Chapter 1 the study of collocations

 
Figure 17.  Model of the Development of Collocational Knowledge 
 
According to this model, collocational knowledge develops as overall 
language proficiency develops, as students become more mature, and as more 
exposure to collocations takes place.  The development of collocational knowledge 
is influenced by the 'salience' of the particular collocation types.  Grammatical 
collocations that are simple and frequent in everyday speech are early acquired.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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The more complex structures are acquired later.  Lexical collocations are more 
difficult to acquire than the simple grammatical collocations.  They are 
syntactically simple (e.g. Noun Verb, Verb Noun, Noun Prep, Prep Noun, Verb 
Adverb), but their acquisition is affected by other factors of 'semantic complexity', 
e.g. arbitrariness, predictability and idiomaticity, i.e. the more fixed and idiomatic 
they are, the more difficult they are to acquire. 
 
Also, based on these results, a continuum of collocational knowledge and 
language proficiency can be described.  Beginning students (Group 1) are able to 
produce simple grammatical collocations, they are more accurate on lexical 
collocations than complex grammatical collocations, but their overall accuracy is 
low.  This can be interpreted as evidence that these students use lexical collocations 
as unanalysed blocks of language that they have memorised, and because their 
grammatical competence is not yet well-developed, they are less accurate with the 
more structurally demanding grammatical collocations.  The fact that they can 
memorise lexical collocations more than grammatical ones could be due to the 
saliency of lexical collocations in terms of length of the collocational strings, i.e. 
most of the lexical collocation types consist of two words (Verb Adverb, Adjective 
Noun, Noun Prep, Adjective Prep) so they are easier to remember.  Grammatical 
collocations, on the other hand, are longer and as such harder to memorise. 
 
At the intermediate level (Group 2), students become more accurate with 
the more complex grammatical collocations as their grammatical competence 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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increases, but their accuracy on lexical collocations and their overall accuracy do 
not improve.   
 
As students reach a higher level of proficiency, post-intermediate (Group 3), 
their overall accuracy in collocations (both lexical and grammatical) increases 
considerably, and they once again show greater accuracy on lexical collocations, 
indicating a richer vocabulary.  Previous research has also shown that more 
advanced learners have more lexical and syntactic tools when they approach a 
language learning task (Ferris 1991, 1994). 
 
A similar step-by-step model of L1 acquisition is described by Berman 
(1986).  According to Berman's model, children in acquiring their L1 go through 
three main phases: 
 
 
(a) a PREGRAMMATICAL phase... where children's knowledge is largely 
item-bound...; (b) the phase of GRAMMAR ACQUISITION..., where rules 
are applied productively across items in terms of linguistic structure, and 
items are interrelated within more general systems, categories and 
paradigms; and (c) a final phase of APPROPRIATE USAGE where the 
repertoire of forms and rules acquired previously are deployed with 
increasing skill.  
 (Berman 
1986:193). 
 
 
 
The beginners' stage is similar to Berman's pregrammatical phase: they learn 
collocations as lexicalised items.  At the intermediate level, learners are at the 
phase of grammar acquisition: they apply rules productively, increasing their 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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knowledge of grammatical collocations.  At the post-intermediate level, students 
are approaching Berman's final phase of appropriate usage: their overall 
knowledge of collocations increases for both grammatical and lexical collocations.  
Since collocations are one of the key building blocks of language, it is not 
surprising that their acquisition proceeds to a pattern similar to L1 acquisition. 
 
Pienemann's Processability Model also provides a framework for 
understanding the development of collocational knowledge.  The first stage of 
Pienemann's model consists of basic sentence structures and basic categories 
(Pienemann 1996).  This stage coincides with the initial stage of collocational 
knowledge: learners acquire simple grammatical collocations and relatively free 
lexical collocations that are basic and frequent in everyday speech.  The second 
stage of Pienemann's model contains extensions of the noun phrase, verb phrase, 
and sentence.  This is the stage where students become able to apply grammatical 
rules productively and have a better understanding of the constituents of the 
sentence resulting to the use of more complex collocational strings.  Stage 3 of the 
Processability model is characterised by the use of new categories which are filled 
with lexical items. The third stage of collocational knowledge is also characterised 
by a better command of both lexical and grammatical and a preference for lexical 
collocations signifying a richer vocabulary.  The roughly parallel stages between 
Pienemann's Processability model and the model of the development of 
collocational knowledge described in this study underscore the existence of a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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stage-by-stage development of collocational knowledge and its significance for the 
overall development of L2 proficiency.