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Lexical collocations:a contrastive view

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Jens BahnsFor some time now there has been, in the field of EFL teaching, a growingawareness of the importance of lexical collocations for vocabularylearning. One of the main obstacles to teaching lexical collocationssystematically, however, is their number, which amounts to tens ofthousands. In this article, it is argued that this enormous teaching andlearning load can be reduced by a contrastive approach to the concept oflexical collocation. An exemplary German-English contrastive analysis ofnoun + verb and verb + noun collocations shows that there is, for aconsiderable portion of them, direct translational equivalence. Such lexicalcollocations do not have to be taught. The teaching of lexicalcollocations inEFL should concentrate, instead, on items for which there is no directtranslational equivalence in English and in the learners respective mothertongues.1

A neglected One of the main developments in the field of ELT during the last decadeaspect of has been a renewed interest in problems of vocabulary teaching. After the

vocabulary two decades from 1960 to 1980, when questions of grammar andteaching grammar teaching were predominant, this general reorientation from

grammar to vocabulary is definitely a step in the right direction. There is,however, one particular aspect of vocabulary learning which deservesmore attention than it has received up to now, and this is the problem ofword combinability. One of the main difficulties students encounter inrelation to new items of vocabulary is knowing what their collocationalproperties are . . . (Rudzka et al., 1981b: 5). Unfortunately for theforeign language learner, words do not co-occur freely; instead, there are(varying levels of) co-occurrence restrictions (Allerton, 1984) which thelearner has to adhere to.Most teachers of English as a Foreign Language (particularly those whoare native speakers of that language) will have noticed that their learnersoften have problems in choosing the correct combination of two (or more)words. Here are a few typical examples of wrong word combinations:2a. *feeble teab. *put up a campaign, *laugh broadlyC. *commit treachery, *hold a buriald. *climb a horse, *healthy adviceSuch errors show a lack of collocational competence in the learner.Korosadowicz-Struzynska (1980: 115) gives an apt characterization ofthe effect of this type of vocabulary error:

Errors in the use of word collocations surely add to the foreign flavourin the learners speech and writing and along with his faultypronunciation they are the strongest markers of an accent.

ELT Journal Volume 47/1 January 1993 Oxford University Press 1993

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What do we meanby collocation?

Collocations,idioms, and freecombinations

Collocations andforeign language

teaching research

Regrettably, collocation is a term which is used and understood in manydifferent ways. It is, however, not possible to present and discuss thevarious understandings of the term within this article. Instead, I shall givea short account of the way in which Benson, Benson, and Ilson (1986a-b)understand and use this term:

In English, as in other languages, there are many fixed, identifiable,non-idiomatic phrases and constructions. Such groups of words arecalled recurrent combinations, fixed combinations, or collocations.Collocations fall into two major groups: grammatical collocations andlexical collocations. (1986b: ix)

Examples of grammatical collocations include: account for, advantageover, adjacent to, by accident, to be afraid that . . . They consist of anoun, an adjective, or a verb, plus a preposition or a grammatical structuresuch as an infinitive or clause. Lexical collocations, on the other hand, donot contain prepositions, infinitives, or clauses, but consist of variouscombinations of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Benson, Benson,and Ilson distinguish several structural types of lexical collocations:verb + noun (inflict a wound, withdraw an offer); adjective + noun (acrushing defeat); noun + verb (blizzards rage); noun1 + noun2 (a pride oflions), adverb + adjective (deeply absorbed), verb + adverb (appreciatesincerely). In the following, we will neglect grammatical collocationswith their specific problems, and concentrate, instead, on lexicalcollocations.

To attain a clearer understanding of (lexical) collocations, it is helpful to tryto distinguish them from idioms on the one hand and from free com-binations on the other. Benson, Benson, and Ilson (1986a: 252-53) usecombinations with the noun murder to illustrate the main distinguishingfeatures of the three categories. The least cohesive type of word com-bination are the so-called free combinations. The noun murder, forexample, can be used with many verbs (to analyse, boast of, condemn,discuss, (etc.) a murder), and these verbs, in turn, combine freely with othernouns. Idioms, on the other hand, are relatively frozen expressions whosemeanings do not reflect the meanings of their component parts. An examplecontaining the noun murder would be to scream blue murder (to complainvery loudly). Between idioms and free combinations are loosely fixedcombinations (or collocations) of the type to commit murder. The maincharacteristics of collocations are that their meanings reflect the meaning oftheir constituent parts (in contrast to idioms) and that they are usedfrequently, spring to mind readily, and are psychologically salient (incontrast to free combinations). There are, however, transitional areas(Cruse, 1986: 41) between free combinations/collocations andcollocations/idioms.Collocations have recently become one of the main concerns oflexicography. Lexicographers have been discussing the role andimportance of collocations in general-purpose dictionaries as well as inlearners dictionaries (Benson, 1985, 1990; Cowie, 1978, 1981;Lexical collocations: a contrastive view 57

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Hausmann, 1985; Zfgen, 1986). Should dictionary entries containtypical collocations, and, if so, which collocations should be given andhow many? In addition, the concept of a dictionary of collocations hasbeen receiving renewed3 attention, as can be seen from The BBICombinatory Dictionary of English - A Guide to Word Combinations(Benson, Benson, and Ilson, 1986b), and from Collins COBUILD EnglishWords in Use - A Dictionary of Collocations, 1991). In this context,mention should also be made of the Oxford Dictionary of CurrentIdiomatic English (Cowie and Mackin, (Vol. 1) 1975; Cowie, Mackin,and McCaig, (Vol. 2) 1983), which, according to Mackin (1978: 149), isessentially a dictionary of collocations.While reliable and manifold dictionaries are one indispensable basis forforeign language teaching, there are further problems which EFL researchhas to tackle with regard to collocations. In my view, there are at leastthree major questions in this context:1 Do collocations need special attention in the EFL classroom? Do we

have to teach collocations or are they learned en passant, more or lessautomatically, together with single lexical items?

2 Should we decide that special attention is necessary, the next problem isthat of choice. Which of the tens of thousands of collocations do weselect for special treatment in the classroom? Are there any criteria todecide which collocations need to be taught and which do not?

3 When we have decided on what to teach, the next question touches onmethodological problems. How should we handle collocations in theclassroom? What kind of exercises are most effective?

The present paper is devoted to a discussion of the second question. Butbefore we turn to the problem of selecting collocations for teachingpurposes, a few remarks on the basic question of whether to teachcollocations at all might be in order.

Should we teach One of the few EFL researchers to have stressed the necessity of actuallycollocations? teaching collocations is Joanna Channel1 (1981). Together with three

colleagues, she has produced two excellent workbooks (Rudzka et al.,1981a, 1985) for advanced EFL learners, in which special emphasis is puton distinguishing broadly synonymous vocabulary items through theirdifferent collocational properties.The importance of teaching collocations is also stressed in particular byPolish FLT research (glottodidactics). Waldemar Marton (1977: 43), forexample, sees indications that mere exposure to the target language is notsufficient for the advanced learner to acquire the knowledge ofconventional syntagms. (Syntagms here equate with collocations.) Heargues that if language teachers want to guide advanced learners towardsa native-like command of the foreign language, they should pay specialattention to their effective learning of conventional syntagms (ibid.: 54).

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A further study, in which the question under discussion is answered in theaffirmative, is Bahns and Eldaw (1990). In an experiment consisting of aJens Bahns

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translation task and a gap-filling task with 58 advanced learners ofEnglish with German as a native language, it was found that the studentsknowledge of collocations had not developed at the same rate as theirknowledge of vocabulary in general.No less a scholar than Ronald Mackin, however, seems to be rathersceptical with regard to the possibility of actually teaching collocations.In an article (Mackin, 1978) on problems arising from the lexicographictreatment of collocations, he claims that the learner of English as a foreignlanguage cannot hope to learn all the collocations he or she should knowin any principled way because of the sheer amount of material (tens ofthousands of such collocations, 1978: 150). As they are in any case sonumerous as to rule out any methodical teaching or acquisition of them,Mackin sees the only way for the foreign language learner to acquire somedegree of collocational competence in years of study, reading, andobservation of the language (1978: 1.51). While Mackin is right inpointing out that the number of collocations an advanced learner ofEnglish should be able to use productively is considerable, he seems tohave overlooked one important aspect of the problem - not all of the tensof thousands of collocations have to be learnt.

Which Mackins estimation that advanced learners of English should have acollocations need command of tens of thousands of collocations is probably not

not be learnt? exaggerated. Compare the figures given for the two collocationaldictionaries of English mentioned above: The BBZ CombinatoryDictionary of English gives over 70,000 combinations and phrases undera total of 14,000 entries, while Collins COBUILD English Words in Useoffers about 100,000 collocational examples grouped around 5,000headwords from the core vocabulary of modern English.4 Is there a way toreduce these enormous learning and teaching loads? Does the learnerreally have to learn all of these collocations? We may find a solution tothis problem if we look at collocations from a contrastive point of view.This way of considering the problem is also advocated by Marton (1977:40-l):

But the notion of conventional syntagm finds its full dimension onlywhen it is considered contrastively, i.e. when the native language of thelearner and his target language are taken into consideration. Reallearning problems are caused by these syntagms which are,comparatively speaking, lexically non-congruent, or, in other words,by those in which there is no direct translational equivalence betweentheir corresponding elements.

Let us illustrate this point of view with a few examples from German andEnglish. If we restrict our attention for a while to one of the collocationalsubtypes distinguished by Benson, Benson, and Ilson, namely the typeverb + noun, a contrastive analysis shows that there is directtranslational equivalence for a large number of (English) verb + nouncollocations as compared with their German (noun + verb) counterparts(see Table 1).5Lexical collocations: a contrastive view 59

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Table 1: IWW DS BBI DEWCGerman noun + verb Arger + hinunterschlucken - + + +collocations for which Appetit + verderben + + +there is direct Geduld + verlieren + + + +

translational equivalence Gelegenheit + ergreifen + + + +in English Gesetz + brechen + + + +lnteresse + zeigen + + + +Kontrolle + ausben + + + +Lsung + finden + + + +Schlu + ziehen + + + +Schutz + suchen + + + +Thema + wechseln - + + +Verantwortung + tragen + + + +Versprechen + brechen + + +Zimmer + lften + + +Zweifel + beseitigen + + - +

Table 2:German noun+verb

collocations for whichthere is no directtranslational equivalence

in English

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swallow + angerspoil + appetitelose + patienceseize + opportunitybreak + lawshow + interestexercise + controlfind + solutiondraw + conclusionseek + shelterchange + subjectbear + responsibilitybreak + promiseair + roomremove + doubts

The German learner of English will most probably have no difficulty inproducing the English collocations of Table 1, as he or she simply has totranslate both constituents in a rather straightforward way (i.e. they canuse the (verb) equivalents which spring to mind most readily). If,however, a German learner of English wants to render the German noun+ verb collocations of Table 2 into English, the probability of committingcollocational errors rises enormously. Here, a straightforward translationof the verbal element of the German noun + verb collocations will resultin a collocational error, as shown in the middle column of Table 2.

literal translation BBJ DEWCW DSDrohung+wahrmachen - +Falle+stellenFamilie+grndenFeuer+legenFoto+machenGeld+abhebenKompliment+machenNachricht+

(ber)bringenOpfer+bringenPilze+sammelnSahne+schlagenTagebuch+fhrenTisch+deckenVersprechen+haltenWahrheit+sagen

+ ++ ++ +++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ +- -+ ++ ++ +

make true+threatput+trapfound+familylay+fire make+photographlift+moneymake+compliment

fulfil+threatlay+trapstart+familyset+firetake+photograph(with)draw+moneypay+compliment

bring+message + + deliver+messagebring+sacrifice + + make+sacrificecollect+mushrooms + + pick+mushroomsbeat+cream + - whip+creamlead+diary + + keep+diarycover+table + + lay+tablehold+promise + + keep+promisesay+truth + + tell+truth

+ -I- ++ -I+ +1: :+ +

These combinations are possible in English, but they have a meaning whichdiffers from the meaning of the respective German collocation.

Thus, the collocations in Table 2, for which there is no direct translationalequivalence, would need particular attention in the teaching of English tospeakers of German, while collocations comparable to the examples inTable 1 would neither have to be learned nor taught as far as Germanlearners of English are concerned.Jens Bahns

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Different To teach English collocations to speakers of other languages, it would, ofcollocations for course, be very useful to have a rich variety of teaching material like

learners with collections of exercises and workbooks. As there is a growing awareness,different mother in the field of EFL, of the importance of collocations for the teaching and

tongues learning of truly idiomatic English (for this goal, collocations seem to bemore important than idioms), we will probably see, in the not-too-distantfuture, the publication of (more) material for the teaching of collocationsto learners of different levels of proficiency. Materials writers who intendto set out on this task should, however, bear in mind what was pointed outabove: it will not be advisable to have the same selection of collocationsfor all learners of English as a Foreign Language. The collocations chosenfor inclusion in such material will have to be different in each case,depending on the Ll of the learners.There seems to be a fundamental difference between the selection, forteaching purposes, of collocations and of idioms. Workbooks intended forthe teaching of idioms to learners of English use criteria like frequencyand usefulness to choose from among the total number of 5,000 to 10,000idioms existing in English. Such selections of idioms, consisting ofbetween 200 and 800 items, can be used for all learners, no matter whattheir L 1 is. Even if there are idioms which are identical in English and ina particular learners Ll - that is, if there is direct translationalequivalence (which is rather the exception with idioms) - such idiomscan and should be included and taught, as the learner will not expect sucha direct translational equivalence in the case of idioms. Learners seem tooperate with a hypothesis that idioms are language-specific and hencenon-transferable (Kellerman, 1978). Therefore, it is necessary to teach allidioms which are regarded as useful for the learner, even if single items dohave a direct translational equivalence.With regard to collocations, however, learners seem to rely on ahypothesis of transferability. The majority of collocational errors can betraced to Ll influence. Cases in point include:6a. *drive a bookshop (from Polish kierowac sklepem) instead of run a

bookshopb. *make attention at (from French faire attention ) instead of payattention to

C. *win money (from Bulgarian ------- instead of make moneyd. *finish a conflict (from German einen KonfIikt beenden) instead of

resolve a conflictFor this reason, it is necessary to distinguish (out of all the collocationsconsidered worth knowing for the learner of English) such collocationswhich the learner with a particular Ll background knows already(because they are fully equivalent in his or her Ll and in English), fromthose collocations which a contrastive analysis has shown to be language-specific (in at least one of the components) and which the learner reallyLexical collocations: a contrastive view, 61

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has to learn. In this way, the amount of material to be included inworkbooks for collocations can be reduced considerably.

Implications What EFL teachers need for an effective training of collocationalcompetence in their classes (as long as these are homogenous with regardto the Ll) are workbooks presenting a selection of collocations geared tothe specific difficulties of learners with a particular Ll background. Suchmaterial would allow us to actually teach collocations and thus shorten, atleast to a certain extent, the long and laborious process of acquiringcollocational competence through years of study, reading, andobservation of the language (Mackin, 1978: 151).Received November 1991

Notes1 This paper is based on a talk entitled Kollokationenund idioms - kontrastiv betrachtet, given at the 14.Kongre fr Fremdsprachendidaktik, Essen (FRG),1991. I would like to thank Petra Burmeister, LesleyDrewing, Moira Eldaw, Martin Nuttall, and ThomasVogel for comments on earlier versions of the paper.2 These examples of collocational errors are takenfrom the following sources: a) Mackin (1978:150); b) Channell (1981: 115); c) Benson (1985:64); d) Gabrys-Biskup (1990: 36 and 38).3 Benson, Benson, and Ilsons claim that much ofthe material provided in this Dictionary (i.e. theirCombinatory Dictionary of English) has neverbefore been published (1986b: vii) has to bequalified somewhat: there have been (English)collocational dictionaries before, but they werecalled dictionaries of style (e.g. Reum, 1931;Leonhardi, 1955).4 Figures taken from publishers advertisements.5 To make sure that Tables 1 and 2 do not include anyfree combinations, the collocational status of thecombinations included has been checked in twoGerman and two English collocational dictionaries(WW = Agricola, 1990; DS = Drosdowski, 1988;BBI = Benson, Benson, and Ilson, 1986b;DEWC = Friederich and Canavan, 1979). Thesign + indicates that the combination is given in therespective dictionary, while the sign - means thatthe combination is not given.6 These examples are taken from the following

sources: a) Gabrys-Biskup (1990: 39); b) Smadja(1989: 163); c) Kouteva (1988: 193); d) Bahns(1987: 92).62 Jens Bahns

ReferencesAgricola, E. 1990. Wrter und Wendungen. Leipzig:Bibliographisches Institut.Allerton, D. J. 1984. Three (or four) levels of wordco-occurrence restriction. Lingua 63: 17-40.Arabski, J. (ed.) 1990. Foreign LanguageAcquisition Papers. Katowice: Universytet Slaski.Bahns, J. 1987. Kollokationen in englischenWrterbchern. Anglistik & Englischunterricht32: 87-104.Bahns, J., and M. Eldaw. 1990. Should we teachEFL students collocations?. Paper given at 9thWorld Congress of Applied Linguistics,Thessaloniki.Barrera-Vidal, A., M. Raupach, and H. Klein-eidam (eds.). 1986. Franzsische Sprachlehre undbon usage. Mnchen: Hueber.Benson, M. 1985. Collocations and idioms, in Ilson(ed.). 1985.Benson, M. 1990. Collocations and general-purposedictionaries. International Journal ofLexicography 3: 23-34.Benson, M., E. Benson, and R. Ilson. 1986a.Lexicographic Description of English.Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.Benson, M., E. Benson, and R. Ilson. 1986b. TheBBI Combinatory Dictionary of English. A Guideto Word Combinations. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:Benjamins.Bergenholtz, H., and J. Mugdan (eds.).Lexikographie und Grammatik. Tbingen:Niemeyer.Channell, J. 1981. Applying semantic theory tovocabulary teaching. English Language TeachingJournal 35: 115-22.

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Cowie, A. P. 1978. The place of illustrative materialand collocations in the design of a learnersdictionary, in Strevens (ed.). 1978.Cowie, A. P. 1981. The treatment of collocations andidioms in learners dictionaries. AppliedLinguistics 2: 223-35.Cowie, A. P. and R. Mackin. 1975. OxfordDictionary of Current Idiomatic English. Vol. 1:Verbs with Prepositions and Particles. Oxford:Oxford University Press.Cowie, A. P., R. Mackin, and I. R. McCaig. 1983.Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English.Vol. 2: Phrase, Clause, and Sentence Idioms.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Cruse, D. A. 1986. Lexical Semantics. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Danchev, A. (ed.). 1988. Error Analysis - BulgarianLearners of English. Sofia: State Publishing

House.Drosdowski, G. 1988. Duden Stilwrteruch derdeutschen Sprache. Mannheim/Wien/Zrich:Dudenverlag.Friederich, W. and J. Canavan. 1979. Dictionary ofEnglish Words in Context. Dortmund: Lensing.Gabrys-Biskup, D. 1990. Some remarks oncombinability: Lexical collocations, in Arabski(ed.), 1990.Hausmann, F. J. 1985. Kollokation im deutschenWrterbuch. Ein Beitrag zur Theorie deslexikographischen Beispiels, in Bergenholtz andMugdan (eds.). 1985.Ilson, R. (ed.). 1985. Dictionaries, Lexicography andLanguage Learning. Oxford/New York/Toronto:Pergamon.Kellerman, E. 1978. Giving learners a break: nativelanguage intuitions as a source of predictions abouttransferability. Working Papers on Bilingualism15: 59-92.Korosadowicz-Struzynska, M. 1980. Wordcollocations in FL vocabulary instruction. StudiaAnglica Posnaniensia 12: 109-20.

Kouteva, T. 1988. Phraseological errors in theinterlanguage of Bulgarian learners of English, inDanchev (ed.). 1988.Leonhardi, A. 1955. The Learners Dictionary ofStyle. Dortmund: Lensing.Mackin, R. 1978. On collocations: Words shall beknown by the company they keep, in Strevens(ed.) 1978.Marton, W. 1977. Foreign vocabulary learning asproblem No. 1 of language teaching at theadvanced level. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin2:33-57.Reum, A. 1931. A Dictionary of English Style.Leipzig: Weber.Rudzka, B., J. Channell, Y. Putseys, and P. Ostyn.1981a. The Words YouNeed. London: Macmillan.Rudzka, B., J. Channell, Y. Putseys, and P. Ostyn.198lb. The Words You Need. Teachers Book.London: Macmillan.Rudzka, B., J. Channell, Y. Putseys, and P. Ostyn.1985. More Words You Need. London: Macmillan.Smadja, F. A. 1989. Lexical co-occurrence: Themissing link. Literary and Linguistic Computing4: 163-68.Strevens, P. (ed.). 1978. In Honour of A. S. Hornby.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Zfgen, E. 1986. Kollokation - Kon-textualisierung - (Beleg) Satz. Anmerkungen zuTheorie und Praxis des lexikographischenBeispiels, in Barrera-Vidal, Raupach, andKleineidam (eds.).

The authorJens Bahns is Director of the Language Laboratoryat Pdagogische Hochschule Kiel, FRG, where hiswork involves teacher training at the undergraduatelevel. He has a PhD in English Philology from theUniversity of Kiel. His current interests are in secondlanguage acquisition, vocabulary learning andteaching, and listening comprehension.

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