Collocation

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For a broader range of definitions of collocation, see colocation (alternate spelling). For collocation methods for the solution of differential equations, see collocation method. For the sense in telecommunications, see Colocation centre.

Within the area of corpus linguistics, collocation is defined as a sequence of words or terms which co-occur more often than would be expected by chance.

Collocation refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together, for example which prepositions are used with particular verbs, or which verbs and nouns are used together. Collocations are examples of lexical units. Collocations should not be confused with idioms.

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[edit] Common features

Non-substitutability
We cannot substitute a word in a collocation with a related word. For example, we cannot say yellow wine instead of white wine although both yellow and white are the names of colors.
Non-modifiability
We cannot modify a collocation or apply syntactic transformations.

[edit] Expanded definition

If the expression is heard often, transmitting itself memetically, the words become 'glued' together in our minds. 'Crystal clear', 'middle management', 'nuclear family', and 'cosmetic surgery' are examples of collocated pairs of words. Some words are often found together because they make up a compound noun, for example 'riding boots' or 'motor cyclist'.

Collocations can be in a syntactic relation (such as verb-object: 'make' and 'decision'), lexical relation (such as antonymy), or they can be in no linguistically defined relation. Knowledge of collocations is vital for the competent use of a language: a grammatically correct sentence will stand out as 'awkward' if collocational preferences are violated. This makes collocation an interesting area for language teaching.

Corpus Linguists specify a Key Word in Context (KWIC) and identify the words immediately surrounding them. This gives an idea of the way words are used.

The processing of collocations involves a number of parameters, the most important of which is the measure of association, which evaluates whether the co-occurrence is purely by chance or statistically significant. Due to the non-random nature of language, most collocations are classed as significant, and the association scores are simply used to rank the results. Commonly used measures of association include mutual information, t scores, and log-likelihood.

Rather than select a single definition, Gledhill[1] proposes that collocation involves at least three different perspectives: (i) cooccurrence, a statistical view, which sees collocation as the recurrent appearance in a text of a node and its collocates[2][3][4], (ii) construction, which sees collocation either as a correlation between a lexeme and a lexical-grammatical pattern[5], or as a relation between a base and its collocative partners[6] and (iii) expression, a pragmatic view of collocation as a conventional unit of expression, regardless of form[7][8]. It should be pointed out here that these different perspectives contrast with the usual way of presenting collocation in phraseological studies. Traditionally speaking, collocation is explained in terms of all three perspectives at once, in a continuum:

‘Free Combination’ ↔ ‘Bound Collocation’ ↔ ‘Frozen Idiom’

[edit] Examples

In English the verb perform is used with operation, but not with discussion: The doctor performed the operation.

Collocates of 'bank' are: central, river, account, manager, merchant, money, deposits, lending, society. These examples reflect a number of common expressions, 'central bank', 'bank or building society', and so forth. It is easy to see how the meaning of 'bank' is partly expressed through the choice of collocates.

High collocates with probability, but not with chance: a high probability but a good chance

Herd collocates with cows, but not with sheep: a herd of cows but a flock of sheep

[edit] References

  1. ^ Gledhill C. (2000): Collocations in Science Writing, Narr, Tübingen
  2. ^ Firth J.R. (1957): Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  3. ^ Sinclair J. (1996): “The Search for Units of Meaning”, in Textus, IX, 75-106.
  4. ^ Smadja F. A & McKeown, K. R. (1990): “Automatically extracting and representing collocations for language generation”, Proceedings of ACL’90, 252-259, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
  5. ^ Hunston S. & Francis G. (2000): Pattern Grammar- A Corpus-Driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English, Amsterdam, John Benjamins
  6. ^ Hausmann F. J. (1989): Le dictionnaire de collocations. In Hausmann F.J., Reichmann O., Wiegand H.E., Zgusta L.(eds), Wörterbücher : ein internationales Handbuch zur Lexicographie. Dictionaries. Dictionnaires. Berlin/New-York : De Gruyter. 1010-1019.
  7. ^ Moon R. (1998): Fixed Expressions and Idioms, a Corpus-Based Approach. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
  8. ^ Frath P. & Gledhill C. (2005): “Free-Range Clusters or Frozen Chunks? Reference as a Defining Criterion for Linguistic Units,” in Recherches anglaises et Nord-américaines, vol. 38 :25-43


[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Look up collocation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.