Лекции по лексикологии английского языка. Гусева Г.В. - 14 стр.

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Lecture 4

Word-Combination

I. What is a Word-Combination? Lexical and Grammatical Combinability

The word-combination (WC) is the largest two-facet lexical unit observed

on the syntagmatic level of analysis. By the degree of their structural and semantic

cohesion WCs are classified into three WCs and phraseological units, cf.: at least,

point of view, by means of, to take place.

Lexical combinability (collocation) is the aptness of a word to appear in

certain lexical contexts, e.g. the word question combines with certain adjectives:

delicate, vital, important.

Each word has a certain norm of collocation. Any departure from this norm

is felt as a stylistic device: to shove a question.

The collocations of correlated words in different languages are not identical,

e.g. both the English flower and its Russian counterpart цветок can be combined

with a number of words denoting the place where the flowers are grown: garden-

flowers, hot-house flowers; садовые цветы, оранжерейные цветы. But the

English word cannot enter into combination with the word room to denote flowers

growing in the rooms, cf.: комнатные цветы – pot flowers.

Grammatical combinability (colligation) is the aptness of a word to appear

in certain grammatical contexts, e.g. the adjective heavy can be followed by a noun

(heavy storm), by an infinitive (heavy to lift). Each grammatical unit has a certain

norm of colligation: nouns combine with pre-positional adjectives (a new dress),

relative adjectives combine with pre-positional adverbs of degree (dreadfully

tired).

The departure from the norm of colligation is usually impossible:

mathematics at clever is a meaningless string of words because English nouns do

not allow of the structure N + at + A.