What is collocation?

 Collocation can be defined as “a familiar grouping of

words, especially words that habitually appear
together and thereby convey meaning by association”.
What is collocation?(conti…)
 Collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that
co-occur more often than would be expected by
chance.

o strong tea Correct Expression

o powerful tea Incorrect Expression

What is collocation?
 When words are used together regularly, rules are
formed about their use not for grammatical reasons

 Black and White

 Hot and Sour
You shall know a word by the company it keeps
J R Firth’s Theory
He says about the example of ass “One of the
meanings of ass is its habitual collocation with an
immediately preceding you silly…”
How meanings are described?
 The meaning was also to be found In the context of situation. Nida, for
instance, discussed the use of chair in:
Sat in a chair
The baby’s high chair
The chair of philosophy
Has accepted a university chair
The chairman of the meeting
Will chair the meeting
The electric chair
Condemned to the chair
in the use of collocations
First difficulty:
 Collocation is not only a matter of association of
ideas.

 For example:

 We should not often say white milk , though the

expression white paint is common enough.
Second difficulty:
 Words may have more specific meanings in particular
collocations.

 For example:

 An exceptional child is not an abnormal child

 Exceptional being used for greater than usual ability and

abnormal to relate to some kind of defect
Third difficulty:
 It would be a mistake to create a distinguishing line
between those collocations that are predictable from
the meanings of words that co-occure and those that
are not.

 For Example:

 Pretty describes only a feminine kind of beauty

 Rancid is to be defined in terms of the very
specific, unplanned, taste associated with butter and
bakon.
Fourth difficulty:
 There is a difficulty in deciding whether a collocation
is or is not semantically determined.

 For example:

 The German verb reiten (to ride) is restricted to

riding a horse but the English verb ride is not only
used for riding on a horse but also for riding on
bicycle
Fifth difficulty:
 We also find a difficulty in separating collocation and
semantics.

 For example:

 We shall say “The thicket died.” but we shall not say

“ The thicket passed away.”
of Collocational Restrictions
First Kind:
 Some collocations are based wholly on the meaning of
the item.

 For example: the use of the term “Green Cow”

Second Kind:
 Some collocations are based on range – a word may
used with those words that have some semantic
features in common.

 For Example: the use of “died” for thicket instead of

“passed away”
Third Kind:
 Some restrictions are collocational in the strictest
sense, involving neither meanings nor range.

 For example: the use of “pretty” with only females

Conclusion:
 So, at the end, we can conclude that although
collocations have some difficulties in their use yet
these are used strictly and frequently in a language.