[PDF] CHAPTER 1 THE STUDY OF COLLOCATIONS 1.0 Introduction

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CHAPTER 1

THE STUDY OF COLLOCATIONS

1.0 Introduction

'Collocations' are usually described as "sequences of lexical items whic h habitually co-occur [i.e. occur together]" (Cruse 1986:40). Examples of English collocations are: 'thick eyebrows', 'sour milk', 'to collect stamps', 'to commit suicide', 'to reject a proposal'. The term collocation was first introduced by Firth, who considered that meaning by collocation is lexical meaning "at the syntagmatic level" (F irth

1957:196). The syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of lexical items

can be schematically represented by two axes: a horizontal and a vertical one. The paradigmatic axis is the vertical axis and comprises sets of words that belong to the same class and can be substituted for one another in a specific gram matical and lexical context. The horizontal axis of language is the syntagmatic axis and refers to a word's ability to combine with other words. Thus, in the sentence 'John ate the apple' the word 'apple' stands in paradigmatic relation with 'orange', 'sandwich', 'steak', 'chocolate', 'cake', etc., and in syntagmatic relation with the word 'ate' and 'John'. Collocations represent lexical relations along the syntagmatic axis. 114
Firth's attempt to describe the meaning of a word on the collocational level was innovative in that it looked at the meaning relations between lexical items, not from the old perspective of paradigmatic relations (e.g. syn onyms, antonyms) but from the level of syntagmatic relations. Syntagmatic rel ations between sentence constituents had been widely used by structural linguists (e.g. 'John ate the apple' is an 'Subject-Verb-Object' construction), but not in the study of lexical meaning. Up till now, studies on collocation have been insufficient in defining the concept of collocation in a more rigorous way (Cowan 1989:1). Since t he term 'collocation' was introduced by Firth to describe meaning at the syntagmatic level, subsequent linguists and researchers have not often attempted to define 'collocation' in a more thorough and methodical way. Collocation is sti ll defined as the tendency of a lexical item to co-occur with one or more o ther words (Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens 1964:33; Ridout & Waldo-Clarke 197 0; Backlund 1973, 1976; Seaton 1982; Crystal 1985:55; Cruse 1986:40; Zhang

1993:1).

Although the theoretical treatment of collocations has been inadequate, the teaching of collocations to second language (L2) learners has gain ed importance during the last decade. For a long time the emphasis in voca bulary learning has been on accumulating and memorising lists of word definitio ns, followed by gap filling exercises (Robinson 1989:276; Gitsaki 1992; for a review of the development of vocabulary teaching see Carter and McCarthy 1988). However, applied linguists realised that vocabulary skills involve more than 115
the ability to define a word. Suggestions were made for a new approach to vocabulary teaching that would avoid the previous emphasis on words in isolation and on word definitions. The new approach would include an examination of the syntagmatic relations of collocation between lexical items, a skill that is evident in the adult native speakers of a language (McCar thy

1984:14-16; Carter 1987:38; Sinclair 1991).

The shift of interest towards lexical learning is also evident in the introduction of a new approach to L2 teaching. The Lexical Approach, as it is outlined by Lewis (1993), regards language as grammaticalised lexis an d places the way words combine at the centre of its theoretical perspective (Hewitson & Steele 1993). Lexis becomes the central organising principle of the syllabus, and collocation assumes an important syllabus-generating role (Lewis 1993) Raising the learners' understanding of the collocations of words is a matter of first-rate importance (McCarthy 1984:21), since the task of learning collocations can present both intralingual and interlingual problems. 'Collocation' as a term describing lexical relations is not well-defined , and unfortunately joining words that are in principle semantically compatible does not always produce acceptable collocations, e.g. 'many thanks' is an acc eptable collocation in English but *'several thanks' is not, in the same way that 'strong tea' is well-formed but *'powerful tea' is not. Further on, unlike paradigmatic relations between words which can be the same for different languages, syntagmatic relations are more likely to differ from language to language (Mitchell 1975:10). For example, English pe ople 116
'draw conclusions' while the Greeks 'bga;zoun sumpera;smata' [take out conclusions]; in English you have to 'wait for somebody' while in Greek 'perime;neiß ka;poion' [wait somebody]; in English you 'go on a diet' while in Greek 'ka;neiß di;aita' [do diet]; in English someone who drinks a lot is a 'heavy drinker' while in Greek he is a ' gero; poth;ri' [strong glass]; in English you 'get in touch with someone', while in Greek you 'e;rcese se epafh; me ka;poion' [come to touch with someone]. The purpose of this thesis is to study syntagmatic lexical relations within a framework that will allow a more thor ough treatment of the phenomenon of 'collocation', and to investigate the acquisition process of English col locations by L2 learners as an attempt to describe the possible factors affecting the development of English collocational knowledge.

1.1 The Importance of Collocations in L2 Learning

The importance of collocations for the development of L2 vocabulary and communicative competence has been underscored by a number of linguis ts and language teachers who recommend the teaching and learning of collocations in the L2 classroom. Collocation has been considered as a separate level of vocabulary acquisition. Bolinger (1968) and (1976) argues that we learn and me morise words in chunks and that most of our "manipulative grasp of words is by way of collocations" (Bolinger 1976:8). The learning of language in segme nts of collocation size, especially in children, is proved by the fact that "th e collocate is 117
what the young child produces if you ask him a definition", e.g. a 'hole ' is 'a hole in the ground' (Cazden 1972:129, cited in Bolinger 1976:11). Bol inger describes language learning as a continuum starting at the morpheme leve l with word formation rules, moving to the word level and activating phras e formation rules. The last stage before storage into memory is the level where words enter into collocations. When learning a language people may or m ay not store a morpheme as such, but they do store phrases. For example, t he phrase 'indelible ink' will be stored as a phrase, but few people will analyse the word 'indelible' as having the morpheme 'in-' as a prefix (Bolinger 196

8:106).

Among the early advocates for the importance of collocations in L2 learning and their inclusion in L2 teaching is Brown (1974), who suggests that an increase of the students' knowledge of collocation will result in an improvement of their oral and listening comprehension and their reading speed. In an effort to make the advanced students achieve a better feel of what is acceptable and what is appropriate, Brown outlines a number of exerci ses. The combination of lexical items as a source of difficulty in vocabular y acquisition has been noted by researchers like Korosadowicz-Struzynska (

1980),

who claims that the learner's mastery of these troublesome combinations, rather than her/his knowledge of single words, should be an indication of her/his progress (Korosadowicz-Struzynska 1980:111). Korosadowicz-Struzynska reports that students face intralingual and interlingual problems in the use of collocations, and even advanced students who have considerable fluency o f expression in a foreign language make collocational errors. The teachin g and 118
learning of collocations for production reasons is regarded as essential by Korosadowicz-Struzynska, who also describes certain steps that should be followed in order to promote the teaching of collocations from the initi al stages of foreign language learning. These include selection of the most essen tial words on the basis of usefulness and frequency of occurrence, selection of the most frequent collocations of these words, presentation of these collocations in the most typical contexts, and contrasting any of the selected collocations with the equivalent native-language collocations that could cause interference problems for the learners. The significant role that conventionalised language forms (idioms, routine formulas and other forms such as collocations) play in the development of foreign language learners' communicative competence is stressed by Yo rio (1980). One of the functions of conventionalised forms is that they "make communication more orderly because they are regulatory in nature" (Y orio

1980:438). Realising that random selection on purely subjective ground

s from diverse conventionalised language forms is totally inadequate for the pu rposes of foreign language teaching, Yorio describes a set of criteria for the selection of specific forms to be taught: need, usefulness, productivity, currency, f requency, and ease (Yorio 1980:439). It has been claimed that prefabricated language chunks and routinized formulas play an important role in acquiring and using language (Nattin ger & DeCarrico 1992:1; Nattinger 1980). Nattinger and DeCarrico have argued that a common characteristic in acquiring a language is the progression from ro utine 119
to pattern to creative language use (Nattinger & DeCarrico 1992:116). Therefore, it is suggested that the learning of prefabricated language p atterns should be promoted in the classroom. The "apparent rulelessness" of collocations as one factor that interferes with foreign language vocabulary learning has been noted by Laufer (198 8). Laufer reports that collocations constitute an essential aspect in the learners' knowledge of vocabulary, and she acknowledges that problems can arise in the learners' use of word combinations. She also suggests that collocations could be found to provide help in many levels of vocabulary development and th e development of self-learning strategies such as guessing (Laufer 1988:1 6). Realising the foreign language learner's difficulties in learning vocabulary, Cowie (1978), (1981) stresses the importance of the compilation of English dictionaries "in which collocation and examples play a separate but complementary role" (Cowie 1978:131). Cowie points out that "meaning is not the only determinant of the extent and semantic variety of collocating words....The constraint may be situational" (Cowie 1978:134). For exa mple, in the collocation 'a tea/dinner service of 50 pieces' there is a restricti on as to which meals can combine with 'service' (tea, dinner, breakfast, ?lunche on) and their combination is based on cultural factors, i.e. which of these meal s it is customary to serve, and whether it is conventional to have separate sets of dishes and plates for each (Cowie 1978:134). As a result, special tre atment of the cultural factor of collocability in a learner's dictionary is propos ed. He also suggests the inclusion of 'free word-combinations' that could still cause 120
problems for the foreign language learners, as well as the inclusion of grammatical rules that will indicate the correct grammatical treatment o f the included collocations (Cowie 1981:226,232). The teaching of collocations in the classroom could help students overcome problems of vocabulary, style and usage (Leed & Nakhimovsky

1979). Leed and Nakhimovsky suggest the utilisation of lexical functio

ns, as these are described by Mel'cuk and Zholkovsky (1988) (see Table 1), for the construction of foreign language teaching materials, vocabulary exercise s and learners' dictionaries. Leed and Nakhimovsky argue that vocabulary exercises should be based on the findings of a well-structured lexical analysis, in the same way that pronunciation exercises are based on phonology (Leed & Nakhimovsky 1979:111). The theory of lexical functions can provide the basis for the generation of pedagogical exercises that are more consistent, di versified, and elaborate, less arbitrary, and ultimately more effective. Such an approach would help foreign language learners with problems of vocabulary, style and usage, and give teachers a method to produce and carry out lexical exerc ises in the classroom, as well as concentrate on the teaching of restricted collocations such as 'heavy drinker', 'heavy smoker', 'deep trouble', etc., (Leed &

Nakhimovsky 1979:109).

Table 1.

Examples of Lexical Functions

Lexical Functions

Syn (to shoot) = to fire [synonym]

121
Sync (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 tak e 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 pos sible" (Twaddell 1973:63). After those habits have been adequately establish ed, 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 afte rwards, when lexical errors have become fossilised (Korosadowicz-Struzynska

1980:116). She disagrees with Smith's view that "mastery of the uttera

nce should be the culmination of learning, not the beginning" (Smith 1971:4 2). It has been argued that the teaching of collocations facilitates vocabul ary 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 122
collocations that are primarily used in academic subjects are selected f or teaching, and the key words of these collocations are members of the sam e semantic field (e.g. 'same', 'identical', 'equivalent', 'parallel', 'eq ual', '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 associati ons as synonymous. Murphy describes 11 steps that foreign language teachers co uld follow in order to include collocations, word association, famous saying s 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 teac hing (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 d ress 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 restrictio ns, can prove to be a useful device in the le arners' disposal for making conscious 123
distinctions and avoiding lexical errors arising from negative L1 transf er (Newman 1988:303). Therefore, the language learning process should be complemented by frequent practice and immersion to cater for the acquisi tion of idioms and rigidly restricted collocations, along with meaningful mne monic 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 collocatio ns have direct translational equivalents and therefore need not be taught, allow ingquotesdbs_dbs14.pdfusesText_20

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