COLLOCATION

Firth introduced the notion of collocations by his statement:

“You shall know a word

by the company it keeps”

heavy

smokerThis is a heavy bag rain

traffic

Collocates are lexemes that co-occur with each other in natural texts.

( http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsACollocate.htm )

•collocation )n.( A term used in lexicology by some linguists )especially Firthian( to refer to the habitual co-occurrence of individual lexical items

. )Crystal 6 edn(

For example, auspicious collocates with : occasion, event,

letter collocates with alphabet, graphic

Collocations and idioms

we have to differentiate between collocations and idioms .

Idiom : a term used in grammar and lexicology to refer to a sequenceof words which is semantically and often syntactically restricted, so thatthey function as a single unit. From a semantic viewpoint, the meanings of theindividual words cannot be summed to produce the meaning of the idiomaticexpression as a whole. From a syntactic viewpoint, the words often do notpermit the usual variability they display in other contexts, e.g. it’s raining catsand dogs does not permit *it’s raining a cat and a dog/dogs and cats, etc.

.

Idioms Collocations to kick the bucket heavy rain

give up make a mistake

Collocates may be characterized as follows :

1 .Syntactically and semantically permissible

Example:

There was green grass growing everywhere

2 .Syntactically permissible but

semantically impermissible

Example:

There were green ideas growing everywhere

3. Syntactically and semantically impermissible

'There was green ideas grows everywhere

Collocate may also be characterized as follow:

Syntactically and semantically permissible

, but incidental, as in live metaphor

Example

The barn was painted red like a tomato

‘

Syntactically and semantically permissible, but fixed in usage, as in dead metaphors

( dead metaphor :a word or phrase that has lost its force through common usage / Webster 11 edn)\

red as a beet' He turned as

“Collocation is not simply a matter of association of ideas. For, although milk

is white we should not say white milk ,though the expression white paint

is common enough”

Palmer)1976: p.76(

Although collocation is very largely determined by meaning, it can not easily be predicted in terms of the meaning of associated words

Example: blond with hair We should not talk about a blond door or a blond dress Also : rancid with bacon and butter

(milk never collocates with rancid but with sour)

Pretty child and buxom neighbor normally refer to females Not pretty boy or buxom man This is found in the collective words:

denoting a number of persons or things considered as one group or whole)) Folk of sheep Herd of cows

School of whales

Words may have more specific meanings in particular collocations

example: abnormal or exceptional weather

but an exceptional child is not an

abnormal child

It would be a mistake to attempt to draw a clear distinguishing line between those collocations that are predictable from the meanings of the words that co-occur and those

that are not

One can with, varying degrees of plausibility ,provide a semantic explanation by assigning very particular meanings to the individual words rancid : unpleasant taste associated with butter

There is some plausibility in accounting for dogs bark, cats mew in terms of the kind of noise made ,since bark can be used of other animals )squirrels(

Not only is some of the semantic explanation a little implausible, but there are other examples where it would seem totally inappropriate)herd of cows \ flock of sheep( the only difference between herd and flock is that one is used with

cows and the other with sheep

a word will often collocate with a number of other words that have some thing in common semantically

Palmer “individual words or sequences of

words will not collocate with certain groups of words. Thus, though we may say The rhododendron died, we shall not say The rhododendron passed away, in spite of the fact that pass away seems to mean ‘die’.” )1986:78(. This is caused by the restriction on the use of a particular word with a group of

words that are semantically related .

Cruse explains the problem by saying that pass away requires the grammatical subject to be human and that’s why it cannot be used

with a shrub

Cruse emphasises the semantic arbitrariness of the restriction and calls it collocational restriction. He defines it as “co-occurrence restrictions that are irrelevant to truth-conditions

Cruse maintains that collocational restrictions are not logically necessary; they are not primarily there to encode part of the message. This fact was already discussed by Firth who says that “meaning by collocation is an abstraction at the syntagmatic level and is not directly concerned with the conceptual or idea approach to the meaning of words”

In relation to synonymy, we must not forget about collocational range and collocational restriction. Lyons )1995( speaks about collocational range of an expression, i.e. the set of contexts in which it can occur He relates it to the condition that two expressions are absolutely synonymous when “they are synonymous in all contexts” )1995: 61(. Lyons exemplifies his thesis by big and large. There are many contexts in which these two expressions cannot be substituted without violating the collocational restrictions of one or the other

You are making a big mistake. You are making a large mistake

Palmer )1986( sees three kinds of collocations :

1 .some are based wholly on the meaning of the item as in the unlikely green cow. semantics)

2 .some are based on range – a word may be used with a whole set of words that have some semantic features in common.” This accounts for the unlikeliness of pretty boy

( pretty is used to denote females )

3 .some restrictions are collocational in the strictest sense, involving neither meaning, nor range” )1986(, as for example addled eggs.

Adjective + noun

verb + noun

verb + adverb

Adverb + adjective

noun + noun

Verbs + preposition

a major problem

set the table

struggle desperately

sound asleep

a surge of anger

Filled with horror