Lexical collocations:

a contrastive view
Jens Bahns
For some time now there has been, in the field of EFL teaching, a growing
awareness
of the importance
of lexical collocations
for vocabulary
learning.
One of the main obstacles
to teaching
lexical collocations
systematically,
however,
is their number,
which amounts
to tens of
thousands. In this article, it is argued that this enormous
teaching and
learning load can be reduced by a contrastive approach to the concept of
lexical collocation.
An exemplary German-English
contrastive analysis of
noun + verb and verb + noun collocations
shows that there is, for a
considerable portion of them, direct translational
equivalence. Such lexical
collocations do not have to be taught. The teaching of lexicalcollocations
in
EFL should concentrate,
instead, on items for which there is no direct
translational
equivalence in English and in the learners respective
mother
tongues.1

A neglected
aspect of
vocabulary
teaching

One of the main developments in the field of ELT during the last decade
has been a renewed interest in problems of vocabulary teaching. After the
two decades from 1960 to 1980, when questions of grammar and
grammar teaching were predominant, this general reorientation from
grammar to vocabulary is definitely a step in the right direction. There is,
however, one particular aspect of vocabulary learning which deserves
more attention than it has received up to now, and this is the problem of
word combinability. One of the main difficulties students encounter in
relation to new items of vocabulary is knowing what their collocational
properties are . . . (Rudzka et al., 1981b: 5). Unfortunately for the
foreign language learner, words do not co-occur freely; instead, there are
(varying levels of) co-occurrence restrictions (Allerton, 1984) which the
learner has to adhere to.
Most teachers of English as a Foreign Language (particularly those who
are native speakers of that language) will have noticed that their learners
often have problems in choosing the correct combination of two (or more)
words. Here are a few typical examples of wrong word combinations:2
a.

*feeble tea

b. *put up a campaign, *laugh broadly

C.

*commit treachery, *hold a burial

d. *climb a horse, *healthy advice

Such errors show a lack of collocational competence in the learner.

Korosadowicz-Struzynska
(1980: 115) gives an apt characterization of
the effect of this type of vocabulary error:
Errors in the use of word collocations surely add to the foreign flavour
in the learners speech and writing and along with his faulty
pronunciation they are the strongest markers of an accent.
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What do we mean
by collocation?

Regrettably, collocation is a term which is used and understood in many

different ways. It is, however, not possible to present and discuss the
various understandings of the term within this article. Instead, I shall give
a short account of the way in which Benson, Benson, and Ilson (1986a-b)
understand and use this term:
In English, as in other languages, there are many fixed, identifiable,
non-idiomatic phrases and constructions. Such groups of words are
called recurrent combinations, fixed combinations, or collocations.
Collocations fall into two major groups: grammatical collocations and
lexical collocations. (1986b: ix)
Examples of grammatical collocations include: account for, advantage
over, adjacent to, by accident, to be afraid that . . . They consist of a
noun, an adjective, or a verb, plus a preposition or a grammatical structure
such as an infinitive or clause. Lexical collocations, on the other hand, do
not contain prepositions, infinitives, or clauses, but consist of various
combinations of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Benson, Benson,
and Ilson distinguish several structural types of lexical collocations:
verb + noun (inflict a wound, withdraw an offer); adjective + noun (a
crushing defeat); noun + verb (blizzards rage); noun1 + noun2 (a pride of
lions), adverb + adjective (deeply absorbed), verb + adverb (appreciate
sincerely). In the following, we will neglect grammatical collocations
with their specific problems, and concentrate, instead, on lexical
collocations.

Collocations,
idioms, and free
combinations

To attain a clearer understanding of (lexical) collocations, it is helpful to try

to distinguish them from idioms on the one hand and from free combinations on the other. Benson, Benson, and Ilson (1986a: 252-53) use
combinations with the noun murder to illustrate the main distinguishing
features of the three categories. The least cohesive type of word combination are the so-called free combinations. The noun murder, for
example, can be used with many verbs (to analyse, boast of, condemn,
discuss, (etc.) a murder), and these verbs, in turn, combine freely with other
nouns. Idioms, on the other hand, are relatively frozen expressions whose
meanings do not reflect the meanings of their component parts. An example
containing the noun murder would be to scream blue murder (to complain
very loudly). Between idioms and free combinations are loosely fixed
combinations (or collocations) of the type to commit murder. The main
characteristics of collocations are that their meanings reflect the meaning of
their constituent parts (in contrast to idioms) and that they are used
frequently, spring to mind readily, and are psychologically salient (in
contrast to free combinations). There are, however, transitional areas
(Cruse, 1986: 41) between free combinations/collocations
and
collocations/idioms.

Collocations
and
foreign language
teaching research

Collocations have recently become one of the main concerns of

lexicography. Lexicographers
have been discussing the role and
importance of collocations in general-purpose dictionaries as well as in
learners dictionaries (Benson, 1985, 1990; Cowie, 1978, 1981;
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57
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Hausmann, 1985; Zfgen, 1986). Should dictionary entries contain

typical collocations, and, if so, which collocations should be given and
how many? In addition, the concept of a dictionary of collocations has
been receiving renewed3 attention, as can be seen from The BBI
Combinatory Dictionary of English - A Guide to Word Combinations
(Benson, Benson, and Ilson, 1986b), and from Collins COBUILD English
Words in Use - A Dictionary of Collocations, 1991). In this context,
mention should also be made of the Oxford Dictionary of Current
Idiomatic English (Cowie and Mackin, (Vol. 1) 1975; Cowie, Mackin,
and McCaig, (Vol. 2) 1983), which, according to Mackin (1978: 149), is
essentially a dictionary of collocations.
While reliable and manifold dictionaries are one indispensable basis for
foreign language teaching, there are further problems which EFL research
has to tackle with regard to collocations. In my view, there are at least
three major questions in this context:
1 Do collocations need special attention in the EFL classroom? Do we
have to teach collocations or are they learned en passant, more or less
automatically, together with single lexical items?
2 Should we decide that special attention is necessary, the next problem is
that of choice. Which of the tens of thousands of collocations do we
select for special treatment in the classroom? Are there any criteria to
decide which collocations need to be taught and which do not?
3 When we have decided on what to teach, the next question touches on
methodological problems. How should we handle collocations in the
classroom? What kind of exercises are most effective?
The present paper is devoted to a discussion of the second question. But
before we turn to the problem of selecting collocations for teaching
purposes, a few remarks on the basic question of whether to teach
collocations at all might be in order.
Should we teach
collocations?

One of the few EFL researchers to have stressed the necessity of actually
teaching collocations is Joanna Channel1 (1981). Together with three
colleagues, she has produced two excellent workbooks (Rudzka et al.,
1981a, 1985) for advanced EFL learners, in which special emphasis is put
on distinguishing broadly synonymous vocabulary items through their
different collocational properties.
The importance of teaching collocations is also stressed in particular by
Polish FLT research (glottodidactics). Waldemar Marton (1977: 43), for
example, sees indications that mere exposure to the target language is not
sufficient for the advanced learner to acquire the knowledge of
conventional syntagms. (Syntagms here equate with collocations.) He
argues that if language teachers want to guide advanced learners towards
a native-like command of the foreign language, they should pay special
attention to their effective learning of conventional syntagms (ibid.: 54).
A further study, in which the question under discussion is answered in the
affirmative, is Bahns and Eldaw (1990). In an experiment consisting of a

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translation task and a gap-filling task with 58 advanced learners of

English with German as a native language, it was found that the students
knowledge of collocations had not developed at the same rate as their
knowledge of vocabulary in general.
No less a scholar than Ronald Mackin, however, seems to be rather
sceptical with regard to the possibility of actually teaching collocations.
In an article (Mackin, 1978) on problems arising from the lexicographic
treatment of collocations, he claims that the learner of English as a foreign
language cannot hope to learn all the collocations he or she should know
in any principled way because of the sheer amount of material (tens of
thousands of such collocations, 1978: 150). As they are in any case so
numerous as to rule out any methodical teaching or acquisition of them,
Mackin sees the only way for the foreign language learner to acquire some
degree of collocational competence in years of study, reading, and
observation of the language (1978: 1.51). While Mackin is right in
pointing out that the number of collocations an advanced learner of
English should be able to use productively is considerable, he seems to
have overlooked one important aspect of the problem - not all of the tens
of thousands of collocations have to be learnt.
Which
collocations
need
not be learnt?

Mackins estimation that advanced learners of English should have a

command of tens of thousands of collocations is probably not
exaggerated. Compare the figures given for the two collocational
dictionaries of English mentioned above: The BBZ Combinatory
Dictionary of English gives over 70,000 combinations and phrases under
a total of 14,000 entries, while Collins COBUILD English Words in Use
offers about 100,000 collocational examples grouped around 5,000
headwords from the core vocabulary of modern English.4 Is there a way to
reduce these enormous learning and teaching loads? Does the learner
really have to learn all of these collocations? We may find a solution to
this problem if we look at collocations from a contrastive point of view.
This way of considering the problem is also advocated by Marton (1977:
40-l):
But the notion of conventional syntagm finds its full dimension only
when it is considered contrastively, i.e. when the native language of the
learner and his target language are taken into consideration. Real
learning problems are caused by these syntagms which are,
comparatively speaking, lexically non-congruent, or, in other words,
by those in which there is no direct translational equivalence between
their corresponding elements.
Let us illustrate this point of view with a few examples from German and
English. If we restrict our attention for a while to one of the collocational
subtypes distinguished by Benson, Benson, and Ilson, namely the type
verb + noun, a contrastive analysis shows that there is direct
translational equivalence for a large number of (English) verb + noun
collocations as compared with their German (noun + verb) counterparts
(see Table 1).5
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Table 1:
German noun + verb
collocations for which
there is direct
translational equivalence
in English

IWW
-

Arger + hinunterschlucken
Appetit + verderben
Geduld + verlieren
Gelegenheit + ergreifen
Gesetz + brechen
lnteresse + zeigen
Kontrolle + ausben
Lsung + finden
Schlu + ziehen
Schutz + suchen
Thema + wechseln
Verantwortung
+ tragen
Versprechen + brechen
Zimmer + lften
Zweifel + beseitigen

+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+

DS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+

BBI
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
-

DEWC
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+

swallow + anger
spoil + appetite
lose + patience
seize + opportunity
break + law
show + interest
exercise + control
find + solution
draw + conclusion
seek + shelter
change + subject
bear + responsibility
break + promise
air + room
remove + doubts

The German learner of English will most probably have no difficulty in

producing the English collocations of Table 1, as he or she simply has to
translate both constituents in a rather straightforward way (i.e. they can
use the (verb) equivalents which spring to mind most readily). If,
however, a German learner of English wants to render the German noun
+ verb collocations of Table 2 into English, the probability of committing
collocational errors rises enormously. Here, a straightforward translation
of the verbal element of the German noun + verb collocations will result
in a collocational error, as shown in the middle column of Table 2.

Table 2:
German noun+verb
collocations for which
there is no direct

translational equivalence
in English

Drohung+wahrmachen
Falle+stellen
Familie+grnden
Feuer+legen
Foto+machen
Geld+abheben
Kompliment+machen
Nachricht+
(ber)bringen
Opfer+bringen
Pilze+sammeln
Sahne+schlagen
Tagebuch+fhren
Tisch+decken
Versprechen+halten
Wahrheit+sagen

WW DS literal translation
+ make
true+threat
+ + put+trap
+ + found+family
+ + lay+fire
+ make+photograph
+ + lift+money
+ + make+compliment

+
+
+
+
+
+
+

+
+
+
+
+
+
+

bring+message
bring+sacrifice
collect+mushrooms
beat+cream
lead+diary
cover+table
hold+promise
say+truth

BBJ DEWC
+ - fulfil+threat
I+ lay+trap
start+family
set+fire
take+photograph
(with)draw+money
pay+compliment

+
I+
1:
+

+
:
+

+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+

+
+
+
+
+
+
+

deliver+message
make+sacrifice
pick+mushrooms
whip+cream
keep+diary
lay+table
keep+promise
tell+truth

These combinations
differs

are possible in English, but they have a meaning

from the meaning of the respective German collocation.

which

Thus, the collocations in Table 2, for which there is no direct translational

equivalence, would need particular attention in the teaching of English to
speakers of German, while collocations comparable to the examples in
Table 1 would neither have to be learned nor taught as far as German
learners of English are concerned.
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Different
collocations
for
learners with
different
mother
tongues

To teach English collocations to speakers of other languages, it would, of

course, be very useful to have a rich variety of teaching material like
collections of exercises and workbooks. As there is a growing awareness,
in the field of EFL, of the importance of collocations for the teaching and
learning of truly idiomatic English (for this goal, collocations seem to be
more important than idioms), we will probably see, in the not-too-distant
future, the publication of (more) material for the teaching of collocations
to learners of different levels of proficiency. Materials writers who intend
to set out on this task should, however, bear in mind what was pointed out
above: it will not be advisable to have the same selection of collocations
for all learners of English as a Foreign Language. The collocations chosen
for inclusion in such material will have to be different in each case,
depending on the Ll of the learners.
There seems to be a fundamental difference between the selection, for
teaching purposes, of collocations and of idioms. Workbooks intended for
the teaching of idioms to learners of English use criteria like frequency
and usefulness to choose from among the total number of 5,000 to 10,000
idioms existing in English. Such selections of idioms, consisting of
between 200 and 800 items, can be used for all learners, no matter what
their L 1 is. Even if there are idioms which are identical in English and in
a particular learners Ll - that
is, if there is direct translational
equivalence (which is rather the exception with idioms) - such idioms
can and should be included and taught, as the learner will not expect such
a direct translational equivalence in the case of idioms. Learners seem to
operate with a hypothesis that idioms are language-specific and hence
non-transferable (Kellerman, 1978). Therefore, it is necessary to teach all
idioms which are regarded as useful for the learner, even if single items do
have a direct translational equivalence.
With regard to collocations, however, learners seem to rely on a
hypothesis of transferability. The majority of collocational errors can be
traced to Ll influence. Cases in point include:6
a.

*drive a bookshop (from Polish kierowac sklepem) instead of run a

bookshop

b. *make attention at (from French faire attention ) instead of pay

attention to
C.

*win money (from Bulgarian -------

instead of make money

d. *finish a conflict (from German einen KonfIikt beenden) instead of

resolve a conflict
For this reason, it is necessary to distinguish (out of all the collocations
considered worth knowing for the learner of English) such collocations
which the learner with a particular Ll background knows already
(because they are fully equivalent in his or her Ll and in English), from
those collocations which a contrastive analysis has shown to be languagespecific (in at least one of the components) and which the learner really
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has to learn. In this way, the amount of material to be included in

workbooks for collocations can be reduced considerably.
Implications

What EFL teachers need for an effective training of collocational

competence in their classes (as long as these are homogenous with regard
to the Ll) are workbooks presenting a selection of collocations geared to
the specific difficulties of learners with a particular Ll background. Such
material would allow us to actually teach collocations and thus shorten, at
least to a certain extent, the long and laborious process of acquiring
collocational
competence
through years of study, reading, and
observation of the language (Mackin, 1978: 151).
Received November 1991

Notes

References

1 This paper is based on a talk entitled Kollokationen

und idioms - kontrastiv betrachtet, given at the 14.
Kongre fr Fremdsprachendidaktik, Essen (FRG),
1991. I would like to thank Petra Burmeister, Lesley
Drewing, Moira Eldaw, Martin Nuttall, and Thomas
Vogel for comments on earlier versions of the paper.
2 These examples of collocational errors are taken
from the following sources: a) Mackin (1978:
150); b) Channell (1981: 115); c) Benson (1985:
64); d) Gabrys-Biskup (1990: 36 and 38).
3 Benson, Benson, and Ilsons claim that much of
the material provided in this Dictionary (i.e. their
Combinatory Dictionary of English) has never
before been published (1986b: vii) has to be
qualified somewhat: there have been (English)
collocational dictionaries before, but they were
called dictionaries of style (e.g. Reum, 1931;
Leonhardi, 1955).
4 Figures taken from publishers advertisements.
5 To make sure that Tables 1 and 2 do not include any
free combinations, the collocational status of the
combinations included has been checked in two
German and two English collocational dictionaries
(WW = Agricola, 1990; DS = Drosdowski, 1988;
BBI = Benson,
Benson,
and Ilson,
1986b;
DEWC = Friederich and Canavan, 1979). The
sign + indicates that the combination is given in the
respective dictionary, while the sign - means that
the combination is not given.
6 These examples are taken from the following
sources: a) Gabrys-Biskup (1990: 39); b) Smadja
(1989: 163); c) Kouteva (1988: 193); d) Bahns
(1987: 92).

Agricola, E. 1990. Wrter und Wendungen. Leipzig:

Bibliographisches Institut.
Allerton, D. J. 1984. Three (or four) levels of word
co-occurrence restriction. Lingua 63: 17-40.
Arabski,
J. (ed.) 1990. Foreign
Language
Acquisition Papers. Katowice: Universytet Slaski.
Bahns, J. 1987. Kollokationen
in englischen
Wrterbchern. Anglistik & Englischunterricht
32: 87-104.
Bahns, J., and M. Eldaw. 1990. Should we teach
EFL students collocations?. Paper given at 9th
World
Congress
of
Applied
Linguistics,
Thessaloniki.
Barrera-Vidal, A., M. Raupach, and H. Kleineidam (eds.). 1986. Franzsische Sprachlehre und
bon usage. Mnchen: Hueber.
Benson, M. 1985. Collocations and idioms, in Ilson
(ed.). 1985.
Benson, M. 1990. Collocations and general-purpose
International
Journal
of
dictionaries.
Lexicography 3: 23-34.
Benson, M., E. Benson, and R. Ilson. 1986a.
Lexicographic
Description
of
English.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
Benjamins.
Benson, M., E. Benson, and R. Ilson. 1986b. The
BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English. A Guide
to Word Combinations. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
Benjamins.
Bergenholtz,
H., and
J. Mugdan
(eds.).
Lexikographie
und
Grammatik.
Tbingen:
Niemeyer.
Channell, J. 1981. Applying semantic theory to
vocabulary teaching. English Language Teaching
Journal 35: 115-22.

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Cowie, A. P. 1978. The place of illustrative material

and collocations in the design of a learners
dictionary, in Strevens (ed.). 1978.
Cowie, A. P. 1981. The treatment of collocations and
dictionaries.
Applied
idioms
in learners
Linguistics 2: 223-35.
Cowie, A. P. and R. Mackin. 1975. Oxford
Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English. Vol. 1:
Verbs with Prepositions and Particles. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Cowie, A. P., R. Mackin, and I. R. McCaig. 1983.
Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English.
Vol. 2: Phrase, Clause, and Sentence Idioms.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cruse, D. A. 1986. Lexical Semantics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Danchev, A. (ed.). 1988. Error Analysis - Bulgarian
Learners of English. Sofia: State Publishing
House.
Drosdowski, G. 1988. Duden Stilwrteruch
der
Mannheim/Wien/Zrich:
deutschen
Sprache.
Dudenverlag.
Friederich, W. and J. Canavan. 1979. Dictionary of
English Words in Context. Dortmund: Lensing.
Gabrys-Biskup,
D. 1990. Some remarks on
combinability: Lexical collocations, in Arabski
(ed.), 1990.
Hausmann, F. J. 1985. Kollokation im deutschen
Wrterbuch.
Ein Beitrag zur Theorie des
lexikographischen Beispiels, in Bergenholtz and
Mugdan (eds.). 1985.
Ilson, R. (ed.). 1985. Dictionaries, Lexicography and
Language Learning. Oxford/New York/Toronto:
Pergamon.
Kellerman, E. 1978. Giving learners a break: native
language intuitions as a source of predictions about
transferability. Working Papers on Bilingualism
15: 59-92.
Korosadowicz-Struzynska,
M.
1980.
Word
collocations in FL vocabulary instruction. Studia
Anglica Posnaniensia 12: 109-20.

Kouteva, T. 1988. Phraseological errors in the

interlanguage of Bulgarian learners of English, in
Danchev (ed.). 1988.
Leonhardi, A. 1955. The Learners Dictionary of
Style. Dortmund: Lensing.
Mackin, R. 1978. On collocations: Words shall be
known by the company they keep, in Strevens
(ed.) 1978.
Marton, W. 1977. Foreign vocabulary learning as
problem No. 1 of language teaching at the
advanced level. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin
2:33-57.
Reum, A. 1931. A Dictionary of English Style.
Leipzig: Weber.
Rudzka, B., J. Channell, Y. Putseys, and P. Ostyn.
1981a. The Words You Need. London: Macmillan.
Rudzka, B., J. Channell, Y. Putseys, and P. Ostyn.
198lb. The Words You Need. Teachers Book.
London: Macmillan.
Rudzka, B., J. Channell, Y. Putseys, and P. Ostyn.
1985. More Words You Need. London: Macmillan.
Smadja, F. A. 1989. Lexical co-occurrence: The
missing link. Literary and Linguistic Computing
4: 163-68.
Strevens, P. (ed.). 1978. In Honour of A. S. Hornby.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1986.
Kollokation - KonZfgen,
E.
textualisierung - (Beleg)
Satz. Anmerkungen zu
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and
Kleineidam (eds.).
The author
Jens Bahns is Director of the Language Laboratory
at Pdagogische Hochschule Kiel, FRG, where his
work involves teacher training at the undergraduate
level. He has a PhD in English Philology from the
University of Kiel. His current interests are in second
language
acquisition,
vocabulary
learning
and
teaching, and listening comprehension.

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