Chapter 1 the study of collocations

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CHAPTER 1 
 
THE STUDY OF COLLOCATIONS 
 
1.0  Introduction 
 
 
'Collocations' are usually described as "sequences of lexical items which 
habitually co-occur [i.e. occur together]" (Cruse 1986:40).  Examples of English 
collocations are: ‘thick eyebrows’, 'sour milk', 'to collect stamps', 'to commit 
suicide', 'to reject a proposal'.  
 
The term collocation was first introduced by Firth, who considered that 
meaning by collocation is lexical meaning "at the syntagmatic level" (Firth 
1957:196).  The syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of lexical items can be 
schematically represented by two axes: a horizontal and a vertical one.  The 
paradigmatic axis is the vertical axis and comprises sets of words that belong to 
the same class and can be substituted for one another in a specific grammatical 
and lexical context.  The horizontal axis of language is the syntagmatic axis and 
refers to a word's ability to combine with other words.  Thus, in the sentence 
'John ate the apple' the word 'apple' stands in paradigmatic relation with 
'orange', 'sandwich', 'steak', 'chocolate', 'cake', etc., and in syntagmatic relation 
with the word 'ate' and 'John'.  Collocations represent lexical relations along the 
syntagmatic axis. 
 
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Firth's attempt to describe the meaning of a word on the collocational 
level was innovative in that it looked at the meaning relations between lexical 
items, not from the old perspective of paradigmatic relations (e.g. synonyms, 
antonyms) but from the level of syntagmatic relations.  Syntagmatic relations 
between sentence constituents had been widely used by structural linguists 
(e.g. 'John ate the apple' is an 'Subject-Verb-Object' construction), but not in the 
study of lexical meaning. 
 
Up till now, studies on collocation have been insufficient in defining the 
concept of collocation in a more rigorous way (Cowan 1989:1).  Since the term 
'collocation' was introduced by Firth to describe meaning at the syntagmatic 
level, subsequent linguists and researchers have not often attempted to define 
'collocation' in a more thorough and methodical way.  Collocation is still 
defined as the tendency of a lexical item to co-occur with one or more other 
words (Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens 1964:33; Ridout & Waldo-Clarke 1970; 
Backlund 1973, 1976; Seaton 1982; Crystal 1985:55; Cruse 1986:40; Zhang 
1993:1). 
 
Although the theoretical treatment of collocations has been inadequate, 
the teaching of collocations to second language (L2) learners has gained 
importance during the last decade.  For a long time the emphasis in vocabulary 
learning has been on accumulating and memorising lists of word definitions, 
followed by gap filling exercises (Robinson 1989:276; Gitsaki 1992; for a review 
of the development of vocabulary teaching see Carter and McCarthy 1988).  
However, applied linguists realised that vocabulary skills involve more than 
 
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the ability to define a word.  Suggestions were made for a new approach to 
vocabulary teaching that would avoid the previous emphasis on words in 
isolation and on word definitions.   The new approach would include an 
examination of the syntagmatic relations of collocation between lexical items, a 
skill that is evident in the adult native speakers of a language (McCarthy 
1984:14-16; Carter 1987:38; Sinclair 1991). 
 
The shift of interest towards lexical learning is also evident in the 
introduction of a new approach to L2 teaching.  The Lexical Approach, as it is 
outlined by Lewis (1993), regards language as grammaticalised lexis and places 
the way words combine at the centre of its theoretical perspective (Hewitson & 
Steele 1993).  Lexis becomes the central organising principle of the syllabus, and 
collocation assumes an important syllabus-generating role (Lewis 1993). 
 
Raising the learners' understanding of the collocations of words is a 
matter of first-rate importance (McCarthy 1984:21), since the task of learning 
collocations can present both intralingual and interlingual problems.  
'Collocation' as a term describing lexical relations is not well-defined, and 
unfortunately joining words that are in principle semantically compatible does 
not always produce acceptable collocations, e.g. 'many thanks' is an acceptable 
collocation in English but *'several thanks' is not, in the same way that 'strong 
tea' is well-formed but *'powerful tea' is not.  
 
Further on, unlike paradigmatic relations between words which can be 
the same for different languages, syntagmatic relations are more likely to differ 
from language to language (Mitchell 1975:10).  For example, English people 
 
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'draw conclusions' while the Greeks ‘bga;zoun sumpera;smata’ [take out 
conclusions]; in English you have to 'wait for somebody' while in Greek 
‘perime;neiß ka;poion’ [wait somebody]; in English you 'go on a diet' while in 
Greek 'ka;neiß di;aita’ [do diet]; in English someone who drinks a lot is a 
'heavy drinker' while in Greek he is a 'gero; poth;ri' [strong glass]; in English 
you 'get in touch with someone', while in Greek you 'e;rcese se epafh; me 
ka;poion
' [come to touch with someone]. 
 
The purpose of this thesis is to study syntagmatic lexical relations within 
a framework that will allow a more thorough treatment of the phenomenon of 
'collocation', and to investigate the acquisition process of English collocations 
by L2 learners as an attempt to describe the possible factors affecting the 
development of English collocational knowledge.