When
we discussed lexical meaning in Chapter 2, we made a brief reference to
collocation under presupposed meaning and defined it tentatively as
semantically arbitrary restrictions which do not follow logically from the
propositional meaning of a word. Another way of looking at collocation would be
to think of it in terms of the tendency of certain words to co-occur regularly
in a given language.
At one level, the tendency of certain words
to co-occur has to do with their propositional meanings. For example, cheque is
more likely to occur with bank, pay, money and write than with moon, butter,
playground or repair. However, meaning cannot always account for collocational
patterning. If it did, we might expect carry out, undertake or even perform to
collocate with visit.
When two words collocate, the relationship
can hold between all or several of their various forms, combined in any
grammatically acceptable order. For example, achieving aims, aims having been
achieved, achievable aims, and the achievement of an aim are all equally
acceptable and typical in English.
a. Collocational range and collocational
markedness
Every word in a language can be said to
have a range of items with which it is compatible, to a greater or lesser
degree. Range here refers to the set of collocates, that is other words, which
are typically associated with the word in question. Some words have a much
broader collocational range than others. The English verb shrug, for instance,
has a rather limited collocational range. It typically occurs with shoulders
and does not have a particularly strong link with any other word in the
language. Run, by contrast, has a vast collocational range, some of its typical
collocates being company, business, show, car, stockings, tights, nose, wild,
debt, bill, river, course, water, and coluor, among others.
Marked collocations are often used in
fiction, poetry, humor, and advertisement precisely for this reason: catch the
reader’s attention. War normally breaks out, but peace prevails. These unmarked
collocations suggest that war is a temporary and undesirable situation and that
peace is a normal and desirable one. The deliberate mixing of collocational
ranges in the above extract conveys the unexpected image of peace being an
abnormal, temporary, and possibly even an undesirable situation.
b.
Collocational and register
Register-specific collocations are not
simply the set of terms that go with a discipline. They extend far beyond the
list of terms that one normally finds in specialized dictionaries and
glossaries. For instance, to know that data in
computer in computer language forms part of compound terms such as data
processing and data bank and to become familiar with the dictionary equivalents
of such terms in the target language.
c.
Collocational meaning
Asked to explain what dry means, we are
likely to think of collocations such as dry clothes, dry river, and dry
weather, which would prompt the definition ‘free from water’. As we move aw
