Definition of the Term “Collocation”

1. Introduction

This paper aims to analyze different definitions to the term “collocation”, a sequence of words that co-occur very often and more frequently than would happen by chance. From a historical point of view, the study of collocations was pioneered by John Rupert Firth back in the 1930s, who is known for the famous quotation: You shall know a word by the company it keeps. (Firth, J. R. 1957:11) He noted a “mutual expectancy” (1968, p. 181) between certain words, viz. word items can expect and predict each other in that the presence of one makes the presence of others more likely than otherwise it would be.

Later on, different definitions have been given out from different research perspectives. However, for many years now, no agreement on a clear and non-contentious definition has been reached by foreign language researchers. Among them, two prominent traditions—the frequency-based and phraseological traditions (Nesselhauf 2004, 2005; Gyllstad 2007; Granger & Paquot 2008; and Siyanova & Schmitt 2008) —have been pointed out in recent studies. Apart from these two, another tradition emerged by combining the two clearly distinguished traditions. And next I will further explain those detailed information about each type of definition.

2. Further explanations from different perspectives

2.1 Frequency-based tradition

When it comes to frequency perspective, collocations are seen as “the occurrence of two or more words within a short space of each other in a text” (Nesselhauf 2005²: 12). This definition, from my point of view, is in a broad sense, which regards co-occurrence as the most important or even the only characteristic feature of collocation and is Firthian in nature, represented by M. A. K. Halliday and Sinclair. Halliday argued that “Lexis seems to require the recognition merely of linear co-occurrence together with some measure of significant proximity, either a scale or at least a cut-off point. It is this syntagmatic relation which is...