Lexical collocations:

a contrastive view
Jens Bahns
For some time now there has been, in the field of EFL teaching, a growing
awareness of the importance of lexical collocations for vocabulary
learning. One of the main obstacles to teaching lexical collocations
systematically, however, is their number, which amounts to tens of
thousands. In this article, it is argued that this enormous teaching and
learning load can be reduced by a contrastive approach to the concept of
lexical collocation. An exemplary German-English contrastive analysis of
noun + verb and verb + noun collocations shows that there is, for a
considerable portion of them, direct translational equivalence. Such lexical
collocations do not have to be taught. The teaching of lexicalcollocations in
EFL should concentrate, instead, on items for which there is no direct
translational equivalence in English and in the learners’ respective mother
tongues.1

A neglected One of the main developments in the field of ELT during the last decade
aspect of has been a renewed interest in problems of vocabulary teaching. After the
vocabulary two decades from 1960 to 1980, when questions of grammar and
teaching grammar teaching were predominant, this general reorientation from
grammar to vocabulary is definitely a step in the right direction. There is,
however, one particular aspect of vocabulary learning which deserves
more attention than it has received up to now, and this is the problem of
word combinability. ‘One of the main difficulties students encounter in
relation to new items of vocabulary is knowing what their collocational
properties are . . . ’ (Rudzka et al., 1981b: 5). Unfortunately for the
foreign language learner, words do not co-occur freely; instead, there are
(varying levels of) co-occurrence restrictions (Allerton, 1984) which the
learner has to adhere to.
Most teachers of English as a Foreign Language (particularly those who
are native speakers of that language) will have noticed that their learners
often have problems in choosing the correct combination of two (or more)
words. Here are a few typical examples of wrong word combinations:2
a. *feeble tea
b. *put up a campaign, *laugh broadly
C. *commit treachery, *hold a burial
d. *climb a horse, *healthy advice

Such errors show a lack of collocational competence in the learner.

Korosadowicz-Struzynska (1980: 115) gives an apt characterization of
the effect of this type of vocabulary error:
Errors in the use of word collocations surely add to the foreign flavour
in the learner’s speech and writing and along with his faulty
pronunciation they are the strongest markers of ‘an accent’.
56 ELT Journal Volume 47/1 January 1993 © Oxford University Press 1993

articles welcome
What do we mean Regrettably, collocation is a term which is used and understood in many
by ‘collocation’? different ways. It is, however, not possible to present and discuss the
various understandings of the term within this article. Instead, I shall give
a short account of the way in which Benson, Benson, and Ilson (1986a-b)
understand and use this term:
In English, as in other languages, there are many fixed, identifiable,
non-idiomatic phrases and constructions. Such groups of words are
called recurrent combinations, fixed combinations, or collocations.
Collocations fall into two major groups: grammatical collocations and
lexical collocations. (1986b: ix)
Examples of grammatical collocations include: account for, advantage
over, adjacent to, by accident, to be afraid that . . . They consist of a
noun, an adjective, or a verb, plus a preposition or a grammatical structure
such as an infinitive or clause. Lexical collocations, on the other hand, do
not contain prepositions, infinitives, or clauses, but consist of various
combinations of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Benson, Benson,
and Ilson distinguish several structural types of lexical collocations:
verb + noun (inflict a wound, withdraw an offer); adjective + noun (a
crushing defeat); noun + verb (blizzards rage); noun1 + noun2 (a pride of
lions), adverb + adjective (deeply absorbed), verb + adverb (appreciate
sincerely). In the following, we will neglect grammatical collocations
with their specific problems, and concentrate, instead, on lexical
collocations.

Collocations, To attain a clearer understanding of (lexical) collocations, it is helpful to try

idioms, and free to distinguish them from idioms on the one hand and from free com-
combinations binations on the other. Benson, Benson, and Ilson (1986a: 252-53) use
combinations with the noun murder to illustrate the main distinguishing
features of the three categories. The least cohesive type of word com-
bination are the so-called free combinations. The noun murder, for
example, can be used with many verbs (to analyse, boast of, condemn,
discuss, (etc.) a murder), and these verbs, in turn, combine freely with other
nouns. Idioms, on the other hand, are relatively frozen expressions whose
meanings do not reflect the meanings of their component parts. An example
containing the noun murder would be to scream blue murder (‘to complain
very loudly’). Between idioms and free combinations are loosely fixed
combinations (or collocations) of the type to commit murder. The main
characteristics of collocations are that their meanings reflect the meaning of
their constituent parts (in contrast to idioms) and that they are used
frequently, spring to mind readily, and are psychologically salient (in
contrast to free combinations). There are, however, ‘transitional areas’
(Cruse, 1986: 41) between free combinations/collocations and
collocations/idioms.

Collocations and Collocations have recently become one of the main concerns of
foreign language lexicography. Lexicographers have been discussing the role and
teaching research importance of collocations in general-purpose dictionaries as well as in
learners’ dictionaries (Benson, 1985, 1990; Cowie, 1978, 1981;
Lexical collocations: a contrastive view 57

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 Hausmann, 1985; Zöfgen, 1986). Should dictionary entries contain
typical collocations, and, if so, which collocations should be given and
how many? In addition, the concept of a dictionary of collocations has
been receiving renewed3 attention, as can be seen from The BBI
Combinatory Dictionary of English - A Guide to Word Combinations
(Benson, Benson, and Ilson, 1986b), and from Collins COBUILD English
Words in Use - A Dictionary of Collocations, 1991). In this context,
mention should also be made of the Oxford Dictionary of Current
Idiomatic English (Cowie and Mackin, (Vol. 1) 1975; Cowie, Mackin,
and McCaig, (Vol. 2) 1983), which, according to Mackin (1978: 149), is
‘essentially a dictionary of collocations’.
While reliable and manifold dictionaries are one indispensable basis for
foreign language teaching, there are further problems which EFL research
has to tackle with regard to collocations. In my view, there are at least
three major questions in this context:
1 Do collocations need special attention in the EFL classroom? Do we
have to teach collocations or are they learned en passant, more or less
automatically, together with single lexical items?
2 Should we decide that special attention is necessary, the next problem is
that of choice. Which of the tens of thousands of collocations do we
select for special treatment in the classroom? Are there any criteria to
decide which collocations need to be taught and which do not?
3 When we have decided on what to teach, the next question touches on
methodological problems. How should we handle collocations in the
classroom? What kind of exercises are most effective?
The present paper is devoted to a discussion of the second question. But
before we turn to the problem of selecting collocations for teaching
purposes, a few remarks on the basic question of whether to teach
collocations at all might be in order.

Should we teach One of the few EFL researchers to have stressed the necessity of actually
collocations? teaching collocations is Joanna Channel1 (1981). Together with three
colleagues, she has produced two excellent workbooks (Rudzka et al.,
1981a, 1985) for advanced EFL learners, in which special emphasis is put
on distinguishing broadly synonymous vocabulary items through their
different collocational properties.
The importance of teaching collocations is also stressed in particular by
Polish FLT research (glottodidactics). Waldemar Marton (1977: 43), for
example, sees indications ‘that mere exposure to the target language is not
sufficient for the advanced learner to acquire the knowledge of
conventional syntagms’. (Syntagms here equate with collocations.) He
argues that if language teachers want to guide advanced learners towards
a native-like command of the foreign language, they ‘should pay special
attention to their effective learning of conventional syntagms’ (ibid.: 54).
A further study, in which the question under discussion is answered in the
affirmative, is Bahns and Eldaw (1990). In an experiment consisting of a
58 Jens Bahns

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 translation task and a gap-filling task with 58 advanced learners of
English with German as a native language, it was found that the students’
knowledge of collocations had not developed at the same rate as their
knowledge of vocabulary in general.
No less a scholar than Ronald Mackin, however, seems to be rather
sceptical with regard to the possibility of actually teaching collocations.
In an article (Mackin, 1978) on problems arising from the lexicographic
treatment of collocations, he claims that the learner of English as a foreign
language cannot hope to learn all the collocations he or she should know
in any principled way because of the sheer amount of material (‘tens of
thousands of such collocations’, 1978: 150). As ‘they are in any case so
numerous as to rule out any methodical teaching or acquisition of them’,
Mackin sees the only way for the foreign language learner to acquire some
degree of collocational competence in ‘years of study, reading, and
observation of the language’ (1978: 1.51). While Mackin is right in
pointing out that the number of collocations an advanced learner of
English should be able to use productively is considerable, he seems to
have overlooked one important aspect of the problem - not all of the tens
of thousands of collocations have to be learnt.

Which Mackin’s estimation that advanced learners of English should have a

collocations need command of tens of thousands of collocations is probably not
not be learnt? exaggerated. Compare the figures given for the two collocational
dictionaries of English mentioned above: The BBZ Combinatory
Dictionary of English gives over 70,000 combinations and phrases under
a total of 14,000 entries, while Collins COBUILD English Words in Use
offers about 100,000 collocational examples grouped around 5,000
headwords from the core vocabulary of modern English.4 Is there a way to
reduce these enormous learning and teaching loads? Does the learner
really have to learn all of these collocations? We may find a solution to
this problem if we look at collocations from a contrastive point of view.
This way of considering the problem is also advocated by Marton (1977:
40-l):
But the notion of conventional syntagm finds its full dimension only
when it is considered contrastively, i.e. when the native language of the
learner and his target language are taken into consideration. Real
learning problems are caused by these syntagms which are,
comparatively speaking, lexically non-congruent, or, in other words,
by those in which there is no direct translational equivalence between
their corresponding elements.
Let us illustrate this point of view with a few examples from German and
English. If we restrict our attention for a while to one of the collocational
subtypes distinguished by Benson, Benson, and Ilson, namely the type
‘verb + noun’, a contrastive analysis shows that there is direct
translational equivalence for a large number of (English) ‘verb + noun’
collocations as compared with their German (noun + verb) counterparts
(see Table 1).5
Lexical collocations: a contrastive view 59

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 Table 1: IWW DS BBI DEWC
German ‘noun + verb’ Arger + hinunterschlucken - + + + swallow + anger
collocations for which Appetit + verderben + + + spoil + appetite
there is direct Geduld + verlieren + + + + lose + patience
translational equivalence Gelegenheit + ergreifen + + + + seize + opportunity
in English Gesetz + brechen + + + + break + law
lnteresse + zeigen + + + + show + interest
Kontrolle + ausüben + + + + exercise + control
Lösung + finden + + + + find + solution
Schluß + ziehen + + + + draw + conclusion
Schutz + suchen + + + + seek + shelter
Thema + wechseln - + + + change + subject
Verantwortung + tragen + + + + bear + responsibility
Versprechen + brechen + + + break + promise
Zimmer + lüften + + + air + room
Zweifel + beseitigen + + - + remove + doubts

The German learner of English will most probably have no difficulty in

producing the English collocations of Table 1, as he or she simply has to
translate both constituents in a rather straightforward way (i.e. they can
use the (verb) equivalents which spring to mind most readily). If,
however, a German learner of English wants to render the German ‘noun
+ verb’ collocations of Table 2 into English, the probability of committing
collocational errors rises enormously. Here, a straightforward translation
of the verbal element of the German ‘noun + verb’ collocations will result
in a collocational error, as shown in the middle column of Table 2.

Table 2: WW DS ‘literal’ translation BBJ DEWC

German ‘noun+verb’ Drohung+wahrmachen - + make true+threat + - fulfil+threat
collocations for which Falle+stellen + + put+trap I- + lay+trap
there is no direct Familie+gründen + + found+family + - start+family
translational equivalence Feuer+legen + + lay+fire † I+ + set+fire
in English Foto+machen + make+photograph take+photograph
Geld+abheben + + lift+money 1: : (with)draw+money
Kompliment+machen + + make+compliment + + pay+compliment
Nachricht+
(über)bringen + + bring+message + + deliver+message
Opfer+bringen + + bring+sacrifice + + make+sacrifice
Pilze+sammeln + + collect+mushrooms + + pick+mushrooms
Sahne+schlagen + + beat+cream + - whip+cream
Tagebuch+führen - - lead+diary + + keep+diary
Tisch+decken + + cover+table † + + lay+table
Versprechen+halten + + hold+promise † + + keep+promise
Wahrheit+sagen + + say+truth + + tell+truth
†These combinations are possible in English, but they have a meaning which
differs from the meaning of the respective German collocation.

Thus, the collocations in Table 2, for which there is no direct translational

equivalence, would need particular attention in the teaching of English to
speakers of German, while collocations comparable to the examples in
Table 1 would neither have to be learned nor taught as far as German
learners of English are concerned.
60 Jens Bahns

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 Different To teach English collocations to speakers of other languages, it would, of
collocations for course, be very useful to have a rich variety of teaching material like
learners with collections of exercises and workbooks. As there is a growing awareness,
different mother in the field of EFL, of the importance of collocations for the teaching and
tongues learning of truly idiomatic English (for this goal, collocations seem to be
more important than idioms), we will probably see, in the not-too-distant
future, the publication of (more) material for the teaching of collocations
to learners of different levels of proficiency. Materials writers who intend
to set out on this task should, however, bear in mind what was pointed out
above: it will not be advisable to have the same selection of collocations
for all learners of English as a Foreign Language. The collocations chosen
for inclusion in such material will have to be different in each case,
depending on the Ll of the learners.

There seems to be a fundamental difference between the selection, for

teaching purposes, of collocations and of idioms. Workbooks intended for
the teaching of idioms to learners of English use criteria like frequency
and usefulness to choose from among the total number of 5,000 to 10,000
idioms existing in English. Such selections of idioms, consisting of
between 200 and 800 items, can be used for all learners, no matter what
their L 1 is. Even if there are idioms which are ‘identical’ in English and in
a particular learner’s Ll - that is, if there is direct translational
equivalence (which is rather the exception with idioms) - such idioms
can and should be included and taught, as the learner will not expect such
a direct translational equivalence in the case of idioms. Learners seem to
operate with a hypothesis that idioms are language-specific and hence
non-transferable (Kellerman, 1978). Therefore, it is necessary to teach all
idioms which are regarded as useful for the learner, even if single items do
have a direct translational equivalence.

With regard to collocations, however, learners seem to rely on a

‘hypothesis of transferability’. The majority of collocational errors can be
traced to Ll influence. Cases in point include:6

a. *drive a bookshop (from Polish kierowac sklepem) instead of run a

bookshop
b. *make attention at (from French faire attention à) instead of pay
attention to
C. *win money (from Bulgarian ------- instead of make money
d. *finish a conflict (from German einen KonfIikt beenden) instead of
resolve a conflict

For this reason, it is necessary to distinguish (out of all the collocations

considered worth knowing for the learner of English) such collocations
which the learner with a particular Ll background ‘knows already’
(because they are fully equivalent in his or her Ll and in English), from
those collocations which a contrastive analysis has shown to be language-
specific (in at least one of the components) and which the learner really
Lexical collocations: a contrastive view, 61

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 has to learn. In this way, the amount of material to be included in
workbooks for collocations can be reduced considerably.

Implications What EFL teachers need for an effective training of collocational

competence in their classes (as long as these are homogenous with regard
to the Ll) are workbooks presenting a selection of collocations geared to
the specific difficulties of learners with a particular Ll background. Such
material would allow us to actually teach collocations and thus shorten, at
least to a certain extent, the long and laborious process of acquiring
collocational competence through ‘years of study, reading, and
observation of the language’ (Mackin, 1978: 151).
Received November 1991

Notes References
1 This paper is based on a talk entitled ‘Kollokationen Agricola, E. 1990. Wörter und Wendungen. Leipzig:
und idioms - kontrastiv betrachtet’, given at the 14. Bibliographisches Institut.
Kongreß für Fremdsprachendidaktik, Essen (FRG), Allerton, D. J. 1984. ‘Three (or four) levels of word
1991. I would like to thank Petra Burmeister, Lesley co-occurrence restriction’. Lingua 63: 17-40.
Drewing, Moira Eldaw, Martin Nuttall, and Thomas Arabski, J. (ed.) 1990. Foreign Language
Vogel for comments on earlier versions of the paper. Acquisition Papers. Katowice: Universytet Slaski.
2 These examples of collocational errors are taken Bahns, J. 1987. ‘Kollokationen in englischen
from the following sources: a) Mackin (1978: Wörterbüchern’. Anglistik & Englischunterricht
150); b) Channell (1981: 115); c) Benson (1985: 32: 87-104.
64); d) Gabrys-Biskup (1990: 36 and 38). Bahns, J., and M. Eldaw. 1990. ‘Should we teach
3 Benson, Benson, and Ilson’s claim that ‘much of EFL students collocations?‘. Paper given at 9th
the material provided in this Dictionary (i.e. their World Congress of Applied Linguistics,
Combinatory Dictionary of English) has never Thessaloniki.
before been published’ (1986b: vii) has to be Barrera-Vidal, A., M. Raupach, and H. Klein-
qualified somewhat: there have been (English) eidam (eds.). 1986. Französische Sprachlehre und
collocational dictionaries before, but they were bon usage. München: Hueber.
called dictionaries of style (e.g. Reum, 1931; Benson, M. 1985. ‘Collocations and idioms’, in Ilson
Leonhardi, 1955). (ed.). 1985.
Benson, M. 1990. ‘Collocations and general-purpose
4 Figures taken from publishers’ advertisements. dictionaries’. International Journal of
5 To make sure that Tables 1 and 2 do not include any Lexicography 3: 23-34.
free combinations, the collocational status of the Benson, M., E. Benson, and R. Ilson. 1986a.
combinations included has been checked in two Lexicographic Description of English.
German and two English collocational dictionaries Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
(WW = Agricola, 1990; DS = Drosdowski, 1988; Benson, M., E. Benson, and R. Ilson. 1986b. The
BBI = Benson, Benson, and Ilson, 1986b; BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English. A Guide
DEWC = Friederich and Canavan, 1979). The to Word Combinations. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
sign + indicates that the combination is given in the Benjamins.
respective dictionary, while the sign - means that Bergenholtz, H., and J. Mugdan (eds.).
the combination is not given. Lexikographie und Grammatik. Tübingen:
6 These examples are taken from the following Niemeyer.
sources: a) Gabrys-Biskup (1990: 39); b) Smadja Channell, J. 1981. ‘Applying semantic theory to
(1989: 163); c) Kouteva (1988: 193); d) Bahns vocabulary teaching’. English Language Teaching
(1987: 92). Journal 35: 115-22.

62 Jens Bahns

articles welcome
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Cowie, A. P. and R. Mackin. 1975. Oxford
Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English. Vol. 1:
Verbs with Prepositions and Particles. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Cowie, A. P., R. Mackin, and I. R. McCaig. 1983.
Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English.
Vol. 2: Phrase, Clause, and Sentence Idioms.
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deutschen Sprache. Mannheim/Wien/Zürich:
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Friederich, W. and J. Canavan. 1979. Dictionary of
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Gabrys-Biskup, D. 1990. ‘Some remarks on
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Hausmann, F. J. 1985. ‘Kollokation im deutschen
Wörterbuch. Ein Beitrag zur Theorie des
lexikographischen Beispiels’, in Bergenholtz and
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Kellerman, E. 1978. ‘Giving learners a break: native
language intuitions as a source of predictions about
transferability’. Working Papers on Bilingualism
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Korosadowicz-Struzynska, M. 1980. ‘Word
collocations in FL vocabulary instruction’. Studia
Anglica Posnaniensia 12: 109-20.
Kouteva, T. 1988. ‘Phraseological errors in the
interlanguage of Bulgarian learners of English’, in
Danchev (ed.). 1988.
Leonhardi, A. 1955. The Learner’s Dictionary of
Style. Dortmund: Lensing.
Mackin, R. 1978. ‘On collocations: “Words shall be
known by the company they keep”‘, in Strevens
(ed.) 1978.
Marton, W. 1977. ‘Foreign vocabulary learning as
problem No. 1 of language teaching at the
advanced level’. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin
2:33-57.
Reum, A. 1931. A Dictionary of English Style.
Leipzig: Weber.
Rudzka, B., J. Channell, Y. Putseys, and P. Ostyn.
1981a. The Words You Need. London: Macmillan.
Rudzka, B., J. Channell, Y. Putseys, and P. Ostyn.
198lb. The Words You Need. Teacher’s Book.
London: Macmillan.
Rudzka, B., J. Channell, Y. Putseys, and P. Ostyn.
1985. More Words You Need. London: Macmillan.
Smadja, F. A. 1989. ‘Lexical co-occurrence: The
missing link’. Literary and Linguistic Computing
4: 163-68.
Strevens, P. (ed.). 1978. In Honour of A. S. Hornby.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zöfgen, E. 1986. ‘Kollokation - Kon-
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The author
Jens Bahns is Director of the Language Laboratory
at Pädagogische Hochschule Kiel, FRG, where his
work involves teacher training at the undergraduate
level. He has a PhD in English Philology from the
University of Kiel. His current interests are in second
language acquisition, vocabulary learning and
teaching, and listening comprehension.

Lexical collocations: a contrastive view 63

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