16 Meaning emphasizes the importance of context: the context of the social setting,
the context of spoken and textual discourse, and, important for collocations, the context of surrounding words. These contextual features easily get lost in the
abstract treatment that is typical of structural linguistics. A good example of the type of problem that is seen as important in this
contextual view of language is Halliday’s example of strong vs. powerful tea Halliday 1966: 150. It is a convention in English to talk about strong tea, not
powerful tea, although any speaker of English would also understand the latter
unconventional expression. Arguably, there are no interesting structural properties of English that can be collected from this contrast. However, the contrast may tell
the readers something interesting about attitudes towards different types of
substances in readers’ culture why do we use powerful for drugs like heroin, but
not for cigarettes, tea and coffee? and it is obviously important to teach this contrast to students who want to learn idiomatically correct English. Most
collocations are also assumed adjacency of words. But in most linguistically oriented research, a phrase can be a collocation even if it is not consecutive as in
the example provide information.
2. Phraseology Framework
Within the general framework of phraseology, the present research focuses on a possibly narrow but linguistically and numerically prominent area. Figure 2.1
shows phraseology framework proposed by Cowie 1988.
17
word combinations
functional expressions composite units gambits formulae
grammatical lexical proverbs etc
collocations collocations
Figure 2.1 Phraseology Framework Based on Cowie 1988
The first major division in word combinations is between “functional expressions” and “composite units”. The former have evolved meanings which
are largely a reflection of the way they function in discourse Cowie 1988:132,
and can frequently be identified with specific speech acts such as greeting good morning or discourse functions such as recapping as has been shown, many of
them, especially in speech, consisting of grammatically complete sentences. Although fixed expressions with a discourse structuring function can easily be
identified in academic writing, they are not sufficiently central to the main focus of this research to be included in the analysis.
The latter, “composite units”, are characterized by being grammatically well-formed constituents of a clause or sentence and having a primarily
propositional function. These units can be further subdivided into grammatical and lexical collocations a distinction made in Benson et al., 1986, the first being
combinations of a content word and a function word for example,
verb+preposition such as get on or adjective+preposition as in keen on, the
second consisting of two or more content words many different combinations of verb, noun, adjective and adverb, though other grammatical material may
18 intervene between the two primary elements in the collocation and form a
compulsory constituent: for example: have a significant effect on someone. This
combination is a recognisable unit as a whole and at the same time is composed of both grammatical and lexical collocations. Figure 2.2 shows an example of
composite unit of lexical and grammatical collocation.
have a significant effect on sth lexical
grammatical lexical
Figure 2.2 Composite Unit of Lexical and Grammatical Collocation
These are lexical collocations and grammatical collocation of the above kind that are the focus of this study. The following list presents examples of such
composites. The list indicates the range of syntactic structures that are associated with verbal patterns and given the coding
adj + n
crying shame
n + PrepP tissue of lies
n + adj battle royal
adv + adj woefully inadequate
adv + v richly deserve
S + V common sense prevails
Verbal patterns Tn
cast a vote
Tn.pr serve notice on sb
Tn.p run up a bill
Ipr resort to violence
19 It is essential to consider lexical collocations as realisations of specific
syntactic patterns, rather than as mere co-occurrences of word forms on the surface of texts. The psycholinguistic evidence points to word combinations being
stored and retrieved in combination with their syntactic structures Pawley Syder 1983: 209. They are to varying degrees manipulated as wholes, or
lexicalised Pawley, 1985. The more lexicalised they are the less language users analyse them into their constituent parts and the more speedily they can be
retrieved and comprehended Gibbs Gonzales, 1985. The most extreme instances of this phenomenon are idiomatic expressions which are semantically
unanalyzable e.g. kick the bucket and occasionally syntactically inconsistent trip the light fantastic. In addition, there are numerous idiosyncratic structural
features of lexical combinations. Compare, for example, the idiom take steps to do something, which cannot be used in that sense with a singular noun and is
frequently found in the passive form, with take a steptwo steps forward, as a figurative idiom and take a stepseveral steps towards somebody, a restricted
collocation, which can be used with either a singular or plural noun and would be
unusual in the passive. Indeed the co-occurrence of step and take in a passive
construction would strongly bias the interpretation towards the idiomatic sense.
3. Translation a. Definition of Translation
