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Collocations in Arabic
3.1. Introduction
This chapter presents collocations in Arabic language. It begins with an
overview of the term “collocations” in Arabic and provides the Arab’s different
perspectives regarding the phenomenon in Arabic. Then, it describes different
types of collocations in Arabic. Also, Arabic collocations in lexicography and
Arabic corpus studies are also addressed.
means and ends الوسائل و الغاياتbread and butter قوت اليوم/لقمة عيش
food and drinks الطعام والشرابgood and evil الخير والشر
form and content الشكل والمضمونvice and virtue الفضيلة والرذيلة
terms and conditions بنود وشروطheart and soul قلبا وقالبا
goods and chattels اموال منقولة وغير منقولةwonderments & bewilderments
عجائب وغرائب
Despite that the abovementioned examples seem to be easy to interpret,
some of these collocations may have different structure notwithstanding. For
instance, the structure of “he is with us heart and soul” “ ”هو معنا قلبا وقالباhas the
same meaning but in a different structure that includes an adverb “he is with us
wholeheartedly”.
The eighth structure of Arabic collocations deals with the different sounds
of animals, insects and certain objects. The pattern consists of noun + verb.
Consider the following examples:
Table (9) presents pattern number eight that made up of noun + verb
c. Bound collocations: Cowie (1981: 228, cited in Emery 1991: 61) refers
to bound collocations as “a bridge between collocations and idioms”.
This type is non-literal. One element of this combination attracts the
other in a distinctive way.
e.g. huge/ tremendous army
جيش جرار
e.g. حرب ضروس
fierce war
d. Idioms: the constitute elements of idioms are opaque as mentioned
earlier which form a semantic unit.
e.g. حرب باردة
the cold war
Association agreement means that the two combined words should have
some kind of harmony between its constituents. For instance, the Arabic
equivalence of collocations such as a pretty woman “" إمراه جميلةor a handsome
man" " رجل وسيمis the same. This means that in Arabic it is not acceptable to say
pretty man or vice versa.
Collocational range refers to how many words can easily combine together
to form collocations. For example, the words die which means (maat) in Arabic
has plenty of words that can collocate with. It can go easily with words related to
human beings or an animate. Co-occurrence of collocations means the normal
combination of words together in any language.
Husamaddin (1985, cited in Brashi 2005: 35), categorizes collocations in
Arabic into seven different types. His classification based on specific elements
such as the sounds made by different animals or cutting objects, names of places
etc.
to cut one’s nose جدع أنفهto cut one’s ear حلمة اذنه
to cut one’s lip شرم شفتهto cut one’s eyelid شتر جفنه
to cut one’s hand جذم يده
The third type of Arabic collocations refers to the place where animals and
insects inhabit. The following are examples of this pattern:
Table (22) includes collocations of animals’ places
figure (1) shows the entry of Ghazala’s dictionary of collocations of letter (a) and it Arabic collocations.
3.4.2.2. Al-Hafiz’s Arabic Collocations (2004)
The second dictionary of recent Arabic dictionaries be dealt with is Al-
Hafiz (2004) by Dr. Tahir A. Hafiz. The dictionary is intended for Arabic learners
of English and vice versa. The dictionary includes Arabic collocations of different
parts of speech. The lexicographer excludes open collocations in his dictionary
and includes three types only namely; restricted collocations, bound and idioms.
The reason for his choice of the three types and excluding free collocations is that
free combinations are easily and freely to combine. For instance, beautiful house
بيت جميلbait jameel can collocate with a wide range of words freely.
The lexicographer listed the entries to be the first letter of the first word in
the combination. For instance, بيت القصيدmust be entered under the letter section
of بin alphabetical order with the other items regardless of whether the first word
is the collocator or the core word. Hafiz (2004) claims that in Arabic-English
dictionaries, a collocation should be entered under the core word. Nevertheless,
for reasons related to time consuming and speed, he argues that the entered
collocation should be included both under the core word alphabetically in one
entry and under its other collocate(s) in a separate entry. For example, (the verb-
noun) collocation اشتدت الحربcan be found under the of ( )أin the verb اشتدas well
as in the entry of the letter ( )حas in the noun ()حرب. The dictionary includes 7756
collocations in general. Each entry is headed by the letter it represents. The
collocations are illustrated by using the core word and the collocate, then it
follows by an explanation of the meaning of each one with examples.
figure (2) shows the layout of Hafiz’s dictionary and how the node and the collocates are represented in the
dictionary in addition to the meaning and examples.
According to Van Mol (2000), the reason behind this complexity of Arabic
corpora is due to three main aspects. In the first place, Arabic language is very
polysemic by which he means that creating new words in Arabic is most probably
done through expanding the older meaning of an existing word to a new one. In
this process, the external morphological pattern of the word still the same despite
the fact that it carries a new meaning. He gives an example of the word مضخة
madaxa in Arabic has two meanings either to pump or bicycle pump. The aspects
of polysemic in Arabic language hinders the ability of tagging the words as a unit
of the language.
The second reason for the complexity of Arabic corpora is that Arabic is
usually not vocalized (i.e. written without short vowel strokes), by which the
ambiguity of the words is more obvious in comparing with other languages, e.g.
English and Dutch. For instance, he provides an example of the word “ktb” in
which he claims that in its raw form, can belong to various grammatical
categories. The string of its characters can stand for the verb “kataba” (to write)
and the plural form of the word kutub (books). Another clear-cut example was
provided by Hasnah & Evans (2005: 5, cited in Brashi 2005: 50), the word علم
؟alam has many different pronunciation. This leads to complicate the process of
searching for words in Arabic corpus of texts.
Finally, Van Mol (2000) asserts that what makes Arabic corpora
complexity is due to the prefixes and suffixes that are attached directly to words.
A matter that makes searching by computer for worse. For example, the string of
word (fhm) which consists of three letters can stand for the verb (fahima) (to
mean). Also, it can stand for the particle and suffix (fahum) (and they) or for the
particle and the verb fahamma (and they began). The point is that in order to
search for one word in the computer based on the string of words, one may find
a number of unnecessary words.
figure (3) represents the Sketch Engine concordance program and the collocation of the word farm in Arabic.