Here are the collocates of KISS computed using Shakespeare plays, ordered by frequency.
There are nearly 190 instances of AGO, mostly in the centre but you see 3 in position L2 (two spaces left of the centre search-word) and 3 more two places to the right of KISS. AND is the top collocate, found 48 times near KISS. Next comes THE, usually found to the right of KISS. And next HAND (not lips!)
However, there are clearly words more grammatical than lexical in the list: grammatical words are usually top frequency items in any language. what's needed is a way of knowing how closely each of these collocates of KISS is related to it. Are AND, THE, TO etc. really closely linked to KISS?
If we now choose Compute | Relationships in the menu,
and select a suitable word-list to use for the comparison:
then we get the following list when sorted by clicking the MI3 column:
The top items in the list now reflect much better the role of a KISS in Shakespeare. (Note: kiss the rod meant accept punishment submissively.)
