This article addresses the possibility of linking constructicon resources for different languages, in particular English and Swedish. The entries in Berkeley’s English constructicon have been compared to Swedish, with a focus on potential correspondences in a Swedish constructicon. In most cases, approximately corresponding Swedish constructions could be established, although typically with minor differences, often concerning grammatical markers. The closest equivalents are, typically, relatively general grammatical constructions, whereas constructions containing specific lexical elements tend to differ more. In order to link all corresponding constructions between the two resources, a combination of strategies seems to be required. Constructions with a referential meaning may be linked via FrameNet frames, while those with a more abstract grammatical function may be related in terms of their grammatical properties.

We present an experiment where natural language processing tools are used to automatically identify potential constructions in a corpus. The experiment was conducted as part of the ongoing efforts to develop a Swedish constructicon. Using an automatic method to suggest constructions has advantages not only for efficiency but also methodologically: it forces the analyst to look more objectively at the constructions actually occurring in corpora, as opposed to focusing on “interesting” constructions only. As a heuristic for identifying potential constructions, the method has proved successful, yielding about 200 (out of 1,200) highly relevant construction candidates.

This chapter addresses central topics in constructicography from the viewpoint of the Swedish constructicon project (SweCcn), focusing on practical constructicon development. The full process of construction description is described and discussed, from selection via corpus analysis to finished constructicon entry and beyond, towards structuring the set of entries into a network. Particular attention is given to the description format and the treatment of constructional variation. A main theme in the chapter is the interdependence and alignment of SweCcn and related resources, on the one hand in the local context, notably the infrastructure of Språkbanken (the Swedish language bank), and on the other hand with respect to corresponding resources for other languages. Of key concern is the relation to FrameNet, both the Swedish and other framenets, and a major section is devoted to conditions for linking constructions and frames.

In a printed bilingual dictionary, one of the languages acts as the source language and the other the target language. In an electronic dictionary, where both languages can be made equally accessible, the relationship between the two languages is much more complicated. This paper will discuss the consequences of this multiple access in bilingual lexicography. The focus will also be on the target language vocabulary, when it is made as accessible as the source language. The point of departure is the Swedish vocabulary presented in the multilingual online-only resource ISLEX, where Icelandic is the source language and Swedish one of the target languages. While the Icelandic vocabulary in ISLEX is carefully selected and representative of the Icelandic lexicon, the Swedish vocabulary consists of a rather arbitrary selection of the Swedish lexicon, revealing unfortunate equivalent lacunae, i.e. the absence of words of frequent occurrence and central to colloquial Swedish. Some implications of multiple access for the typology of bilingual dictionaries will be discussed.