T1 112008039 Full text
A STUDY ON WORD COMBINATIONS
USED IN AGATHA CHRISTIE’S NOVEL, THE PALE HORSE
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirement for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Grace Maytri Haryono
112008039
ENGLISH DEPARMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2013
1
A STUDY ON WORD COMBINATIONS
USED IN AGATHA CHRISTIE’S NOVEL, THE PALE HORSE
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirement for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Grace Maytri Haryono
112008039
ENGLISH DEPARMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2013
2
3
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
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accepted for the fulfillment of any degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my
knowledge and my belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any
other person except where due reference is made in the text.
Copyright@ 2013. Grace Maytri Haryono.
All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced by any means without the
permission of at least one of the copyright owners or the English Department, Faculty of
Language and Literature, Satya Wacana University, Salatiga.
Grace Maytri Haryono :
4
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: 112008039
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A STUDY ON WORD COMBINATIONS
USED IN AGATHA CHRISTIE’S NOVEL, THE PALE HORSE
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Thesis Examiner
Dian Toar Y.G Sumakul, M.A
5
Table of Content
List of Tables .........................................................................................................................VII
List of Figurines .....................................................................................................................VII
Introduction ...........................................................................................................................1
Word Combination.................................................................................................................3
Free Combination ..................................................................................................................4
Collocations ...........................................................................................................................4
Idioms .................................................................................................................................6
Compounds ..........................................................................................................................7
Statement of the Problem .......................................................................................................8
Research Question ................................................................................................................8
Purpose of the Study ..............................................................................................................8
Significance of the Study .......................................................................................................8
Scope of the Study .................................................................................................................9
Research Design.....................................................................................................................9
Data Collection ......................................................................................................................10
Results and Discussion ..........................................................................................................10
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................14
Acknowledgment ...................................................................................................................15
References ..............................................................................................................................17
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List of Tables
Table 1, Categories of Word Combination ...........................................................................2
Table 2, Example of Free Combination .................................................................................4
Table 3, Example of Collocations .........................................................................................5
Table 4, Free Combination vs. Collocation vs. Idioms .........................................................7
Table 5, The Exact Quantity of Word Combination
Used in Agatha Christie novel, The Pala Horse .....................................................10
Table 6, Lexical Collocations
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, The Pale Horse ....................................11
Table 7, Free Combination
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, The Pale Horse ...................................12
Table 8, Idioms
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, The Pale Horse ....................................13
Figure 9, Compounds
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, The Pale Horse ...................................14
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List of Figures
Figure 1, The Relationship Between Free Combinations, Collocations, Idioms ...................4
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A Study on Word Combinations used in Agatha Christie Novel, “The Pale Horse”
Grace Maytri Haryono
Abstract
This study presents word combinations based on Benson categorization, which are
free combinations, collocations, idioms, and compounds used in chapter one of Agatha
Christie novel, The Pale Horse. The purpose of this study is to find out the most frequent
word combinations used and relate them to with Christie’s writing style. The result of this
study shows that the most frequent word combinations used in this novel is collocation and
for the writing style, Agatha Christie sometime tend to use uncommon words and phrase to
make the language of her novel more interesting.
Key Words
Keywords : word combinations, free combinations, collocations, idioms, compounds.
Introduction
“Words play an enormous part in our lives and are therefore deserving of the closest
study” –Aldous Huxley- (1894-1963). That is a magnificent quotation from the famous
English novelist which represents how words can be very important and crucial in people‟s
lives. There is no day without words. People use words in many different ways and thus of
words leads to different interpretations towards another word.
When a person reads a word or a sentence, a number of processes will occur. The
person must recognize the word, then identify its meaning, and when reading a sentence they
have to combine the word into the meaning of the sentence. These processes also happen
when we read and try to comprehend a novel. One of the problems is one word can have
more than one meaning depending on the combination with other words, which is called its
word combinations. Take for example, the word “run” in “he runs” and in the word “run
businesses” have a big difference in meaning. “Run” in first phrase means “to move with
quick steps” while in second are means “to manage”.
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Scholars further classify word combinations into free combination, collocations,
idioms, and compounds. Some word combinations do not have literal meaning and therefore
a reader may misunderstand the text. For example, students who learn English as a
second/foreign language may not know the meaning of “to bury the hatchet” which is to
reconcile. Similarly, the word combination in “Bella is in hot water”, which means “Bella is
to be in trouble”. People may incorrectly believe that Bella is literally submerged. It shows
that it is very important for students to familiarize themselves with word combinations, so
that they can successfully comprehend the entire meaning of text (Dews, et al, 1996).
Knowledge of word combination is also crucial in order to construct natural – sounding texts,
both oral and written. With this in mind, I have chosen word combinations as the subject of
my study.
For this purpose I have selected Agatha Christie‟s nove „The Pale Horse‟ for the
source of my data to show the extent of word combinations more fully since it can be
assumed that literally texts are more endowed with various types of word combinations than
other types of texts. In addition, her style is also relevant to the study on word combination.
Agatha Christie often makes uncommon words and phrases (Danielsson, et.al, 2012)
and examples can be seen in part of the result and discussion. From her novel we can learn
uncommon word combination which can be useful to enrich our word combination repertoire.
She also often uses fixed phrases which are very common in spoken language (the examples
can be seen in the part of the result and discussion). With this in mind, one of my aims to
study the word combination in her novel is to find out how the compositions of her use of
word combinations can explain her style of writing.
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Word Combinations
Benson (1986) and Howarth (1998) have the same concept of word combinations
which is related to the possibility of different words to appear together in the text. Although
using different labels, they represent very similar sets of categories such as free
combinations, collocations, idioms and compounds as shown in table 1.
(Table 1)
Categorizes of Word Combination
Howarth (1998)
Benson (1986)
Free combinations
Free combinations
The meaning of free combinations derives
Their components are the freest in regard to
from the literal meaning of individual
being combined with other lexical items.
elements.
Ex: write letter, read a book
Ex: drink milk, wash hair, eat candy
Restricted collocations
Collocations
It is more limited in the selection of
Loosely fixedword combinations and the
compositional elements and usually has one
meanings are close to their components part.
component used in specialized context.
Ex: close attention, pure chance, to commit a
Ex: keep the change, get angry, go crazy
murder
Figurative idioms
Idioms
It has a metaphorical meaning as a whole that Frozen expression whose meanings do not
can somehow not represent literal
reflect the meanings of their component
interpretation.
parts.
Ex: do a U turn, break a leg, break the ice
Ex: to kill two birds with one stone, to kick
the bucket
Pure idioms
Compounds
It is a single unit whose meaning is totally
The most fixed word combinations,
unpredictable from the meaning of its
completely frozen and no variants at all are
components.
possible.
Ex: blow the gaff, as easy as pie
Ex: floppy disk, break through
From table 1 we can see that eventhough Howarth and Benson use different way to
explain each of word combinations, they actually have the same concept and it can be used to
complement each other. The main difference between them is in compounds and idioms.
Benson mentions “compounds” as one of word combinations while Howarth does not
mention at all. For idioms, Howarth divides it into figurative and pure idioms, while Benson
only uses the term idioms.
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For this study I will focus on Benson‟s theory of word combination and add some
additional theories from other researcher, such as Shin & Nation (2012), Sapientiae (2010),
Berkowitz (2009), Mckeown & Radev (1999) who have the same concept with Benson. To
clarify Benson‟s theory about word combinations, I will explain each of them and give some
example.
Free Combination
The first type of word combinations is free combination. Free combination is the
freest combination of words and it means that this combination has the highest degree of the
possibility of different words to appear together. Example of free combination are provided in
table 2 below.
drink
eat
wash
read
Table 2
Example of Free Combination
drink milk, drink tea, drink water, drink beer,
drink coffee, drink wine
eat a bananas, eat a candies, eat a rice, eat an
apple, eat a cupcake, eat a burger
wash hair, wash dishes, wash cloth,
read a newspaper, read a novel, read a book,
read a journal, read a bible, read a magazine
From table 2 we can see that in free combination, one word can be used with many other
words and the meaning of free combination can be seen literally or from the meaning of each
word.
Collocations
The second type of word combination is collocations. Collocation is used to
refer to a group of two or more words that occur frequently together. According to Benson
(1986), collocation is divided into Grammatical Collocation and Lexical Collocation.
Grammatical collocation consists of a preposition and main word (noun, adjective, and verb)
and it is a frozen collocation, because it has to follow the grammar rule (the rule of using
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preposition, etc). Some examples of grammatical collocations are “at the moment”, “across
the sky”, “at the end”, “looked into”, and “pushed back”.
While lexical collocation is defined in contrast to grammatical collocation as
normally not containing prepositions, infinitives or clause and typically consisting of noun,
adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Some examples of lexical collocations are “take note”, “hot
bath”, “walk heavily”, and “take place”.
Meanwhile, in this study I will focus more on lexical than grammatical
collocations because the later is kind of representation grammar rules (e.g: how to use
prepositions correctly).
. Benson (1986) stated that collocation is part of word combinations which is more
limited to the selection of the combination of the words. It means that one word has less
possibility to appear together than free combinations. This is one of the differences between
collocations and free word combinations, we can not mix and match collocations as free as
free combinations. Some example of collocations can be seen in table 3 below.
Table 3
Example of Collocations
Catch a train
Do your hair
Warm greetings
Take notes
Make an effort
The problem that often occurs in defining collocations is the difficulties in which
word combinations can be acceptable as collocations (Mckeown & Radev, 1999). The huge
number of collocations makes them harder to learn but learning a collocation is never useless
because it is an efficient way to improve language fluency and native like selection of
language.
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Shin & Nation (2012) elaborating Benson‟s (1986) theory stated that collocation is
made up of two parts. The first is a pivot word which is the main word in the collocation,
while the second is the word/words accompanying the pivot word. A pivot word has to be a
noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. The word “high”, for example can become a collocation like
“high school, high court, so high, too high”. The pivot word from this list of collocations is
“high” and the collocates of the pivot word are “school, court, so, to”.
Idioms
The third type of word combinations is idioms. From the linguistic perspective,
idioms are groups of words that frequently occurred together (collocations). Idioms can also
be seen as a type of collocations, but the collocations in idioms are frozen. The relationship
between free combination, collocation, and idiom based on their degree of combination
flexibility is illustrated in figure 1 below.
Figure 1
(The Relationship between Free Combinations, Collocations, Idioms
(Benson, 1986)
Free
Combinations
Collocations
Idioms
Idioms can be explained as a collocated verb phrase that must be interpreted
figuratively (Sapientiae, 2010). So the main difference between idioms and collocations is the
fact that idioms must be interpreted figuratively while collocations can still be interpreted
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literally. “To drive a car” is a collocation because these words frequently occurre together but
it is non idiomatic, because each word can be interpreted literally. In contrast “drive me a
crazy”, is also a collocation but idiomatic or has a figurative meaning, because it cannot be
interpreted literally, so this phrase can be included as a idiom. More examples of the
distinction between free combinations, collocations, and idioms can be seen in Table 4.
Free Combinations
to take the bus
the end of the road
to buy a house
Table 4
Free Combinations vs. Collocations vs. Idioms
((Mckeown & Radev, 1999)
Collocations
Idioms
to trade actively
to kick the bucket
table of contents
dead end
to drive a car
drive me crazy
A common problem when dealing with some idioms is they can lead to
ambiguous interpretation ((Mckeown & Radev, 1999). Idioms may be interpreted differently
depending on readers‟ familiarity with the idiom (Sapinetiae, 2010). For example, the idiom
“break the ice”, can be interpreted as break a piece of ice or figuratively initiate social contact
with a stranger. However, there are also idioms which obviously have figurative meanings,
for example “to scream blue murder” is unambiguous and only can be interpreted figuratively
which is to complain very loudly. One way to solve this problem is to learn many kinds of
idioms because an idiom is a fixed expression and cannot be interpreted literally. Hence we
need to memorize it.
Compounds
The last type of word combinations is compounds. A compound is the most fixed
word combination and it is completely frozen and has no variants at all. A compound is also a
lexical element of more than one word (Benson, 1986). It means that the meaning of
compound is always seen from the whole words as one set, or in other words, it cannot be
separated from each other. There are three forms of compound words (Berkowitz, 2009):
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1. The closed form, in which the words are blending together, such as “firefly”,
secondhand”, “softball”, “childlike”, “redhead”, “makeup”, “notebook”.
2. The hyphenated form, such as “daughter – in – law”, “mass – produced”, “six
– pack”.
3. The open form, such as “post office”, “real estate”, “full moon”, “middle
class”.
Statement the Problem
The main problem of this study will be how to identify word combinations (free
combinations, collocations, idioms, and compound) which are used in Agatha Christie‟s
novel, The Pale Horse.
Research Question
The research question in this study is what are the most frequent word combinations
used in chapter one Agatha Christie‟s novel, The Pala Horse?
Purpose of the Study
The main purposes of this study are:
1. To show the most frequent word combination used in chapter one Agatha Christie‟s
novel; The Pale Horse.
2. To show the most common free combination word used in chapter one Agatha
Christie‟s novel, The Pale Horse.
3. To help students become more aware of a word combinations especially collocations
and idioms so that they can apply them in their daily life or language learning context.
Significance of the Study
Word combinations have to date remained an interesting subject in applied linguistics.
Word combinations are concerned with naturalness and I believe most students who learn
English as a foreign language often use them in their writing or speaking activities without
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realizing what they actually are. Because word combinations are used extensively and by
different people, this study is significant for many parties. First, for me who is interested in
linguistic application, it will enhance my understanding of word combinations. For students
who are also interested in Applied Linguistics, this study provides an example of word
combinations taken from Agatha Christie‟s novel, The Pale Horse. After reading this study, I
hope that the students will be more aware of word combinations especially collocations and
idioms so that they can apply them accordingly in their daily life or language learning
context. I believe that most students have used word combinations in their writing or
speaking activities without realizing about what they are actually are. This study is hoped to
enhance their awareness of word combinations and how to use them correctly. They might be
able to develop their own stylistic choice of word combinations, using different variants
appropriately. Finally, this study will provide future researchers with references relate to
word combinations.
Scope of the Study
This study focuses on word combinations used in Agatha Christie‟s novel, The Pale
Horse, which was first published in UK in 1961 and in Indonesia in 1985. It has been so
popular that it was reprinted in 2012. I will take several examples of free combinations,
lexical collocations, compounds, and idioms, and then analyze it based on the theory already
stated in the introduction.
Research Design
In analyzing word combinations used in Agatha Christie‟s novel; The Pale Horse, I
used a descriptive qualitative research approach which is more concerned with the description
and characteristics of data or variables (Creswell, 2010).
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I chose this method, because this research is concerned with the collocation of
words, phrases, sentences without using any samples or numbers and characteristics of
descriptive qualitative research could be found in the process of data gathering.
Data Collection
The data of this study was taken from the Agatha Christie novel, “The Pale Horse”.
In collecting the data, I gathered the data required through the following steps. First, I read
the first chapter of the novel. And then I identified words, phrases, and sentences which can
be classified as word combinations. Next, I categorized the word combination whether they
belong to free combinations, collocations, idioms, or compounds and finally I would make
the conclusions from the whole data collection.
Results and Discussion
From chapter one of Agatha Christie‟s novel, „The Pala Horse”, I found some word
combinations which can be divided into free combinations, collocations, idioms, and
compounds. The exact quantity of word combinations used in this novel can be seen in table
5 below.
Table 5
The Exact Quantity of Word Combination
Used in Agatha Christie novel, the Pale Horse
Type of Word Combination
Quantity
Lexical Collocations
46 (43, 8%)
Free Combination
26 (24, 77%)
Compounds
25 (23.81%)
Idioms
8 (7.62 %)
TOTAL of Word Combination
105
Based on table 5, we can see that the common word combinations in this novel are
lexical collocations, free combinations, compounds and idioms. The use of many lexical
collocations in this novel shows that Christie tends to apply the combination of words that
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often occur together, which shows how natural Christie‟s style is. The complete lexical
collocations used in this novel are listed in table 6.
Table 6
Lexical Collocation
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, the Pale Horse
Lexical Collocations
firmly associated
various pages
smelled pleasant
absolutely right
uniformly bad
a long time ago
rhymed couplet
without favor
winding road
some such name
poor weapons
strange business
inevitably prevail
completely indifferent
descending cast
looked round
inner sensations
took note
early memories
a few weeks ago
infernal powers
slow menacing rumble
hopeful platitudes
all through
achieve simplicity
live abroad
late opponent
so much
whole street
graceful folds
inadequate looking
each other
real sports
false amnesty
regulation words
stinking rich
set forth
slummy room
heavy road transport
certain evening
particular evening
most evening
every other way
poorly written
dressed up
pretty bad
Some of them ar very common lexical collocations, such as „various pages‟, „each
other‟, „so much‟, „live abroad‟, „all through‟, „absolutely right‟, „a long time ago‟, and „took
note‟. I believe that we often hear, read, and use that kind if collocation. Even for less
common lexical collocation, such as „infernal powers‟, „graceful folds‟, „inevitably prevail‟,
and „descending cast‟ can still be acceptable for intermediate students who learn English as a
foreign language. They just need to pay more attention to the pattern and meaning of the
whole collocations in order to figure out the correct meaning.
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The second word combinations that are often used in this novel is free combinations.
Main typical free combinations are the mixing with of different words freely. The examples
are cited in Table 7.
Table 7
Free Combinations
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie’s novel, the Pale Horse
Free Combinations
dying woman
woolen stocking
writing narrative
unwashed hair
angry snake
very attractive
angry scream
Indian women
very foundation
black hair
dangerous world
bright colors
furnished flat
young women
writing a book
young men
small remnant
without avail
red light
red hair
red tights
rather dark
cup of coffee
young people
coffee bars
black skirt
There are twenty six free combinations used in chapter one of this novel. The main
reason why all of these words in table 5 all free combinations because the meaning of these
phrases can be seen from literal meaning of each word (Benson, 1986). A free combination is
the easiest word combination to understand because we do not need to interpret the meaning.
Most students learn English as a foreign language will not find problems with free
combinations, because they can directly search the meaning of the phrase from the dictionary.
Although free combination is the freest of word combinations, there are still semantic
constraints for capability (Gelbukh, et.al, 2004). For example, from table 7:
„dying‟ is combining with „women‟
‟Dying‟ is an adjective and it has to combine with something life like human, animals, or
plants. We can not combine „dying‟ with „chair‟. There is no „dying chair”. It totally does not
make sense.
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The next discussion is about idiom. Mostly novels, poetry, or another type of literary
text will use idioms. Idiom is a kind of tools to make a pretty language, so it will never be
useless to apply, even in effort to learn English as a foreign language. The idioms that I found
in this novel can be seen in table 8.
Table 8
Idioms
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, the Pale Horse
Idioms
Meanings
offbeat generation
people who have eccentric way of life
throw her into hot bath
force someone to take a bath with hot water
a cake of soap
a big size of soap
break it up
to put an end to something
in a minute
not exactly in one, two, or three minutes but a
several minutes (not too long either)
a bit of fun
small amount of fun
kick out of living
to enjoy living very much.
Table 8 shows that idioms must be interpreted figuratively, as each word cannot be
interpreted literally. For students who study English as foreign language, the meanings of
idioms sometimes really do not make any sense, because it has to be interpreted far away
from the literal meaning of each word. From table 8 we can also see that sometimes Agatha
Christie uses uncommon word phrases, such as “a cake of soap”. Instead of the common
phrase, “a bar of soap” instead of “a cake of soap”; which makes her language very unique.
The last discussion of word combinations is about compounds. Benson (1986)
mentioned that compounds are the most fixed and completely frozen word combination.
Table 9 listed all the compounds that found in the chapter one of this novel.
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Table 9
Compounds
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, the Pale Horse
foreword
myself
dishwashers childhood newspapers
The Closed Form
however neighborhood
trapdoors
halfway nowadays
redhead
catcalls
sideburns
boyfriend
inadequate – looking
perspiration – soaked wool
The Hyphenated Form present – day
fish – wives
lank – haired blonde
Italian - looking
jet planes
tube train
pressure cookers
vacuum cleaners
The Open Form
foaming cup
In linguistics, compounds occur when two or more words are joined together to make
them one word. Sometime, the meaning of the compound may be very different from the
meaning of its component in isolation. For example, taken from table 9, “pressure cookers”,
pressure” mean to force something but when compounding with “cookers”, it becomes a
strong metal pot with a tight lid, which cooks food quickly by steam under high temperature
(based on thesaurus dictionary).
Conclusion
Each type of word combinations has a different characteristic and some of them can
be interpreted literally and some of them have to be interpreted figuratively. Every novel and
written literature text must use word combinations which are free combinations, collocations,
idioms, and compounds. So word combinations are important to learn in order to comprehend
the text that we read, especially the word combinations that need to be interpreted
figuratively. .
From table 5 we can see that the most common word combinations used in this novel
is collocations. Most of the collocations are common collocations which are easy to
understand. Using common word choices has been a Christie‟s style in her writing because
she want the reader more focus on the story rather figure out the meaning of difficult
words/phrases.
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However, from this study we can learn that in order to comprehend word
combinations especially collocations, idioms, and compounds, we need to pay attention to the
meaning of word as a whole phrase, not as an individual part because a lot of students who
learn English as a foreign language only pay attention to the meaning of individual word, so
they often make a mistake in understanding the right meaning of word combinations.
The high quantity of collocations used in this novel is can be the other reason why we
need to learn word combinations because free combinations, collocations, idioms, and
compounds are connected one with the other. We have to learn all of these in order to form a
better understanding of written language. Learning word combinations is an efficient way to
improve the learner‟s language fluency and native like selection of language use.
Overall this study can improve the student‟s knowledge about word combinations
especially students who use English as a foreign language. Many of these students often use
word combinations in their writing or daily conversation without realizing it. With this study
they might more aware about word combinations and how to use them correctly. They might
be able to develop their stylistic choice of word combinations so they can use more variants
of word combinations. Maybe the future researchers later investigate the stylistic choice word
combinations.
23
Acknowledgment
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who support me in
finishing my thesis. My special thanks are due to my former supervisor, the late Mr. Hendro
Setiawan and my lovely aunt Mrs. Jessica Pattinasarany, for their stimulating suggestions and
encouragement in writing my thesis. Furthermore, I would like to thank Ms. Elizabeth Titik
Murtisari as my thesis supervisor and Mr. Toar Sumakul as my second reader. Without their
guidance and encouragement, this thesis would not have been possible. Also, I like to thank
my family, my parents and my brothers for all the support they gave to me. Above all, I thank
God for giving me the strength and courage to complete this thesis
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26
USED IN AGATHA CHRISTIE’S NOVEL, THE PALE HORSE
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirement for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Grace Maytri Haryono
112008039
ENGLISH DEPARMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2013
1
A STUDY ON WORD COMBINATIONS
USED IN AGATHA CHRISTIE’S NOVEL, THE PALE HORSE
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirement for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Grace Maytri Haryono
112008039
ENGLISH DEPARMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2013
2
3
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
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accepted for the fulfillment of any degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my
knowledge and my belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any
other person except where due reference is made in the text.
Copyright@ 2013. Grace Maytri Haryono.
All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced by any means without the
permission of at least one of the copyright owners or the English Department, Faculty of
Language and Literature, Satya Wacana University, Salatiga.
Grace Maytri Haryono :
4
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: 112008039
: English Language Education
: Faculty of Language and Literature
: Undergraduate Thesis
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A STUDY ON WORD COMBINATIONS
USED IN AGATHA CHRISTIE’S NOVEL, THE PALE HORSE
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5
Table of Content
List of Tables .........................................................................................................................VII
List of Figurines .....................................................................................................................VII
Introduction ...........................................................................................................................1
Word Combination.................................................................................................................3
Free Combination ..................................................................................................................4
Collocations ...........................................................................................................................4
Idioms .................................................................................................................................6
Compounds ..........................................................................................................................7
Statement of the Problem .......................................................................................................8
Research Question ................................................................................................................8
Purpose of the Study ..............................................................................................................8
Significance of the Study .......................................................................................................8
Scope of the Study .................................................................................................................9
Research Design.....................................................................................................................9
Data Collection ......................................................................................................................10
Results and Discussion ..........................................................................................................10
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................14
Acknowledgment ...................................................................................................................15
References ..............................................................................................................................17
6
List of Tables
Table 1, Categories of Word Combination ...........................................................................2
Table 2, Example of Free Combination .................................................................................4
Table 3, Example of Collocations .........................................................................................5
Table 4, Free Combination vs. Collocation vs. Idioms .........................................................7
Table 5, The Exact Quantity of Word Combination
Used in Agatha Christie novel, The Pala Horse .....................................................10
Table 6, Lexical Collocations
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, The Pale Horse ....................................11
Table 7, Free Combination
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, The Pale Horse ...................................12
Table 8, Idioms
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, The Pale Horse ....................................13
Figure 9, Compounds
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, The Pale Horse ...................................14
7
List of Figures
Figure 1, The Relationship Between Free Combinations, Collocations, Idioms ...................4
8
A Study on Word Combinations used in Agatha Christie Novel, “The Pale Horse”
Grace Maytri Haryono
Abstract
This study presents word combinations based on Benson categorization, which are
free combinations, collocations, idioms, and compounds used in chapter one of Agatha
Christie novel, The Pale Horse. The purpose of this study is to find out the most frequent
word combinations used and relate them to with Christie’s writing style. The result of this
study shows that the most frequent word combinations used in this novel is collocation and
for the writing style, Agatha Christie sometime tend to use uncommon words and phrase to
make the language of her novel more interesting.
Key Words
Keywords : word combinations, free combinations, collocations, idioms, compounds.
Introduction
“Words play an enormous part in our lives and are therefore deserving of the closest
study” –Aldous Huxley- (1894-1963). That is a magnificent quotation from the famous
English novelist which represents how words can be very important and crucial in people‟s
lives. There is no day without words. People use words in many different ways and thus of
words leads to different interpretations towards another word.
When a person reads a word or a sentence, a number of processes will occur. The
person must recognize the word, then identify its meaning, and when reading a sentence they
have to combine the word into the meaning of the sentence. These processes also happen
when we read and try to comprehend a novel. One of the problems is one word can have
more than one meaning depending on the combination with other words, which is called its
word combinations. Take for example, the word “run” in “he runs” and in the word “run
businesses” have a big difference in meaning. “Run” in first phrase means “to move with
quick steps” while in second are means “to manage”.
9
Scholars further classify word combinations into free combination, collocations,
idioms, and compounds. Some word combinations do not have literal meaning and therefore
a reader may misunderstand the text. For example, students who learn English as a
second/foreign language may not know the meaning of “to bury the hatchet” which is to
reconcile. Similarly, the word combination in “Bella is in hot water”, which means “Bella is
to be in trouble”. People may incorrectly believe that Bella is literally submerged. It shows
that it is very important for students to familiarize themselves with word combinations, so
that they can successfully comprehend the entire meaning of text (Dews, et al, 1996).
Knowledge of word combination is also crucial in order to construct natural – sounding texts,
both oral and written. With this in mind, I have chosen word combinations as the subject of
my study.
For this purpose I have selected Agatha Christie‟s nove „The Pale Horse‟ for the
source of my data to show the extent of word combinations more fully since it can be
assumed that literally texts are more endowed with various types of word combinations than
other types of texts. In addition, her style is also relevant to the study on word combination.
Agatha Christie often makes uncommon words and phrases (Danielsson, et.al, 2012)
and examples can be seen in part of the result and discussion. From her novel we can learn
uncommon word combination which can be useful to enrich our word combination repertoire.
She also often uses fixed phrases which are very common in spoken language (the examples
can be seen in the part of the result and discussion). With this in mind, one of my aims to
study the word combination in her novel is to find out how the compositions of her use of
word combinations can explain her style of writing.
10
Word Combinations
Benson (1986) and Howarth (1998) have the same concept of word combinations
which is related to the possibility of different words to appear together in the text. Although
using different labels, they represent very similar sets of categories such as free
combinations, collocations, idioms and compounds as shown in table 1.
(Table 1)
Categorizes of Word Combination
Howarth (1998)
Benson (1986)
Free combinations
Free combinations
The meaning of free combinations derives
Their components are the freest in regard to
from the literal meaning of individual
being combined with other lexical items.
elements.
Ex: write letter, read a book
Ex: drink milk, wash hair, eat candy
Restricted collocations
Collocations
It is more limited in the selection of
Loosely fixedword combinations and the
compositional elements and usually has one
meanings are close to their components part.
component used in specialized context.
Ex: close attention, pure chance, to commit a
Ex: keep the change, get angry, go crazy
murder
Figurative idioms
Idioms
It has a metaphorical meaning as a whole that Frozen expression whose meanings do not
can somehow not represent literal
reflect the meanings of their component
interpretation.
parts.
Ex: do a U turn, break a leg, break the ice
Ex: to kill two birds with one stone, to kick
the bucket
Pure idioms
Compounds
It is a single unit whose meaning is totally
The most fixed word combinations,
unpredictable from the meaning of its
completely frozen and no variants at all are
components.
possible.
Ex: blow the gaff, as easy as pie
Ex: floppy disk, break through
From table 1 we can see that eventhough Howarth and Benson use different way to
explain each of word combinations, they actually have the same concept and it can be used to
complement each other. The main difference between them is in compounds and idioms.
Benson mentions “compounds” as one of word combinations while Howarth does not
mention at all. For idioms, Howarth divides it into figurative and pure idioms, while Benson
only uses the term idioms.
11
For this study I will focus on Benson‟s theory of word combination and add some
additional theories from other researcher, such as Shin & Nation (2012), Sapientiae (2010),
Berkowitz (2009), Mckeown & Radev (1999) who have the same concept with Benson. To
clarify Benson‟s theory about word combinations, I will explain each of them and give some
example.
Free Combination
The first type of word combinations is free combination. Free combination is the
freest combination of words and it means that this combination has the highest degree of the
possibility of different words to appear together. Example of free combination are provided in
table 2 below.
drink
eat
wash
read
Table 2
Example of Free Combination
drink milk, drink tea, drink water, drink beer,
drink coffee, drink wine
eat a bananas, eat a candies, eat a rice, eat an
apple, eat a cupcake, eat a burger
wash hair, wash dishes, wash cloth,
read a newspaper, read a novel, read a book,
read a journal, read a bible, read a magazine
From table 2 we can see that in free combination, one word can be used with many other
words and the meaning of free combination can be seen literally or from the meaning of each
word.
Collocations
The second type of word combination is collocations. Collocation is used to
refer to a group of two or more words that occur frequently together. According to Benson
(1986), collocation is divided into Grammatical Collocation and Lexical Collocation.
Grammatical collocation consists of a preposition and main word (noun, adjective, and verb)
and it is a frozen collocation, because it has to follow the grammar rule (the rule of using
12
preposition, etc). Some examples of grammatical collocations are “at the moment”, “across
the sky”, “at the end”, “looked into”, and “pushed back”.
While lexical collocation is defined in contrast to grammatical collocation as
normally not containing prepositions, infinitives or clause and typically consisting of noun,
adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Some examples of lexical collocations are “take note”, “hot
bath”, “walk heavily”, and “take place”.
Meanwhile, in this study I will focus more on lexical than grammatical
collocations because the later is kind of representation grammar rules (e.g: how to use
prepositions correctly).
. Benson (1986) stated that collocation is part of word combinations which is more
limited to the selection of the combination of the words. It means that one word has less
possibility to appear together than free combinations. This is one of the differences between
collocations and free word combinations, we can not mix and match collocations as free as
free combinations. Some example of collocations can be seen in table 3 below.
Table 3
Example of Collocations
Catch a train
Do your hair
Warm greetings
Take notes
Make an effort
The problem that often occurs in defining collocations is the difficulties in which
word combinations can be acceptable as collocations (Mckeown & Radev, 1999). The huge
number of collocations makes them harder to learn but learning a collocation is never useless
because it is an efficient way to improve language fluency and native like selection of
language.
13
Shin & Nation (2012) elaborating Benson‟s (1986) theory stated that collocation is
made up of two parts. The first is a pivot word which is the main word in the collocation,
while the second is the word/words accompanying the pivot word. A pivot word has to be a
noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. The word “high”, for example can become a collocation like
“high school, high court, so high, too high”. The pivot word from this list of collocations is
“high” and the collocates of the pivot word are “school, court, so, to”.
Idioms
The third type of word combinations is idioms. From the linguistic perspective,
idioms are groups of words that frequently occurred together (collocations). Idioms can also
be seen as a type of collocations, but the collocations in idioms are frozen. The relationship
between free combination, collocation, and idiom based on their degree of combination
flexibility is illustrated in figure 1 below.
Figure 1
(The Relationship between Free Combinations, Collocations, Idioms
(Benson, 1986)
Free
Combinations
Collocations
Idioms
Idioms can be explained as a collocated verb phrase that must be interpreted
figuratively (Sapientiae, 2010). So the main difference between idioms and collocations is the
fact that idioms must be interpreted figuratively while collocations can still be interpreted
14
literally. “To drive a car” is a collocation because these words frequently occurre together but
it is non idiomatic, because each word can be interpreted literally. In contrast “drive me a
crazy”, is also a collocation but idiomatic or has a figurative meaning, because it cannot be
interpreted literally, so this phrase can be included as a idiom. More examples of the
distinction between free combinations, collocations, and idioms can be seen in Table 4.
Free Combinations
to take the bus
the end of the road
to buy a house
Table 4
Free Combinations vs. Collocations vs. Idioms
((Mckeown & Radev, 1999)
Collocations
Idioms
to trade actively
to kick the bucket
table of contents
dead end
to drive a car
drive me crazy
A common problem when dealing with some idioms is they can lead to
ambiguous interpretation ((Mckeown & Radev, 1999). Idioms may be interpreted differently
depending on readers‟ familiarity with the idiom (Sapinetiae, 2010). For example, the idiom
“break the ice”, can be interpreted as break a piece of ice or figuratively initiate social contact
with a stranger. However, there are also idioms which obviously have figurative meanings,
for example “to scream blue murder” is unambiguous and only can be interpreted figuratively
which is to complain very loudly. One way to solve this problem is to learn many kinds of
idioms because an idiom is a fixed expression and cannot be interpreted literally. Hence we
need to memorize it.
Compounds
The last type of word combinations is compounds. A compound is the most fixed
word combination and it is completely frozen and has no variants at all. A compound is also a
lexical element of more than one word (Benson, 1986). It means that the meaning of
compound is always seen from the whole words as one set, or in other words, it cannot be
separated from each other. There are three forms of compound words (Berkowitz, 2009):
15
1. The closed form, in which the words are blending together, such as “firefly”,
secondhand”, “softball”, “childlike”, “redhead”, “makeup”, “notebook”.
2. The hyphenated form, such as “daughter – in – law”, “mass – produced”, “six
– pack”.
3. The open form, such as “post office”, “real estate”, “full moon”, “middle
class”.
Statement the Problem
The main problem of this study will be how to identify word combinations (free
combinations, collocations, idioms, and compound) which are used in Agatha Christie‟s
novel, The Pale Horse.
Research Question
The research question in this study is what are the most frequent word combinations
used in chapter one Agatha Christie‟s novel, The Pala Horse?
Purpose of the Study
The main purposes of this study are:
1. To show the most frequent word combination used in chapter one Agatha Christie‟s
novel; The Pale Horse.
2. To show the most common free combination word used in chapter one Agatha
Christie‟s novel, The Pale Horse.
3. To help students become more aware of a word combinations especially collocations
and idioms so that they can apply them in their daily life or language learning context.
Significance of the Study
Word combinations have to date remained an interesting subject in applied linguistics.
Word combinations are concerned with naturalness and I believe most students who learn
English as a foreign language often use them in their writing or speaking activities without
16
realizing what they actually are. Because word combinations are used extensively and by
different people, this study is significant for many parties. First, for me who is interested in
linguistic application, it will enhance my understanding of word combinations. For students
who are also interested in Applied Linguistics, this study provides an example of word
combinations taken from Agatha Christie‟s novel, The Pale Horse. After reading this study, I
hope that the students will be more aware of word combinations especially collocations and
idioms so that they can apply them accordingly in their daily life or language learning
context. I believe that most students have used word combinations in their writing or
speaking activities without realizing about what they are actually are. This study is hoped to
enhance their awareness of word combinations and how to use them correctly. They might be
able to develop their own stylistic choice of word combinations, using different variants
appropriately. Finally, this study will provide future researchers with references relate to
word combinations.
Scope of the Study
This study focuses on word combinations used in Agatha Christie‟s novel, The Pale
Horse, which was first published in UK in 1961 and in Indonesia in 1985. It has been so
popular that it was reprinted in 2012. I will take several examples of free combinations,
lexical collocations, compounds, and idioms, and then analyze it based on the theory already
stated in the introduction.
Research Design
In analyzing word combinations used in Agatha Christie‟s novel; The Pale Horse, I
used a descriptive qualitative research approach which is more concerned with the description
and characteristics of data or variables (Creswell, 2010).
17
I chose this method, because this research is concerned with the collocation of
words, phrases, sentences without using any samples or numbers and characteristics of
descriptive qualitative research could be found in the process of data gathering.
Data Collection
The data of this study was taken from the Agatha Christie novel, “The Pale Horse”.
In collecting the data, I gathered the data required through the following steps. First, I read
the first chapter of the novel. And then I identified words, phrases, and sentences which can
be classified as word combinations. Next, I categorized the word combination whether they
belong to free combinations, collocations, idioms, or compounds and finally I would make
the conclusions from the whole data collection.
Results and Discussion
From chapter one of Agatha Christie‟s novel, „The Pala Horse”, I found some word
combinations which can be divided into free combinations, collocations, idioms, and
compounds. The exact quantity of word combinations used in this novel can be seen in table
5 below.
Table 5
The Exact Quantity of Word Combination
Used in Agatha Christie novel, the Pale Horse
Type of Word Combination
Quantity
Lexical Collocations
46 (43, 8%)
Free Combination
26 (24, 77%)
Compounds
25 (23.81%)
Idioms
8 (7.62 %)
TOTAL of Word Combination
105
Based on table 5, we can see that the common word combinations in this novel are
lexical collocations, free combinations, compounds and idioms. The use of many lexical
collocations in this novel shows that Christie tends to apply the combination of words that
18
often occur together, which shows how natural Christie‟s style is. The complete lexical
collocations used in this novel are listed in table 6.
Table 6
Lexical Collocation
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, the Pale Horse
Lexical Collocations
firmly associated
various pages
smelled pleasant
absolutely right
uniformly bad
a long time ago
rhymed couplet
without favor
winding road
some such name
poor weapons
strange business
inevitably prevail
completely indifferent
descending cast
looked round
inner sensations
took note
early memories
a few weeks ago
infernal powers
slow menacing rumble
hopeful platitudes
all through
achieve simplicity
live abroad
late opponent
so much
whole street
graceful folds
inadequate looking
each other
real sports
false amnesty
regulation words
stinking rich
set forth
slummy room
heavy road transport
certain evening
particular evening
most evening
every other way
poorly written
dressed up
pretty bad
Some of them ar very common lexical collocations, such as „various pages‟, „each
other‟, „so much‟, „live abroad‟, „all through‟, „absolutely right‟, „a long time ago‟, and „took
note‟. I believe that we often hear, read, and use that kind if collocation. Even for less
common lexical collocation, such as „infernal powers‟, „graceful folds‟, „inevitably prevail‟,
and „descending cast‟ can still be acceptable for intermediate students who learn English as a
foreign language. They just need to pay more attention to the pattern and meaning of the
whole collocations in order to figure out the correct meaning.
19
The second word combinations that are often used in this novel is free combinations.
Main typical free combinations are the mixing with of different words freely. The examples
are cited in Table 7.
Table 7
Free Combinations
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie’s novel, the Pale Horse
Free Combinations
dying woman
woolen stocking
writing narrative
unwashed hair
angry snake
very attractive
angry scream
Indian women
very foundation
black hair
dangerous world
bright colors
furnished flat
young women
writing a book
young men
small remnant
without avail
red light
red hair
red tights
rather dark
cup of coffee
young people
coffee bars
black skirt
There are twenty six free combinations used in chapter one of this novel. The main
reason why all of these words in table 5 all free combinations because the meaning of these
phrases can be seen from literal meaning of each word (Benson, 1986). A free combination is
the easiest word combination to understand because we do not need to interpret the meaning.
Most students learn English as a foreign language will not find problems with free
combinations, because they can directly search the meaning of the phrase from the dictionary.
Although free combination is the freest of word combinations, there are still semantic
constraints for capability (Gelbukh, et.al, 2004). For example, from table 7:
„dying‟ is combining with „women‟
‟Dying‟ is an adjective and it has to combine with something life like human, animals, or
plants. We can not combine „dying‟ with „chair‟. There is no „dying chair”. It totally does not
make sense.
20
The next discussion is about idiom. Mostly novels, poetry, or another type of literary
text will use idioms. Idiom is a kind of tools to make a pretty language, so it will never be
useless to apply, even in effort to learn English as a foreign language. The idioms that I found
in this novel can be seen in table 8.
Table 8
Idioms
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, the Pale Horse
Idioms
Meanings
offbeat generation
people who have eccentric way of life
throw her into hot bath
force someone to take a bath with hot water
a cake of soap
a big size of soap
break it up
to put an end to something
in a minute
not exactly in one, two, or three minutes but a
several minutes (not too long either)
a bit of fun
small amount of fun
kick out of living
to enjoy living very much.
Table 8 shows that idioms must be interpreted figuratively, as each word cannot be
interpreted literally. For students who study English as foreign language, the meanings of
idioms sometimes really do not make any sense, because it has to be interpreted far away
from the literal meaning of each word. From table 8 we can also see that sometimes Agatha
Christie uses uncommon word phrases, such as “a cake of soap”. Instead of the common
phrase, “a bar of soap” instead of “a cake of soap”; which makes her language very unique.
The last discussion of word combinations is about compounds. Benson (1986)
mentioned that compounds are the most fixed and completely frozen word combination.
Table 9 listed all the compounds that found in the chapter one of this novel.
21
Table 9
Compounds
From Chapter 1 of Agatha Christie novel, the Pale Horse
foreword
myself
dishwashers childhood newspapers
The Closed Form
however neighborhood
trapdoors
halfway nowadays
redhead
catcalls
sideburns
boyfriend
inadequate – looking
perspiration – soaked wool
The Hyphenated Form present – day
fish – wives
lank – haired blonde
Italian - looking
jet planes
tube train
pressure cookers
vacuum cleaners
The Open Form
foaming cup
In linguistics, compounds occur when two or more words are joined together to make
them one word. Sometime, the meaning of the compound may be very different from the
meaning of its component in isolation. For example, taken from table 9, “pressure cookers”,
pressure” mean to force something but when compounding with “cookers”, it becomes a
strong metal pot with a tight lid, which cooks food quickly by steam under high temperature
(based on thesaurus dictionary).
Conclusion
Each type of word combinations has a different characteristic and some of them can
be interpreted literally and some of them have to be interpreted figuratively. Every novel and
written literature text must use word combinations which are free combinations, collocations,
idioms, and compounds. So word combinations are important to learn in order to comprehend
the text that we read, especially the word combinations that need to be interpreted
figuratively. .
From table 5 we can see that the most common word combinations used in this novel
is collocations. Most of the collocations are common collocations which are easy to
understand. Using common word choices has been a Christie‟s style in her writing because
she want the reader more focus on the story rather figure out the meaning of difficult
words/phrases.
22
However, from this study we can learn that in order to comprehend word
combinations especially collocations, idioms, and compounds, we need to pay attention to the
meaning of word as a whole phrase, not as an individual part because a lot of students who
learn English as a foreign language only pay attention to the meaning of individual word, so
they often make a mistake in understanding the right meaning of word combinations.
The high quantity of collocations used in this novel is can be the other reason why we
need to learn word combinations because free combinations, collocations, idioms, and
compounds are connected one with the other. We have to learn all of these in order to form a
better understanding of written language. Learning word combinations is an efficient way to
improve the learner‟s language fluency and native like selection of language use.
Overall this study can improve the student‟s knowledge about word combinations
especially students who use English as a foreign language. Many of these students often use
word combinations in their writing or daily conversation without realizing it. With this study
they might more aware about word combinations and how to use them correctly. They might
be able to develop their stylistic choice of word combinations so they can use more variants
of word combinations. Maybe the future researchers later investigate the stylistic choice word
combinations.
23
Acknowledgment
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who support me in
finishing my thesis. My special thanks are due to my former supervisor, the late Mr. Hendro
Setiawan and my lovely aunt Mrs. Jessica Pattinasarany, for their stimulating suggestions and
encouragement in writing my thesis. Furthermore, I would like to thank Ms. Elizabeth Titik
Murtisari as my thesis supervisor and Mr. Toar Sumakul as my second reader. Without their
guidance and encouragement, this thesis would not have been possible. Also, I like to thank
my family, my parents and my brothers for all the support they gave to me. Above all, I thank
God for giving me the strength and courage to complete this thesis
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