Word Usage and Vocabulary in context Lecture 8 Words in combinations: Collocations Word Usage and Vocabulary in context Lecture 8
do homework ×make homework make mistakes ×do mistakes tall man/woman ×tall man/woman high mountain ×high mountain
Fast food, but not quick food Quick look, but not fast look Commit suicide, but not make suicide Cut a finger, but not cut grass Mow grass, but not mow a finger
boring, certain, drunk, stupid, sure, tired, worried dead boring, certain, drunk, stupid, sure, tired, worried
heavily drink, smoke rain
The meaning ‘beginning start/begin (theatre performance etc.) kick off (soccer match) fall (night) break (day or dawn, poetic language)
What is a collocation? Collocation means a natural combination of words; It refers to the way words are closely associated with each other.
Why learn collocations? They will help you to speak and write English in a more natural and accurate way. Learning collocations will also help you to increase your range of English vocabualry.
Caution We cannot substitute a word in a collocation with a related word. Collocations should not be confused with idioms. Free combination→bound collocation→ frozen idiom We cannot replace yellow wine with red wine. Idioms are a special type of collocation where a fixed group of words has a meaning that cannot be guessed by knowing the meaning of the individual word
Exercises http://www.better-english.com/strongcollocation/coll1.htm http://www.englishmedialab.com/cloze/Adjective%20noun%20collocation/index.html http://www.edict.com.hk/vlc/collocation/wordpartners1.htm
Corpus linguistics It is the study of language as expressed in samples (corpora) or "real world" text. Corpus lingusitics uses large collections of both spoken and written natural texts that are stored on computers.
Corpus linguistics Corpus lingusits can explore different questions about language use. Corpus Linguists specify a Key Word in Context (KWIC) and identify the words immediately surrounding them. This gives an idea of the way words are used.
Collocations in corpus linguistics In corpus linguistics, collocation is defined as a sequence of words or terms which co-occur more often than would be expected by chance.
Collocation comprises the restrictions on how words can be used together, for example which prepositions are used with particular verbs, or which verbs and nouns are used together.
Links to Online Corpora http://www.americancorpus.org/ http://www.lextutor.ca/concord_writer/