1. Word Usage and Vocabulary in context Lecture 8
Words in combinations: Collocations
Word Usage and Vocabulary in context
Lecture 8

2. do homework ×make homework
make mistakes ×do mistakes
tall man/woman ×tall man/woman
high mountain ×high mountain

3. 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

4. boring, certain, drunk, stupid, sure, tired, worried
dead
boring, certain, drunk,
stupid, sure, tired, worried

5. heavily
drink,
smoke
rain

6. The meaning ‘beginning
start/begin (theatre performance etc.)
kick off (soccer match)
fall (night)
break (day or dawn, poetic language)

7. What is a collocation?
Collocation means a natural combination of words; It refers to the way words are closely associated with each other.

8. 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.

9. 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

10. Exercises http://www.better-english.com/strongcollocation/coll1.htm

11. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. Links to Online Corpora