DISTRIBUTOR

a) Keyness

The lemma ‘distributor’ was the fifty-fourth most significant key word in the BEC corpus.

N	Word	bec freq.	bec.lst %	bnc freq.	bnc.lst %	Keyness	P
54	DISTRIBUTOR	218	0.02	16	-	363.5	0.000000

b) Semantic Prosody

Left:

In this small sample, only one main umbrella group could be discerned. This category refers to the type of distributor in question. This can relate to nationality, (e.g. French distributor), range (e.g. global distributor) or nature of a distributor agreement (e.g. sole/authorized distributor).

Other collocates found were major, new and main distributor, but there were not enough examples to constitute a discernible group.

semantic prosody	frequency/142 & %	example
Type of distributor	22 - 15.59%	local Angus distributor an exclusive distributor

Right:

In this sample four small groups were identified. The rights and obligations of the distributor are noted by modality, e.g. may terminate / shall make his best efforts. In the last group, the preposition for functions to link the distributor to lexis that determines what is being distributed, where and over what period of time (see table below and the colligation section).

semantic prosody	frequency/142 & %	example
legal agreements	9 - 6.33%	a full distributor agreement
distributor rights	7 - 4.92%	distributor is entitled to distributor may terminate
distributor obligations	15 - 10.56%	The distributor shall make his best efforts ...
what/where/time period	8 - 5.63%	distributor for the defective software distributor for the period

In the third category, distributor obligations, and the fourth, what/where/time period, we see the crossover of semantic prosody and colligation.

c) Three-word clusters:

N	cluster	Freq.
1	the distributor shall	8
2	actually paid to	4
3	by the distributor	4
4	distributor in the	4
5	distributor or its	4
6	of this agreement	4
7	paid to distributor	4
8	to distributor for	4

d) Macro-generic distribution:

e) Colligation

COBUILD Sense 1 ( a company that supplies goods to shops or other businesses)

100% of sample

Patterns: Count noun (usually with supplementary information).

if you were approached by another distributor you could sell it to them

Other patterns:

i) Modality:

The rights and obligations of the distributor are noted by modality, e.g. may terminate / shall make his best efforts.

Once again, as with the word ‘supplier’ above, most of the instances come from a legal agreement. This again points to strong genre-specific collocational/colligational patterning, but makes any further generalisations inadvisable.

ii) distributor + for:

8 instances - 5.63% of sample

distributor for the defective software, distributor for S. Ireland, distributor for the period

f) Associates

The word ‘distributor’ was key in 4 files. No associates > =5 were found.