Collocation

Collocation

            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