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Collocations

Collocations. ENG. 213 Prof. Miguel A. Arce Ramos PUCPR. What are collocations?. Collocations are groups of words that frequently occur together. Every language develops different collocations. For example, in these three languages, different adjectives are used to describe tea:

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Collocations

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  1. Collocations ENG. 213 Prof. Miguel A. Arce Ramos PUCPR

  2. What are collocations? • Collocations are groups of words that frequently occur together. • Every language develops different collocations. • For example, in these three languages, different adjectives are used to describe tea: • English: strong tea, weak tea • Italian: strong tea, long tea • Japanese: dark tea, thin tea

  3. What are collocations? • "Collocations and clichés are strings of words that are remembered as wholes and often used together, such as gone with the wind or like two peas in a pod. • People know tens of thousands of these expressions; the linguist Ray Jackendoff refers to them as 'the Wheel of Fortune lexicon,' after the game show in which contestants guess a familiar expression from a few fragments." • (Steven Pinker, Words and Rules. HarperCollins, 1999)

  4. Two ways to identify collocations • Statistical • a measure of the frequency with which two words co-occur: • ‘of the’: the most common bigram • most frequent adv+adj combinations include: • very good, more likely, quite happy, most important

  5. Two ways to identify collocations • Semantic • how do you say ‘do/make’ with this noun? • how do you say ‘very/extremely’ with this adjective? • Collocation helps to create meaning. • violently/horribly sick • acutely/desperately sick • thoroughly/heartily sick

  6. Why is collocation important? • Essential to meaning: you really do ‘know a word by the company it keeps.’ • The link between typicality (correlates with frequency in a corpus) and naturalness, fluency.

  7. Noticing Collocations

  8. Common collocations in academic texts

  9. Common collocations in academic texts

  10. Common collocations in academic texts

  11. Common collocations in academic texts

  12. Common collocations in academic texts

  13. Using Concordance Sentences to Identify Collocations

  14. Using Concordance Sentences to Identify Collocations • A concordance is a computerized collection of sentences that all contain the same word or phrase. • The sentences are taken from authentic texts, not texts written for language learning. • These are established patterns in which a word appears.

  15. Guidelines for Learning Collocations

  16. Guidelines for Learning Collocations • Read extensively • Research has shown that this is the best way to expand your knowledge of the collocations used in written English. • By reading a lot—not just a few passages, or stories, but whole books—you will encounter many examples of how words are used and how they combine with each other. • As a result, you will become a more effective and fluent reader (and writer).

  17. Guidelines for Learning Collocations • Notice collocations as you read • When you encounter an unfamiliar word, look at the words that are used with it.

  18. Homework • Read pages 74-87 from Advanced Reading Power. • Do exercises 1-7 and 9.

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