Collocational restraints

This, then, is one kind of constraint on the combinability of words, a syntactic one. Now let us turn to the collocational constraints on word combinations. ‘Collocation’ is a term that has been used in a number of ways. We shall use it to refer to two kinds of combinability: firstly, the regular expectations that a word has for one or more other words; and secondly, the semantic compatibilities that exist between words having particular syntactic functions.

The first sense of collocation covers facts like the following: in geometry we say that we describe a circle, construct a triangle and drop a perpendicular, where all these verbs refer to drawing a particular line or series of lines on a two-dimensional surface. But these kinds of compatibility are not restricted to specialized registers. We talk of someone raising his eyebrows, not lifting them. We talk of a powerful motorcar, but of strong coffee, and of both powerful and strong arguments. We talk of raising or breeding cattle, but of bringing up children (though raise is perhaps possible here also), and of breeding dogs or cats. Compare also the collocations of good, strong and high with the nouns likelihood, probability, possibility and chance:

From this notion of collocation derives the idea that some words have a strong mutual expectancy, e. g. lay and egg, knead and dough, white or black and coffee, turn on or turn off and switch or tap. Obviously many of these expectancies arise from the extra-linguistic situation that the words are referring to; we are after all dealing here with semantic constraints. When the expectancies become particularly strong, and words are continually found in each others’ company, then this gives rise to the development of idioms and cliché s. For example, the following would count as idioms: red revolution, purple passage, be worth while, find fault with, seek help from, to and fro, kith and kin, without let or hindrance; and the following as cliché s: desirable residence in estate agents’ blurb, at this present moment in time in politicians’ speeches, exclusive interview or revelation in journalistic jargon, unrepeatable offer in salesmen’s talk, and perhaps real meaning in students’ essays!

The other sense of collocation, referring to the semantic compatibilities between words having a particular syntactic function, may be illustrated by a sentence that has become a classic in linguistics: Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. Colourless and green are semantically incompatible adjectives; they in turn are incompatible with the noun idea, since ideas cannot have colour predicated of them.

Likewise idea is incompatible with sleep, since that is not something that ideas are deemed capable of doing; and sleep is incompatible with the adverb furiously, since that is not a way in which people can sleep. Obviously, these incompatibilities arise from the nature of extra-linguistic reality; but it is nevertheless arguable that they reflect facts about the operation of words in the language system, facts that need to be taken account of in a linguistic description.

We have so far stated the matter rather negatively, in terms of incompatibilities. It is possible to make more positive statements. For example, taking the verb eat, it is possible to say of this verb that the subject associated with it must be a noun phrase referring to an animate object, human or animal, and that the object must refer to an edible object, food, meat, cereal, plants, etc. By stating the regular collocations of words in this way it is possible to account quite easily for metaphor. For example, the sentence He ate his words will obviously be classed as metaphorical, since words are not normally edible objects. As in the case of syntactic compatibilities, it is easier to state semantic collocational compatibilities in terms of what particular verbs require, rather than in terms of what particular nouns require. For example, the noun man as subject could require any of the verbs that refer to actions that men are capable of doing. This merely emphasizes the centrality of the verb in the clause, and its function as the departure point in description, if not in communication.

As a postscript, let us come back to the question of what is a word. We have distinguished between phonological, grammatical and lexical words (also called lexical items or lexemes). Given the notion of collocation, and more especially the notion of idiom or fixed collocation, it seems that we shall have to recognize as lexical items groups of more than one word, in an orthographic sense, and consider them to have the same value in the language system as individual words. For example, in the clause She went at him hammer and tongs, the last three words constitute a single lexical item. This can be demonstrated if we consider its syntactic status, i. e. whether it should be classed as a noun or as an adverb. Using the criterion of word classification that we have already established, namely that of function, we see that hammer and tongs here functions as head of an adverb phrase functioning as adjunct in the clause and referring to the ‘manner’ of the action. Since it is head of an adverb phrase it must be considered to be an adverb, even though analytically the individual parts are nouns. In other words, our principles of classification will on occasions compel us to regard groups of orthographic words as single lexical items from a structural point of view.