Chapter 1 the study of collocations

Table 1.  Examples of Lexical Functions 
 
Lexical Functions 
Syn (to shoot) = to fire [synonym] 
 
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Syn
c
 (to shoot) = to machine-gun [narrower synonym] 
Anti (victory) = defeat [antonym] 
Oper1 (analysis) = to perform [be the subject of] 
Oper2 (analysis) = to undergo [be the object of] 
(Mel'cuk & Zholkovsky 1970:26; Mel'cuk 1981:39) 
 
 
Teaching phrase-patterns and sentence patterns from the early stages of 
L2 learning may help vocabulary expansion (Twaddell 1973; Korosadowicz-
Struzynska 1980).  Twaddell argues that vocabulary expansion should take 
place from the intermediate stages of L2 learning and onwards under the 
condition that "the most habitual parts of language use" such as phrase-patterns 
and sentence patterns will be "practised and established as early as possible" 
(Twaddell 1973:63).  After those habits have been adequately established, then 
new vocabulary can be assimilated into the L2 patterns.  Korosadowicz-
Struzynska also suggests that it is reasonable to teach collocations of words to 
learners from the beginning rather than to arrange remedial courses afterwards, 
when lexical errors have become fossilised (Korosadowicz-Struzynska 
1980:116).  She disagrees with Smith's view that "mastery of the utterance 
should be the culmination of learning, not the beginning" (Smith 1971:42). 
 
It has been argued that the teaching of collocations facilitates vocabulary 
building for University-bound ESL students (Smith 1983).  Smith (1983) 
illustrates a type of exercise for the teaching of collocations that combines both 
paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations between words.  A number of 
 
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collocations that are primarily used in academic subjects are selected for 
teaching, and the key words of these collocations are members of the same 
semantic field (e.g. 'same', 'identical', 'equivalent', 'parallel', 'equal', 
'homogeneous', 'similar') .  According to Smith, this type of exercise could 
prove to be useful in an ESP course. 
 
A "carefully graded curriculum" should include word associations 
according to Murphy (1983), who treats collocations and word associations as 
synonymous.  Murphy describes 11 steps that foreign language teachers could 
follow in order to include collocations, word association, famous sayings and 
catch phrases in their teaching program.   
 
The study of fixed expressions in English has been suggested as a useful 
starting point for a principled approach to vocabulary learning and teaching 
(Alexander 1984:132).  Alexander stresses the benefits in the learning process if 
emphasis is placed "on the three C's of vocabulary learning: collocation, 
context, and connotation" (Alexander 1984:128). 
 
Contrastive analysis has been suggested as an approach to the teaching 
of collocations.  The main strategy of this approach is the compilation of lists of 
collocations in the learner's L1 and their equivalents in the target language.  
Newman (1988) conducted a contrastive analysis of Hebrew and English dress 
and cooking verbs and their noun/object collocations.  Newman suggests that 
providing learners with words that are described in terms of meaning 
components, derived from contrastive analysis and collocation restrictions, can 
prove to be a useful device in the learners' disposal for making conscious 
 
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distinctions and avoiding lexical errors arising from negative L1 transfer 
(Newman 1988:303).  Therefore, the language learning process should be 
complemented by frequent practice and immersion to cater for the acquisition 
of idioms and rigidly restricted collocations, along with meaningful mnemonic 
operations that will involve the "deliberate exercising of the learner's powers of 
analysis and creativeness parallel to the characteristics of the transparent freer 
end of the collocational range" (Newman 1988:304).  A similar view is reported 
by Bahns (1993).  He argues that a contrastive analysis of the lexical collocations 
in the students' L1 and the target language will reveal which collocations have 
direct translational equivalents and therefore need not be taught, allowing 
foreign language teaching to concentrate on items for which there is no 
translational equivalence in the target language. 
 
The studies reviewed above show the importance of teaching 
collocations to ESL learners, and the necessity of the inclusion of collocations in 
the second/foreign language curriculum, as this can prove to be beneficial for 
the development of L2 vocabulary, communicative competence, and language 
performance.  Even though some criteria are offered in order to help teachers 
decide which collocations to teach, these criteria are arbitrarily established, they 
are not based on empirical research, and they are by no means conclusive.  For 
example, Brown (1974) recommends that 'normal' collocations should be taught 
first because they form the basis for 'unusual' collocations (Brown 1974:3), but 
she does not define the criteria that would help teachers distinguish 'normal' 
from 'unusual' collocations.  In addition, the proposed exercises do not seem to 
 
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have been constructed systematically; the choice of verbs and nouns to be 
combined seems random, and no criteria are given as a means for establishing 
the "usefulness" of the collocations provided by the exercises; and the teacher 
has to rely on her/his own intuition about which of the collocations are more or 
less useful. 
 
Similarly, Laufer (1988) accepts the view that collocations constitute an 
essential aspect in the learner’s knowledge of vocabulary, and she 
acknowledges that problems can arise in the learner’s use of word 
combinations, but she nevertheless concentrates on the paradigmatic lexical 
relations, abandoning collocations to their 'rulelessness'.  In addition, Laufer 
does not explain how the problem of teaching, learning, and use of collocations 
can be tackled, even though collocations could be found to provide help in 
many levels of vocabulary development (Laufer 1988). 
 
In Murphy's paper (1983) a number of exercises are outlined for the 
teaching of collocations, but it is left to the teacher's personal judgement to 
decide which collocations, word associations and phrases are more useful than 
others and which ones should be taught first. 
 
These are some of the problems presented by studies prescribing the 
teaching of collocations.  It is apparent that even though the importance of 
collocations in L2 teaching and learning has been established, the treatment of 
collocations has been inadequate.  There are still decisions to be made as to 
which collocations should be given priority in the classroom, how many 
collocations per new word should be taught, how to practice collocations, at 
 
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which level the teaching of collocations should be attempted, how is the 
acceptability of specific collocations to be established. 
 
Finally, the large repertoire of terms employed by linguists and language 
pedagogists to refer to word combinations includes 'combinations of lexical 
items' (Korosadowicz-Struzynska 1980), 'conventionalised language forms' 
(Yorio 1980), 'prefabricated language chunks and routinized formulas' 
(Nattinger & DeCarrico 1992), 'phrase patterns and sentence patterns' 
(Twaddell 1973), 'word associations' (Murphy 1983), 'fixed expressions' 
(Alexander 1984)(see also Kennedy 1990).  The variety of terms used 
underscores the need for a more precise definition of 'collocation' and a method 
for the systematic classification of individual collocations.