Oxford Word Collocation
Heberto Calderon
Collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing. For example, in English you say strong wind but heavy rain. It would not be normal to say heavy wind or strong rain. And whilst all four of these words would be recognized by a learner at pre-intermediate or even elementary level, it takes a greater degree of competence with the language to combine them correctly in productive use.
Collocation runs through the whole of the English language. No piece of natural spoken or written English is totally free of collocation. For the student, choosing the right collocation will make his or her speech and writing sound much more natural, more native-speaker-like, even when basic intelligibility does not seem to be at issue. A student who talks about strong rain may make himself or herself understood, but it requires more effort on the part of the listener and ultimately creates a barrier to communication. Poor collocation in exams is also likely to lead to lower marks.
Totally free combinations are excluded and so, for the most part, are idioms. Exceptions to this rule are idioms that are only partly idiomatic. An idiom like not see the wood for the trees has nothing to do with wood or trees, and is therefore excluded; but drive a hard bargain is very much about bargaining, even if the expression as a whole can be considered to be idiomatic.
The first question (Is this a typical use of language?) required that all the collocations be drawn from reliable data. The main source used was the Oxford English Corpus. A corpus is a collection of texts of written or spoken language stored in electronic form. It provides us with the evidence of how language is used in real situations, which we use as the basis for our dictionary entries. The Oxford English Corpus is a database of almost two billion words of text in English taken from up-to-date sources from around the world, ensuring that we have the most accurate information about word behaviour possible.
By analysing the corpus and using special software, we can see words in context and find out how they combine with other words. Compilers of the dictionary were able to check how frequently any given combination occurred, in how many (and what kind of) sources, and in what particular contexts. The corpus also helped in the preparation of example sentences, most of which were based on the authentic texts included in the corpus, with minor modifications to make them more accessible (but without, of course, altering any collocations).
The third question asked (Would a student look up this entry to find this expression?) led to the exclusion of noun collocates from verb and adjective entries. When framing their ideas, people generally start from a noun. You might think of rain and want to know which adjective best describes rain when a lot falls in a short time. You would be unlikely to start with the adjective heavy and wonder what you could describe with it (rain, breathing, damage, gunfire?). Similarly, you might be looking for the verb to use when you do what you need to do in responseto a challenge. But you would not choose meet and then choose what to meet (a challenge, an acquaintance, your death, the expense). Types of combination The dictionary covers the following types of word combination:
With adjectives, often a wide range of modifying adverbs can be used. To indicate that the adjective can be used with a full range of modifiers, the adverbs section gives extremely, fairly, very, etc. The main modifiers which are used in this way are:
It also happens that certain sets of words share all or most of their collocations. This is particularly true of very strictly defined sets such as days of the week, months and points of the compass, but it also applies to slightly less rigid, but still limited sets such as currencies, weights and measures, and meals. In order to show how these collocations are shared by a number of headwords, the dictionary includes usage notes, each treating the collocations of a particular set. A full list of the usage notes and where they may be found is given here.
Because this is a type of dictionary that may be totally new to many students, it is recommended that users familiarize themselves with how the dictionary works by workingthrough some of the exercises in the Study pages. The first of these aims to show the overall concept of the dictionary by looking at a single entry (idea) in some detail. The next few exercises take users systematically through the different sections of the entries for nouns, verbs and adjectives. Two pages of exercises get students thinking about the common verbs make, do, have, give and take; and the remaining exercises range across the whole dictionary, testing collocations linked to various themes, including politics, jobs and money.
The dictionary includes the most frequent and useful British and American collocates for the 9,000 British and American headwords. Where appropriate, headwords, meanings and collocations are labelled to show that they are used only, or especially, in one variety of English or the other. The labels used are:
The labels especially North American English and especially British English indicate that the headword or collocation is used especiallyin that variety. It may be used in the other variety, but is significantly less frequent. Other collocations may be more frequently used to express the same idea, or it may have a special meaning in one variety but not in the other.
For example, the headword pavement is labelled British English. All the collocates given at this entry are also therefore to be understood as British English. A cross-reference to sidewalk indicates the American equivalent of the headword.
A word may be labelled as British English or American English, but may include some collocations which are actually found in both varieties. An example is the entry shop, which is labelled especially British English. Gift shop, pet shop and souvenir shop, however, are used in American English as well as British English, so these are labelled British English, North American English.
These labels always refer to the preceding collocate only. The labels all British English, all North American English, etc. and both British English, both North American English, etc. indicate that all or both of the collocations in that group are British English or American English.
Some collocations are used far more frequently in British or American English simply because they refer to institutions that are particular to the UK or the US. High schools are found in the US, not normally in the UK; but the term may be used in British English to refer to this type of US school. Collocates like this are labelled in the UK or in the US. Collocates referring to particular sports, etc. that are more popular in one country than another are labelled in cricket, in baseball, etc., but are not given a geographical label.
The most frequent usage label used in the dictionary is figurative. It is a feature of English that when the meaning of a word is extended and used in a non-literal sense, the collocations of the literal sense are often carried over: that is, both literal and figurative meanings of a word may share collocations. The dictionary indicates where this is so: for example, at way, the collocation lose is given, followed by the examples: She lost her way in the fog and This projectseems to have lost its way (figurative). This shows that lose your way can be used in both a literal and a figurative way. With strong collocations that are slightly idiomatic, a short explanation of the meaning may be given. For example, at bargain, the phrase drive a hard bargain has thegloss (= force somebody to agree to the arrangement that is best for you).
The dictionary also includes ten Special pages on different topics such as business, meetings and sport. These pull together collocations from the different topics and can be used as the basis for topic work in class, or for brainstorming vocabulary for an essay, for example. A full list of Special pages is given here.
It is hoped that this dictionary will be of use not only to students of English of upper-intermediate level and above, but also to teachers (both non-native speaker and native-speaker teachers, looking for ways to present collocations to their students), translators, academics, business people, and all who wish to write fluent and idiomatic English. The whole dictionary has been designed to be accessible, and (we hope) enjoyable to use.
A completely new type of dictionary with word collocation that helps students and advanced learners effectively study, write and speak natural-sounding English. This onlinedictionary is very helpful for the education of the IELTS, TOEFL test.
The Macmillan Collocations Dictionary does seem to be largely concerned with academic vocabulary; however, some other indications of style would be helpful. For example, students in various disciplines may need to refer to the media for up-to-date information when writing assignments; yet, it is inappropriate for them to use journalese in their own writing. The Macmillan Collocations Dictionary gives no indication that crackdown is a word which is largely to be found in news reports, and, although educated native speakers would readily be able to identify the examples given as being clearly from this source[2], non-native speakers are often less able to do so. A search for crackdown in the British National Corpus also returns a large majority of results which come from news sources, but even students who use the BNC do not always check the sources of the results returned.
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