When necessary, the CREA (Corpus de referencia del español actuel, i.e.Reference Corpus of Contemporary Spanish) has been consistently used to test the appropriateness and idiomaticity of the equivalents in Spanish.

Word combinations included in the dictionary
For the purposes of this dictionary, we have followed Benson, Benson and Ilson's (1986: 252-254) overall taxonomy of 'lexical combinations', namely: (a) 'free combinations' of words, which are those whose "components are the freest in regard to combining with other lexical items"; (b) 'idioms', which are "relatively frozen expressions whose meanings do not reflect the meanings of their component parts"; and (c) 'collocations', which are "fixed"/"recurrent" word combinations, that is, "loosely fixed combinations" between free word combinations and idioms. 11Nonetheless, free combinations of words have not been considered in the dictionary, since their meaning may be found by examining the meaning of their individual constituent words in general dictionaries. 124.1.3.1.1Collocations Benson, Benson and Ilson (1997) distinguish between 'grammatical collocations' and 'lexical collocations'. 13A 'grammatical collocation' is "a phrase consisting of a dominant word (noun, adjective, verb) and a preposition or grammatical structure such as an infinitive or clause" (1997: xv); for instance, decide on (decidirse por) in decide on a boat.In contrast, 'lexical collocations' "do not contain prepositions, infinitives, or clauses.Typical lexical collocations consist of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs" (1997: xxx); for example, warmest regards (saludos afectuosos) in I send warmest regards.The dictionary is mainly concerned with lexical collocations, which Spanish-speaking users of English might easily convert into wrong collocations (e.g.*deserted children/abandoned children [niños abandonados]).Moreover, although there is a large number of English collocations following the Verb + Noun structure (abandon hope), this lexicographic repertoire does not include all possible free word combinations.In their discussion of English word combinations, Benson, Benson and Ilson (1997: xxx) make this point clear by considering the construction condemn murder (condenar delitos), which is a free word combination in English, the verb condemn combining with an unlimited number of nouns (e.g.condemn abortion, abuse of power) and murder similarly combining with hundreds of verbs (e.g.accept, acclaim, advocate); however, commit murder (cometer un crimen) is a collocation.Following Benson, Benson and Ilson's (1997: xxx-xxxiii)  ).Such collocations appear in the dictionary entry of the second noun.Nevertheless, if the meaning of the second noun within the word combination is different from its meaning when used independently, the word combination is included in the dictionary on the basis of the second word (e.g.acceptance speech [discurso de ingreso en una institución pública]). (

Idiomatic expressions
The dictionary takes account of a wide range of idiomatic expressions of contemporary British and American English.). 14The dictionary does not incorporate 'phrasal verbs' as a characteristic type of multi-word combination because there are various dictionaries of phrasal verbs, both monolingual and bilingual, on the market. 15

Structure of entries
The dictionary is articulated in accordance with the typical procedure of alphabetical order, which "is based on the written form of the lexically relevant units rather than on their meaning" and adopts a 'semasiological' approach in entries, that is, "going from name to notion" (Ilson 2002: 291).The basic principles guiding the organisation of entries within the dictionary are as follows: 16   (a) Key headwords, compounds included, are alphabetically ordered in the dictionary. 17Single-word compounds precede those written as two words.Homographs follow this order: adjective, adverb, noun, verb.For instance, tease (n.) precedes tease (v.).Determiners, prepositions and pronouns are not often headwords.

TEASE I n.
[person who teases] a terrible tease un bromista.TEASE II v.
1. to tease a person cruelly burlarse o reírse de una persona.By then she had acquired a distinctive Geordie accent and she was upset when her friends at school teased her about her rounded vowels and up and down, sing-song voice.
2. to tease an animal provocar a un animal.He would meddle with fishing nets, pull up anchors and tow boats, tease dogs and tow swimmers.
3. to tease a fabric; wool cardar un tejido; lana.As a test of his strength Utnapishtim challenged him to stay awake for six days and seven nights -; But while Gilgamesh sat there resting on his haunches, a mist of sleep like soft wool teased from the fleece drifted over him (…).

(b)
Entries contain at least one context of usage.The key headword is written in small capital letters.English collocations are written in bold and Spanish equivalents appear in italics.Regular font face has been adopted for usage examples, the word combination in question being underlined.
Here is an example: to brandish, wield a machete blandir un machete.We can't take time to talk to the stylist before they wield the machete.
(c) Cross-references within the dictionary are highlighted in yellow.For example, in the following entry penny is highlighted in yellow because the same idiom may be found in the entry for penny within the dictionary: TEN n. 1. to be two/ ten a penny ser baratísimo/no valer nada.Uncritical testimonials to the postmodern's attractions are ten a penny, and conservative denunciations thereof not much scarcer.
2. ten to one (inform.)diez a uno/te apuesto lo que quieras.The great bulk of those who thronged Emmett place last night wanted to see the film, and they outnumbered protestors by a minimum of ten to one.
(d) When a word collocates with others, the dictionary pinpoints series of collocations in an alphabetical order (e.g.ABILITY: to demonstrate, display, exhibit, show).This helps not only to save space, but also to display synonyms and near-synonyms.So, in the series for ability, demonstrate ability and display ability are treated as synonyms.(e) Collocations whose meaning may be difficult to grasp by the student are often defined between brackets on the left of the collocation: MARKET n.
[...] 5. a bear ("falling"); bull ("rising") market mercado/bolsa a la baja; en alza.Spicer points out that the sector has thrived in a bull market but the advertising boom may be coming to an end.
Information about register, dialects and other social factors is also indicated between brackets, e.g.formal (form.),American English (IAm), British English (IBr); etc: (f) As the following example of an entry from the dictionary instantiates, idiomatic expressions are written in blue at the end of entries: MAT n.
1. to weave a mat sacudir una alfombrilla/un felpudo.The Lele are subsistence cultivators, growing maize, ground-nuts, and raffia palms from whose fronds they weave mats which are used as a special currency -a rare case of money really growing on trees.2. a bath; exercise; prayer; welcome mat alfombrilla de baño; para hacer ejercicio/ colchoneta; para arrodillarse y rezar; de bienvenida.For elderly people, grab rails at strategic places (including the bathroom/toilet) and use of a non-slip bath mat are devices likely to prevent accidents.
3. to go to the mat (for sb) (IAm) hacer todo lo que puedes para solucionar un problema difícil, para ayudar a algn que tiene menos poder que tú.
(g) Examples have been taken from the BNC and, to a lesser extent, from the Collins COBUILD English Collocations on CD-ROM (1995).Although this is the case on very few occasions, the dictionary sometimes includes collocations without usage examples as no examples have been found in the language corpora utilized.However, an equivalent is always provided in Spanish, if the word combination is believed to be problematic for Spanish speakers: AIR CONDITIONER n.
(h) Alternative translations of a collocation or idiom are separated by a slash (/): MAD adj.
Excuses abound: world markets have collapsed, diet-conscious Europeans are eating less red meat, some people in Britain fear it will give them mad cow disease.(i) Usage notes are highlighted in light blue, and range from pragmatic information to differences between British and American English, through other grammatical questions.They are also used to make reference to 'false friends', namely "terms in two languages which are phonologically and graphologically similar (cognates), but have subtly different meanings" (Malmkjaer 2002: 82).Here is an example: TAPE n.
[...] 9. audiotape; videotape cinta de audio; de vídeo.The screen replaces the car windscreen, and on it is shown a road scene that has been recorded on video tape, and transferred to disk.Nota de uso: se pueden encontrar los compuestos juntos (videotape) o separados (video tape).

(j)
The use of a long underscore (_____) in an idiomatic phrase indicates that various nouns, adjectives or verbs may be inserted in the gap: MAN n.
[…] 33.our man in _____ nuestro hombre en _____.I don't know why our man in Madrid came to see me; just idle curiosity, perhaps -so few people have ever met me, so many seem anxious to do so.

Presentation and Revision
At this stage of the editing project, the dictionary on the whole is close to completion.The final stage of the project still needs to be undertaken.This will entail formatting, printing and proofreading the whole dictionary several times.A thorough revision of the dictionary will accordingly have to be carried out prior to its final publication.

Final remarks
Through the presentation of a research project attempting to produce an English-Spanish lexicographic repertoire of word-combinations using examples from the British National Corpus, this article has tried to shed light on the vital role of corpus-based language analysis for dictionary-making practices, chiefly as regards "bilingual dictionaries that have English as their source language" (Benson 1985: 61).Focusing on collocations and idioms as fundamental multiword-combination categories in English, this article has tried to disentangle the lexicographic mechanisms contributing to developing systematically-organised lexical repertoires of equivalents in Spanish.This project is intended to compensate for the shortage of bilingual dictionaries providing instant and user-friendly access to Spanish translations of English word combinations.The fact is, as McCarthy stresses, that "the relationship of collocation is fundamental in the study of vocabulary " (1990: 12), and therefore is a major area of concern for learners of EFL.In a similar way, "idioms are a great source of difficulty for foreign learners" (Taylor 1990: 49), so that bilingual dictionaries of multi-word expressions are invaluable resources for both Spanish learners of EFL and translators.Dictionaries like this may thus help to facilitate and increase Spanish speakers' cultural awareness of English, since "all fluent and appropriate language use requires collocational knowledge" (Nation 2001: 318).
By way of conclusion, it could be said that an exercise like this may serve as a model for similar research and editing projects aiming to build word-combination bilingual dictionaries dealing with other languages.The production of a Spanish-English counterpart of this lexicographic repertoire is now the logical continuation of the present project.

Endnotes
1.According to Richards and Schmidt's definition of these terms when applied to bilingual dictionaries, the 'source language' is "the language out of which a translation is made" (2002: 496) and the 'target language' is "the language into which a translation is made"(2002: 539).2. There is some degree of terminological confusion regarding word combinations and their subclasses.As Mel'čuk (1998: 23-24) evidences, the terms 'collocation' and 'idiom' -or 'idiomatic expression' -have sometimes been used to refer not only to a subclass of the word combinations of a language, but as synonyms of notions like 'word combination' or 'fixed (frozen) phrases'.His use of the term 'set phrases' (1998: 23ff), or 'phrasemes' as a synonym of word combinations to refer to phrases which are not free, is quite illuminating in this respect.Together with the term 'word combination', the lexicographic literature on phraseology recurrently draws upon the terms 'word-combination' (e.g.Howarth 1996), 'multi-word combination' (e.g.Ilson 2002) and 'multi-word expression' (e.g.Hartmann and James 1998) to refer to "a phrase consisting of two or more words functioning as a single lexeme.The constituents are relatively stable (fixed expression), and, if used idiomatically, their combined meaning is more or other than the sum of the parts, e.g.fly-by-night, face the music" (Hartmann and James 1998: 97). 3. The notion of 'collocation' was first introduced by Firth (1957) in his semantic theory to evoke the phenomenon of word combinations giving rise to semantic and idiomatic relations based on their co-occurrence.4. See Cowie (1998) andMel'čuk (1988) for detailed and complex terminological discussions outside the scope of this contribution.
mercantile (IBr), merchant (IAm) marine marino mercante.It is true that certain measures of nationalisation had been undertaken in the first months of Soviet government -for example, the Merchant Marine had been taken over in January 1918 (…).
taxonomy of collocations, the main types of lexical collocations included in the dictionary are the following: g. come to a conclusion, make an appointment, set a record [llegar a una conclusión, concertar una cita, fijar un récor]).In many cases, the collocation incorporates an idea of eradication (e.g.override a veto [anular el veto]).(b) Adjective + Noun Typical examples include strong/weak tea [té fuerte/flojo], which may not be replaced by might/feeble tea.Sometimes it is possible for various adjectives to collocate with a single noun.In these cases, only the most frequent lexical collocations are included.Furthermore, it is necessary to bear in mind that in English many nouns have an adjectival function when they are placed before another noun (e.g.placement test [test de nivel]

operate, run, use, work; shut down a machine, to
Synonyms are thus grouped together and separated by commas within the series of collocations.As shown in the example below, to operate, run, use and work are treated as synonyms, and are likewise separated from shut down (which is not a synonym) by a semicolon: However, collocations which are not synonyms are separated by a semicolon (;) (e.g.domestic; physical; sexual ABUSE).