An Analysis of English Collocation

With the revolutionary progress in computer science, interest in vocabulary studies has been increasing for the last decade not only in the field of linguistics but also in applied linguistics. Making use of corpora has enabled researchers to analyze linguistic data objectively in a surprisingly shorter period of time. Collocation, which is defined as a group of words that occurs repeatedly in a language, is fundamental to the study of vocabulary. It is true that corpora havegreatly helped research on collocation, however, researchers' judgment and analysis of patterning in collocation are truly needed. This paper explores the concept of collocation and establishes a framework of collocation for analysis. There are still some subjects which have not been fully examined in this area, such as classification of collocation, clarification of multi-word units / items, and collocational network in our mental lexicon. There seems to be a great possibility for linguists to pursue collocation in the study of lexis with the headway of computer technology.6KJ00004265186departmental bulletin pape