Collocations, free compounds, and idioms

2. Theoretical background 1. Definitions of “collocation”

2.4. Collocations, free compounds, and idioms

In order to determine learners‟ difficulties with collocations, it is necessary to delimitate collocations from other types of word combination. In his book, a practical guide to lexicography, Piet Van Sterkenburg assumed that if the user wants to look up a multiple-word item and his general- purpose dictionary does not

(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.study.on.common.errors.related.to.the.usage.of.DO.and.MAKE.collocations.by.English.non.major.students.at.Thai.Nguyen.University.of.Economics.and.Business.Administration.(TUEBA)(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.study.on.common.errors.related.to.the.usage.of.DO.and.MAKE.collocations.by.English.non.major.students.at.Thai.Nguyen.University.of.Economics.and.Business.Administration.(TUEBA)(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.study.on.common.errors.related.to.the.usage.of.DO.and.MAKE.collocations.by.English.non.major.students.at.Thai.Nguyen.University.of.Economics.and.Business.Administration.(TUEBA)(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.study.on.common.errors.related.to.the.usage.of.DO.and.MAKE.collocations.by.English.non.major.students.at.Thai.Nguyen.University.of.Economics.and.Business.Administration.(TUEBA)

provide sufficient information, he has to decide whether the lexical unit in question is to be classified as a collocation, an idiom or a phrasal verb in order to choose the right reference work. Therefore, delimitating collocation from other types of word combinations would be useful for learners of foreign language. In this paper, the

“collocation” is used to denote a type of word combinations. This part mainly focused on three kinds of word combinations: collocations, free word combination and idiom.

Idioms are: „multi-word items that are not the sum of their parts: they have holistic meanings which cannot be retrieved from the individual meanings of the component words (Moon, 1997:46), for example, spill the beans. However „idioms are by no means as fixed as conventional accounts suggest‟.

Collocation as mentioned above, however, corresponds to a conventional combinations of words, which are not necessary contiguous and whose meaning is roughly speaking compositional. Conventional combinations mean that native speakers recognize such combinations as the „correct‟ way of expressing a particular concept. For instance, substituting one term of a collocation with a synonym or a near-synonym is usually felt by native speakers as being „not quite right‟, although perfectly understandable. For example, firing and burning are synonymous but firing ambition is different from burning ambition.

Free word combination can be defined as sequences of words that occur most frequently where the meaning of the whole is the sum of the meanings of its constituent words and any word of them can be substituted by a large class of words. (e.g., the noun murder can be used with many verbs: to analyze, boast of, condemn, describe, film, forget, remember .etc.) (Aisenstadt, 1979).

In addition, criteria to distinguish collocation from other types of combinations were discussed here. In fact, word combination is not clearly delimitable. Different researchers have used different criteria but only the most widely accepted defining criterion for collocation mentioned here is namely arbitrary restriction on substitutability. In other words, a distinction is made in which a possible restriction

on the substitutability of elements is due to their semantic properties and a combination in which the restriction is to some degree arbitrary. For example, we have a combination between the verb read and a book (read a book). However, the substitution of read by drink (drink a book) in that combination is impossible or unusual because drink requires a noun with the semantic property of “liquid” and read requires a noun with the semantic property of “containing written language”.

In another combination, for example, make a decision, in contrast, decision can be substituted by a number of nouns such as, make a plan, make a point, make a profit, make a promise, make a remark, make a sound, make a speech. This restriction doesn‟t seem to be a result of the semantic properties of the two elements concerned, but a somewhat arbitrary convention on language. However, it is often difficult to draw a distinction between semantic restriction and arbitrary restriction.

In his research, Nadja stated that the distinction between these two types is even impossible to make with words which only combine with very few other words. The researcher gave illustration of the combination „to dial a number‟. The meaning of the verb dial is difficult to determine whether its meaning is so specific that it can combine with a number or whether there has an arbitrary restriction that dial cannot combine with radio station (not dial a radio station). Nadja created a notion called

„restricted sense‟, therefore, a sense of a verb is considered restricted if it applies one of the two following criteria as follow,

 The sense of the verb is so specific that it allows combination with only a small set of nouns.

 The verb cannot be used in this sense with all nouns that are syntactically and semantically possible.

The primary sense of the verbs DO and MAKE would be considered unrestricted according to this definition because they can combine with a variety of nouns (do a favor, do harm, do business, do housework, and make a cake, make food, make a fortune, make friends, make a fuss, make a journey…) and there are no arbitrary constrains on its combinability.

On the basic of this notion of restricted sense, three major classes of word combinations can be distinguished as following:

Free combination: the senses in which the verb and the noun are used are unrestricted, so they can be freely combined according to these senses, for example, want a book.

Collocations: The sense in which the noun is used is unrestricted, but the sense of the verb used is restricted, so that the verb in the sense in which it is used could be only combined with certain nouns. E.g. take a picture but take a film

Idioms: Both the verb and the noun used are in a restricted sense, so substitution is either impossible or only possible to an extremely limited degree.

Thus, a combination is classified as collocation if one of the criteria or both of them mentioned above applies to the verb or noun of the combination.