Chapter 1 the study of collocations

Table 44.  Accuracy order for the collocation types included in the translation 
test - Group 1 
Type 
23. SV(O) Adverbial 
13. SV Inf 
16. SVO Inf 
14. SVV-ing 
5. Adjective Prep 
11. SV(O) Prep O 
1. Noun Prep 
27. Verb Noun (creation) 
 
 
 
The above accuracy order shows the following. 
i)  SV Inf collocations are easier to translate than SVO Inf collocations, which in 
turn are easier to translate than SVV-ing collocations. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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ii)  Collocations containing a preposition, i.e. Adjective Prep, SV(O) Prep O, and 
Noun Prep, are more difficult to translate than collocations containing an infinitive, 
i.e. SV Inf, and SVO Inf.  Prepositions are also more likely to cause interference 
from the subjects' L1 than infinitives.  Greek has a number of prepositions that do 
not always coincide with the English prepositions, i.e. 'pain in the stomach' is 
‘po;nos sto stoma;ci’ [pain to the stomach], 'things about other countries' is 
'pra;gmata gia a;lles cw;res’ [things for other countries].  On the other hand, 
infinitives in Greek are like their English equivalents.  Prepositional phrases and 
phrasal verbs have also been reported as constructions that exhibit arbitrary lexical 
restrictions (Allerton 1984), and as such they are difficult to acquire. 
iii)  Verb Noun (creation) lexical collocations are the most difficult to translate, a 
result that was also evident from the between-group analysis of the translation 
data. 
 
Group 2 
 
 
The results for Group 2 show that only Type 11. SV(O) Prep O collocations 
were translated significantly more accurately than the other collocation types.  The 
implicational scaling analysis for this set of data, which was also found to be 
statistically significant, shows the accuracy order given in Table 45: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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