Collocation

By collocation is meant the habitual association of a word in a language with other particular words in sentences. Collocation is distinct from syntax in that one is concerned in collocation with each word as an individual lexical item in the company of other words as individual lexical items, and not, as in syntax, part of the grammatical level of analysis, with words as members of classes in relation to other words also as members of classes. Speakers become accustomed to the collocations of words and the mutual expectancies that hold between them in utterances irrespective of their grammatical relations as members of word classes or as ‘parts of speech’. A rather obvious example is given by Firth, who made use of the term as part of the technical terminology of linguistics: dark collocates with night, and vice versa. ‘One of the meanings of night is its collocability with dark, and of dark, of course, collocation with night. ’This statement does not, of course, exclude word groups like bright night, dark day, but just because of the less usual concomitance of such pairs, they stand out as more prominent in an ut­terance in which they occur than do dark night and bright day. Collocations such as these are manifestly related to the referential and situational meaning of the words con­cerned, but collocation and situational meaning are dif­ferent parts of the total statement of the use of words. In some other cases collocations are habitual but less closely connected with extralinguistic reference. White coffee, black coffee, white wine, white race all have a range of situational reference, but apart from the collocation of the particular second words in each pair the word white would not, in most utterances, be used with reference to the colours of the referents. Similar collocations in English involving colour words, but further removed from reference to actual colour surfaces, are green with jealousy, red revolution, purple passage. Some words in languages have, at least in certain styles, very limited uses, almost wholly circumscribable in their collocations. The word maiden, for example, in modern spoken English, is scarcely ever used as a syn­onym for girl, but principally occurs in collocation with a limited set of other words such as voyage, speech, over (in cricket), aunt, lady (English speakers can readily supply the others).

Conversely, words like the, a, if, when, and so on are hardly subject to any collocational restrictions, and are found in almost any lexical company in the language that the grammar permits. For such words collocation is not a relevant part of the statement of their use; but with others (the majority) it is possible to set up collocational ranges of words with which given words will be found associated in their various grammatical constructions. The conjunction of two or more words quite outside the range of colloca­tion and unprepared by any explanation, is likely to be incomprehensible or downright nonsensical, although its grammatical composition may be unexceptionable. A now famous example of such a grammatical but nonsensical sentence is: ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’.

Collocational ranges are unlike grammatical classes in that they are peculiar to each word, and almost certainly no two words in a language share exactly the same range and frequency of occurrence within a range, whereas gram­matical classes may each contain many different words as members. Moreover collocations are far more personally variable among speakers of a single dialect within a language than are grammatical classes; borderline cases there are in grammar, where speakers may differ or be uncertain, as to whether a particular word form or word sequence is grammatically acceptable; but these are very few compared to the personal differences in collocational use and accept­ance.

Sometimes different styles, types of utterance appro­priate to specific types of situation are characterized by dif­ferent collocations (consider the differences between He’s a proper rascal and that is a very proper observation, and between we’ve had a nice time today and we have here a nice point to decide).

[...]Special cases of collocations are what are called idioms and cliché s. Idiom is used to refer to habitual collocations of more than one word, that tend to be used together, with a semantic function not readily deducible from the other uses of its component words apart from each other (e. g. English she went for him hammer and tongs, they ran off hell for leather).Knowledge of such individual features of a language, acquired by long experience, but unnecessary for ordinary intercourse, usually comes at the end of one’s learning of a foreign language; hence a com­plete and near-complete mastery of one is often said to be ‘idiomatic’. Some idioms preserve in use words that have otherwise become obsolete (e. g. English to and fro, waifs and strays, kith and kin).

When a collocation has become almost universal in a particular style, the contribution of some of its words comes to be nugatory, and often appears irritating and inelegant to listeners or readers who do not relish (as some seem to) that mode of discourse (for example the house agent’s desirable residence (residence), the politician’s this modern age in which we are living (this age), the journal­ist’s inside information (information); the reader will be painfully able to multiply the examples from his own experience). Cliché s of this sort form a notable part of the public speaking style of many politicians all over the world, presumably because of intellectual laziness or in the hope of appealing to the emotions of people in political meetings, broadcasts, and the like, by the repeated use of words, such as freedom, peace, etc., to which favourable responses are normally accorded; cliché -ridden talk is a good deal easier to produce than a serious examination of current political problems.