Talk:Collocation
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Should there also be a discussion of collocation in the mathematical (PDE approximation method) sense here?
- How about in the computer server sense, i.e., the Wikipedia servers are collocated at a data center in Florida? cluth 11:05, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps examples would aid in understanding this, I'm not 100% clear on what a Collocation is after reading this is.
I'd like to contribute but am not sure about the terminology. Is a collocation a semantic unit? Is 'united states of america' a colocation ? If yes I could write a lot about it, but I don't want to mess with something else... Kh251
U.S.A. is more a compound word IMHO - not a collocation. The problem with collocations is, that there is not the "one definition". Several linguists have tried to define this phenomenon, and some of these definitions differ slightly (as far as I know). For example there are some who believe, that collocations can only be made off two lexems while other linguists say that they can contain more than two. There is no clear cut border between collocations and compound words on the one side and collocations and idioms on the other. Collocations are relatively free in their syntactic use, much more than ie. proverbs are. I think another good example of a collocation is the word "commit" in English. Commit has a relatively fixed set of words which co-occur with it. Commit is very often found with crime words like: commit (a crime / suicide / murder / etc.). You wouldn't say, I don't know: to peform suicide or something like that. (of course there is also "to perpetrate a crime", but this is far less frequent, isn't it). So "commit" + crimeword = collocation - AFAIK. --80.129.150.208 10:59, 5 December 2005 (UTC) LINNE
Regarding the fine line between collocations, compounds, and idioms --
IDIOMS differ from the other two because their meaning is not literal. Collocations and compound words pretty much mean what they say. The latter two categories are hierarchical.
COLLOCATIONS are more general because they can be either within or across syntactic categories e.g., "row a boat" and "commit suicide" include both verbs and noun or noun phrase; "crystal ball" is a noun phrase.
COMPOUNDS are either NOUNS or VERBS, without mixing, for the most part: (N) greenhouse, (V) look after
The reason compounds and collocations are so easily confused is that most discussions leave out prosodic features.
COLLOCATIONS are stressed with default phrase intonation - adj NOUN - "crystal BALL"; verb phrase - "row a BOAT" COMPOUNDS shift stress to make one large noun: PARKing meter or one large verb: look AFter --66.30.203.16 13:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Something someone may want (or not) to address:
I've always wondered about the words commingle and collocate. At first glance (and the first time I heard them), I thought they should be colocate and comingle (co signifying "with," as in cooperate, coworker, etc.). The definitions of both words certainly seem to indicate that the co- prefix is an accurate description of the word, so why is there a double letter after the co- prefix? Why collocate and commingle? It looks funny and doesn't make any sense. You wouldn't write coooperate or cowworker (unless that worker were a real moo-er...); why this?
Someone know the etymology or something? Should it be addressed here and in commingling? cluth 11:05, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
According to the OED, it comes from latin ad. L. collocQtiZn-em, n. of action f. collocQre (see prec.). Cf. F. collocation. Also, the orthography for collocation signals a couple of things--first, this is *not* "location" plus prefix "co-", rather it's a borrowing from Latin with its original use being as a noun describing an action (1600s). It's first use in Linguistics is shown as 1940; I'd say the spelling is fixed at this point.
Anyway, if you say the words (using the prescribed pronounciation, at least), you'll see that there's definitely some lengthening of the glide "l" in "collocation" vs. "location" and the nasal "m" in "commingle" vs. "mingle." Hope that's useful. King Mongo 17:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] motor cyclist?
I think the motor cyclist example is a poor one. A google search today shows about 57,800 hits for "motor cyclist" with the quotes, and about 3,100,000 hits for motorcyclist, about six times more common. A better example would be any two-word compound that is never combined to form one word. But, as I am not a linguist, I leave it for someone more expert to confirm my intuition and make this change. Anomalocaris 06:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] kick the bucket
'kick the bucket' (an example used) is more than a collocation - it is an idiom!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.191.64.147 (talk) 08:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] References
Neither of the "references" for this article seem to have been used in the creation of the articles - they were just added by editors (perhaps confusing "references" with something else). Since they are not referenced by the article itself, I am removing the section entirely and flagging the article as unreferenced, which it is. Just making sure it's clear why I did this. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- Well, that didn't take long. I'll remove the tag. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
