Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare by Jeremy Butterfield

Author:Jeremy Butterfield [Butterfield, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2008-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

The company a word keeps

Words do not exist in isolation. They are strongly attracted to other words, and associate with them to make regular, predictable patterns. Those patterns are part of our ‘implicit’ knowledge of language. In the introduction to ET’s dialogue with Geoff, and in the dialogue, several word combinations are underlined: come in peace, mutual cooperation and understanding, vastly more sophisticated, and so forth. (Which of them ring bells with you?) They’re underlined because they seem to belong together naturally.

These combinations also seem predictable: cooperation suggests mutual and understanding; when talking about aliens landing, ‘We come in …’ is likely to be followed by peace. Sometimes the second word seems almost inevitable, given the first: move swiftly on. Sometimes, given a word or phrase, what comes before seems inevitable and pre-ordained: given more sophisticated, why does vastly sound more natural than hugely, and why is it fifteen times more common? These combinations appear over and over again in many different kinds of English texts. Their technical name is ‘collocation’. Collocation refers to the combination itself, while the individual words are known as ‘collocates’. If two or more words appear together regularly, they are said to ‘collocate’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.