Collocation, selection restriction and the teaching of the English verb grammar

Collocation generally refers to the expression of words which are often used together such as handsome boy, crystal clear or cosmetic surgery. If you hear the first word, the second can be expected, or at least you have an idea what it can be. In context with verbs collocation means the syntactic relationship between a verb and a noun phrase such as to make a decision or to take a photo. The words make and decision belong together in some way. They are collocates.

For co-occurring in syntax we use the term collocate; an item collocates with another in its environment, the two together forming a collocation.1

To find collocates you take a word and look for other words which belong to the first, like in a mind-map. The word in the middle is called the node, “its lexical behaviour is under examination”2. The words around it are called collocates, as they occur in close proximity to the node3. In some cases collocates may be called equal partners and in some cases they cannot. This can be attributed to the fact that one word out of the span can also be the node to the current node and the current node is also a collocate of that word. An example for equal partners is pig and pork. They can occur in one sentence. If you hear the word pig you can easily think of the word pork and if you hear the word pork you can easily think of the word pig. The word pork belongs to the set of the word pig and vice versa. Each of the words is used for a different range of collocates. If pig is the node you can also think of words like feed. Feed can be in the span of pig. But if you take pork as the node, feed will not be one of the first words one might think of and it is not used as frequently with pork as with pig. Even if there is a relationship between pig and pork they have “different collocational ranges, and this establishes the fact that they belong to different lexical sets and are different lexical items.”4

In a lexical set the lexical items have a similar range.5 They might be synonyms or words with a similar meaning or use. In the example which is mentioned sow could be used to substitute for pig in many cases as they belong to the same lexical set. In the normal use of language they do not often occur together in one sentence because of their similar meaning. The distance in which the node and its collocate appear in a sentence is called the span. “A span of – 4, +4 means that four words on either side of the node (q.v.) word will be taken to be its relevant verbal environment.”6