International Journal of Lexicography Advance Access originally published online on October 21, 2005
International Journal of Lexicography 2005 18(4):409-443; doi:10.1093/ijl/eci042
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Collocation, Colligation and Encoding Dictionaries. Part I: Lexicological Aspects
Universität-GH Siegen, Fachbereich 3, Adolf-Reichwein-Straße, D-57068 Siegen, Germany
(dsiepmann{at}t-online.de)
This article attempts to synthesise recent advances in collocational theory into a coherent framework for lexicological theory and lexicographic practice. By posing a number of fundamental questions related to the definition of collocation, it critically reviews frequency-based, semantic and pragmatic approaches to collocation. It is found, among other things, that two types of collocation, namely ‘long-distance’ collocation and collocation between semantic features, have suffered almost total neglect. This leads to suggestions for a new division of the collocational spectrum and for a revised definition of ‘collocation’ based on the notions of ‘usage norm’ (Steyer 2000) and ‘holisticity’ (Siepmann 2003). It is argued that this new view of collocation considerably widens the dictionary maker's brief, since future lexicography will have to provide a full account of both structurally simple and structurally complex units, including fixed expressions of regular syntactic-semantic composition (see Part II of this article, to be published in the March issue of this journal).
1 For those readers who are not yet familiar with the relatively recent notion of colligation (a term originally coined by Firth), here is how Hoey (1998) defines colligation:
- – the grammatical company a word keeps (or avoids keeping) either within its own group or at a higher rank.
- – the grammatical functions that the word's group prefers (or avoids).
- – the place in a sequence that a word prefers (or avoids).
- – the grammatical functions that the word's group prefers (or avoids).
2 Even a superficial glance at lexical functions shows that they disregard contextual relationships. Thus, the adverb drop-dead may intensify the adjective beautiful with reference to women, but not with reference to buildings.
3 On an alternative construal, the German sequence might be viewed as a colligational pattern or schematic construction (Croft and Cruse 2003): eine ADJ Straßenlage haben, but this seems problematic to the extent that very few adjectives can fill the slot.
4 I use the term ‘concept’ more or less in its standard terminological sense to refer to a ‘unit of thought constituted through abstraction on the basis of properties common to a set of objects or phenomena’.
5 Clearly, then, the notion of literal meaning turns out to be a linguistic abstraction (see also the introduction to this article).
6 A point of criticism that might be raised is that we are here dealing with an instance of regular polysemy. The meaning of ‘drink’ could be glossed as referring to an occasion where people have a drink, and the same reasoning would apply to cases such as quiet dinner/breakfast/lunch/tea. I would argue that such apparent regularities are in fact more or less accidental; as Blank (2001) and Grossmann and Tutin (forthcoming) have shown, nouns belonging to the same semantic class may share some of their collocations or colligations, but not all of them (e.g. nach der Schule gingen die Schüler nach Hause vs *nach dem Parlament gingen die Abgeordneten nach Hause).
7 Or a three-item construction in the sense of Croft and Cruse (2003).
8 Blank is not unaware of the fact that verbs may also be associated with particular circumstantial complements (‘Zirkumstanten’) which may themselves carry selectional restrictions, but he considers these two levels to be of lesser importance. As our analysis has shown, however, it is often the particular collocation that determines the verb pattern (l’autoroute file quelque part). Put another way, valency and collocation appear to shade off into each other; speakers have semantically and syntactically prepatterned collocations or ‘constructions’ (Fillmore) at their disposal.
9 Interestingly, the distinction we have just established between selectional and collocational restrictions has a parallel in theories of formal grammar, such as Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, where selection refers to the process whereby a head selects its complements and an adjunct selects its head. Using the example of the German verb fackeln, whose linguistic environment invariably comprises a durational modifier (most commonly nicht lange), Sailer and Richter (2002) show that the durational modifier cannot be interpreted as a complement of the head verb, but rather as an adjunct. Therefore, they argue, the relationship between the head verb and the relational modifier is one of collocation rather than selection.
10 An alternative, cognitive-linguistic explanation might take the conceptual background as its starting point. Since paintings, carvings, etc. are often perceived as aesthetically pleasing, the adjective beautiful readily springs to mind to describe them. Collocations incorporating the adverb beautifully could then be regarded as being derived from the original collocation (beautiful carving -> beautifully carved). The problem with this explanation is that such derivation is not always possible.