Chapter 1 the study of collocations

Table 5.  Types of Lexical Collocations used in the study 
Type 
1. Noun Prep 
2. Adjective Prep 
27. Verb Noun (creation) 
28. Verb Noun (eradication) 
29. Adjective Noun 
30. Noun Verb 
31. Noun1 of Noun2 
32. Adverb Adjective 
33. Verb Adverb  
36. Prep Det Noun  
37. Phrasal Verb 
 
 
The use of syntactic structures to operationalise English collocations and 
to examine the acquisition of an area of vocabulary, i.e. collocations, is 
considered appropriate for this study for the following reasons: 
i)  English collocations have already been found to be influenced by structure 
(see studies under the structuralist approach, above).  Also, the classification of 
 
167

---

English collocations in patterns/types enables a large scale investigation of 
vocabulary acquisition, i.e. by using types of collocations a larger area of 
vocabulary will be covered than by using a number of specific collocations.  
ii)  The use of syntactically defined structures will enable the description of the 
development of collocational knowledge with respect to types of collocation 
rather than to a limited number of specific collocations.  If collocational 
knowledge is affected by structure and does develop in terms of collocation 
types, then the results of this investigation will be applicable for all the specific 
collocations that belong to a particular collocation type.  For example, if certain 
conclusions can be drawn about how collocational knowledge develops with 
respect to the 'SV inf' collocations, then the results will hold for all collocations 
that belong to this type: 'I can sing', 'we must go', 'he might win', etc. 
iii)  The old debate in linguistics on the division between grammar/syntax and 
vocabulary did not prove a constructive approach to the description of L2 
acquisition.  If vocabulary is not a mere listing of words in memory but 
combinations of words carrying meaning and governed by syntactic rules, as 
the studies reviewed in this chapter claim, then investigating the acquisition of 
vocabulary in combination with syntactic structures will yield a more complete 
picture of L2 vocabulary acquisition. 
 
The investigation of the development of English collocations at different 
proficiency levels was considered useful because previous studies have made 
assumptions based on their results that learners at different levels of 
proficiency use different types of collocation (Zhang 1993).  The aim of the 
 
168

---

present study will be to describe the development of collocational knowledge 
in L2 learners at different proficiency levels and to investigate whether there 
are any collocation types that are acquired before others.  If different collocation 
types are used by L2 learners at different levels of proficiency, could it be that 
there are developmentally determined acquisition orders in the acquisition of 
English collocations? 
 
The following chapter reviews a number of studies on acquisition orders 
and developmental sequences in L2 acquisition. 
 
169

---