ATLAS OF LANGUAGE

AT-NAV-G03-049 · ATLAS 259

Co-occurrence

Co-occurrence is the joint appearance of linguistic units within a defined observational window.

Part of the subject path Philosophy of Language, Thought and Knowledge

Why is this entry in the Atlas?

A · Analytical concept R1 · Distinct contribution to understanding

Co-occurrence provides an examinable basis for the joint appearance of linguistic forms. Observed proximity alone establishes neither a causal link nor a stable lexical collocation.

Colours and admission grounds

The rectangular label identifies the entry function: F – linguistic figure or procedure; A – analytical concept; G – foundational concept; E – selected concrete case. The rounded badge indicates the admission ground: R1 – distinctive contribution; R2 – necessary foundation; R3 – justified illustrative case. This editorial rationale explains the current selection rather than claiming an undocumented original selection history.

Explanation

Co-occurrence is the joint appearance of linguistic units within a defined observational domain. This may be a sentence, a text or a window of specified width. Frequency counts are difficult to compare without that definition. Raw joint frequency and statistically marked association are also different findings: very common words often occur together simply because each is common. Association measures therefore relate observed values to an explicit baseline. Whether a relationship is linguistically significant still requires interpretation. Co-occurrence alone establishes neither a fixed collocation nor a causal or conceptual connection.

Movement of thought

1. Specify the corpus. 2. Define units and the observational window. 3. Count joint occurrences. 4. Consider marginal frequencies and comparison values. 5. Interpret the finding through actual examples.

Scientific use case

Reproducible analysis records tokenisation, window size, corpus size and the association measure used.

Example

One study counts bright and light in the same sentence; another requires immediate adjacency. Their results answer different questions.

Counterexample

A high raw joint count may merely reflect the high frequency of both words in the corpus.

Distinction

Distinguish co-occurrence from collocation, statistical association, sameness of meaning and causation.

Effect on thought and perception

The method makes recurring relationships open to study and their assumptions open to scrutiny.

Resonance

Frequent company invites interpretation without already supplying it.

Provenance

Parallel source review reconciled 2026-10-07; human specialist review not claimed.

Cite this entry

Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Co-occurrence“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-NAV-G03-049. ATLAS 259, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-NAV-G03-049

https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-NAV-G03-049

The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.