a corpus-based study on collocations of keywords in english business articles about the european debt crisis = nghiên cứu tập hợp cụm từ của các từ khóa trong các bài báo kinh tế tiếng anh

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
University of languages and international studies
Faculty of post-graduate studies

ĐÀO THỊ NGỌC NGUYÊN

A corpus-based study on collocations of
keywords in English business articles
ABOUT THE EUROPEAN DEBT CRISIS

(Nghiên cứu tập hợp cụm từ của các từ khóa trong các bài báo tiếng
Anh kinh tế về cuộc khủng hoảng nợ châu Âu)

M.A. COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15

Hanoi - 2012


iv

TABLE OF CONTENT
Declaration ...................................................................................................................i
Abstract....................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgement ..................................................................................................... iii
List of tables ............................................................................................................. vii
List of figures ..............................................................................................................ix

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................1

I.1. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study ..............................................1
I.2. Aims of the study....................................................................................................2
I.3. Scope of the study ..................................................................................................3
I.4. Organization ...........................................................................................................3

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................ 4
II.1. Corpus linguistics ..................................................................................................4
II.2. Sense and sense relations ...................................................................................... 6
II.3. Transference of meaning ....................................................................................... 7
II.3.1. Metaphor ..................................................................................................7


v

II.3.2. Metonymy ................................................................................................ 8
II.3.3. Other types of meaning transference........................................................ 9
II.4. Collocations.........................................................................................................10
II.4.1. Definitions of collocations .....................................................................10
II.4.2. Properties of collocations .......................................................................12
II.4.2.1. Collocations are arbitrary. ........................................................... 13
II.4.2.2. Collocations are language-specific. ............................................13
II.4.2.3. Collocations are recurrent in context. .........................................14
II.4.3. Classifications of collocations................................................................ 15

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY................................................. 17
III.1. Data collection instrument ................................................................................. 17
III.1.1. Construction of corpus ..........................................................................17
III.1.1.1. Database ............................................................................................. 17
III.1.1.2. Extracted business articles ................................................................ 19
III.1.2. Concordance program ...........................................................................20

III.2. Data collection procedures ................................................................................. 21

CHAPTER IV: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .................................................... 22
IV.1. Quantitative results ............................................................................................ 23


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IV.2. Collocation analysis of content keywords ......................................................... 26
IV.2.1. DEBT and CRISIS ................................................................................ 26
IV.2.2. ECONOMIC ......................................................................................... 44
IV.2.3. MARKETS ............................................................................................ 50

Chapter V: CONCLUSION ..................................................................................... 57
V.1. Major findings .....................................................................................................57
V.2. Pedagogical implications and suggestions .......................................................... 59
V.2.1 Improving collocation competence among language learners ................ 59
V.2.2 Corpus-based activities for learner‘s collocation development in ESP
class ................................................................................................................... 62
V.3. Suggestions for further studies............................................................................67

REFERENCES..........................................................................................................68

APPENDIX


vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: List of the selected articles
Table 2: Top 100 high-frequency words from the constructed corpus
Table 3: First 25 keywords from the corpus
Table 4: CRISIS Concordance (Adjective collocations)
Table 5: Adjectives collocating with CRISIS
Table 6: DEBT Concordance (Adjective collocations)
Table 7: Adjectives collocating with DEBT
Table 8: CRISIS Concordance (Noun collocations)
Table 9: DEBT Concordance (Noun collocations)
Table 10: Nouns collocating with CRISIS
Table 11: Nouns collocating with DEBT
Table 12: CRISIS Concordance (Verb collocations)
Table 13: DEBT Concordance (Verb collocations)
Table 14: Verbs collocating with CRISIS
Table 15: Verbs collocating with DEBT


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Table 16: Other patterns of CRISIS in the corpus
Table 17: Other patterns of DEBT in the corpus
Table 18: ECONOMIC Concordance (Noun collocations)
Table 19: Nouns collocating with ECONOMIC in the corpus
Table 20: Composite nominal containing ECONOMIC (with modification within the head)
Table 21: Composite nominal containing ECONOMIC (with coordination in the modifier)
Table 22: MARKETS Concordance (markets as ‗the total amount of trade in a particular kind
of goods‘)
Table 23: MARKETS Concordance (markets as ‗people who buy and sell goods in
competition with each other‘)
Table 24: MARKETS Concordance (markets as ‗a particular country, area or section of

population that might buy goods‘)


ix

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Concordance Program‘s main screen
Figure 2: String matching of CRISIS from the corpus
Figure 3: String matching of DEBT from the corpus
Figure 4: String matching of ECONOMIC from the corpus
Figure 5: String matching of MARKETS from the corpus


1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION
I.1.Statement of the problem and rationale of the study
The importance of vocabulary in language learning has always and long been recognized,
although there were times when vocabulary was treated as separated from grammar and skills.
However, under the light of recent studies, vocabulary has even gained much more attention.
Essential and crucial as it has become, vocabulary has been highlighted as the basis of
language and communication. Wilkins, an outstanding British linguist, once stated "without
vocabulary nothing can be conveyed". Obviously, a rich knowledge of vocabulary not only
makes one's ability of using the language recognized and appreciated but also makes him or
her be more successful in communication.
However, no matter how convinced learners of English in principles of the importance of
vocabulary, the vocabulary acquisition actually poses enormous difficulties to them. One of
the most complicated problems arising when vocabulary is dealt with is how to combine and

use words appropriately in accordance with culture or language conventions, which is often
referred to as ―collocation competence‖ (Hill,1999).
Collocations are usually defined as words that typically occur in association with other words;
in reality, they run through the whole of the English language and they are as old as the
language itself. No piece of natural spoken and written English is totally free of collocations.
Because of their widespread use, the role that collocations play in the language is absolutely
undeniable.
For learners of English in general, with collocation competence, they should have the ability to
combine lexical (and grammatical) chunks in order to produce fluent, accurate, as well as
semantically and stylistically appropriate utterances. For business English learners in


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particular, a good knowledge of collocation patterns in English is also of great importance.
The most important characteristics of the language of business English, as opposed to the
language of general English, are a sense of purpose, intercultural dimension and a need for
clear, straightforward and concise communication (Ellis & Johnson, 1994). In order to achieve
these broad objectives of business English learners, teachers have to find out the best ways to
teach business performance skills such as socializing, telephoning, meeting, presentation, and
report writing. In all these situations, collocation competence is significantly essential.
With the rise of computing power as well as the acceptance of corpus linguistics since 1990s,
collocations have received serious treatment. The dramatic rise in processing power of
computers now makes it possible to quickly compose lists of frequency for lexical items in a
large corpus. At the same time, there have been a large number of different software programs
installed for keywords and collocations extract from corpus data. Such software packages have
made easier access to the investigation into typical lexical items and their collocations of any
particular text genres.
With the writer‘s personal interest in collocations as a researcher and observations of students‘
tough experience in dealing with collocations in business discourse as a tutor of business

learners, this thesis provides a comprehensive research on collocations of keywords in a
variety of business articles written about a currently hot topic for business learners, the
European debt crisis. The thesis, therefore, is carried out in the hope that it may be of some
help to business learners of English as well as those who find themselves interested in English
semantics and collocation-related issues.
I.2. Aims of the study
The aim of this research is to conduct a close investigation into collocations of keywords from
a corpus of a certain number of business articles written about the European debt crisis. To be
specific, it identifies words with high frequency of occurrence within the chosen corpus and


3

examines their collocations. The research, therefore, is carried out to answer the following
research questions:


What are the top high-frequency words in the corpus of written articles about the
European debt crisis?



What are significant patterns and features of collocations of such keywords?

I.3.Scope of the study
This study is about to discuss keywords and their collocations in 15 written articles about the
European debt crisis. The designed corpus of over 20,000 words is taken from online business
articles from websites of high reputation such as The Washington Post, Money CNN,
….Keywords chosen for analysis of significant patterns of collocation within the study are
those which can distinguish the business genre of the selected articles.

I.4. Structure of the thesis
The study is organized as follows:


Chapter I-Introduction- is firstly introduced, briefly stating the rationale, aims, scope and
organization of the study.



Secondly, chapter II-Theoretical Background- deals with the theories setting the
background for the study.



Thirdly, chapter III- Research Methodology- is a presentation on the methodology of the
research, referring to the research design, data collection procedures and data analysis
procedures of the study.



Next, on chapter IV-Results and Discussion-, a detailed discussion of collocations
keywords in the selected corpus is carried out, through which some interesting aspects can
be revealed.



In chapter V-Conclusion- major findings of the study and pedagogical implications and
suggestions are presented.

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CHAPTER II

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
This chapter is going to deal with the theories setting the background for the research on
collocations of keywords in business articles about the European debt crisis 2011 under the
light of corpus linguistics. In the first place, an overview of corpus linguistics is presented,
followed by the theories of sense and sense relation. Then, the literature about transference of
meaning is overviewed. The chapter will be closed with a presentation on collocation in an
effort to provide a partial answer to three questions "What is collocation?", "What are
properties of collocation that surface repeatedly across the literature?", and "How is
collocation classified by different researchers?"
II.1. Corpus linguistics
Nowadays, a lot of investigation has been devoted to how computers can facilitate language
learning. With the help of computer technology, the contextual factors that influence
variability in language use can be discovered through examples taken from corpora. A corpus
can be described as a large collection of authentic texts that have been gathered in electronic
form according to a specific set of criteria (Bowker& Pearson, 2002).
Corpus linguistics (hereafter CL) deals with the principles and practice of using such corpora
in language study. As a branch of linguistics, it differs from traditional linguistics as it is
related to the study of authentic examples of language (Sinclair, 1997). The main focus on CL
is to discover pattern of authentic language in order to verify a hypothesis about language, for
example, to determine how the usage of a particular sound, word, or syntactic construction
varies. This, in turn, allows learners and researchers to ascertain related linguistic patterns and
structures for the goals of their research.
Conducting a corpus analysis is the very fundamental technique used by CL. Corpus analysis
is a means of accessing a corpus of text to show how any given word or phrase in the text is

5

used in the immediate contexts in which it appears. By grouping the uses of a particular word
or phrase on the computer screen or in printed form, the researcher shows the patterns in
which the given word or phrase is typically used. A large collection of a word‘s patterns then
can be created very quickly and effectively. Thus, CL has been widely employed in other
areas of linguistics and lexicography, where corpora can be used to help dictionary markers to
spot new words and identify contexts for new meanings (Meyer, 2002).
In addition to its crucial function in language study in general, the role of CL in language
pedagogy has become increasingly prominent. McEnery and Wilson (1996) argue that foreign
language teachers usually produce simplified examples, which will raise difficulties for
students when these are confronted with real, more complex language that sometimes they are
incapable of processing. CL can thus contribute to rendering learning a foreign language more
effective since students will be faced with real language. Authentic materials can motivate
learners in the language classroom whereas non-authentic materials may not because they do
not reflect real applications of language and thus students will lose motivation in learning in a
target language.
The essence of exposure to authentic materials even becomes more accurate in the case of ESP
classes where all lessons are highly purpose-driven. CL, therefore, takes an essential part in
ESP, bringing a great deal of benefit to the teaching and learning on ESP courses. However,
among the many different types of corpora available such as written and spoken corpora,
general reference corpora, special purpose corpora, monolingual and multilingual corpora,
synchronic and diachronic corpora, open and closed corpora, and learner corpora (Biber,
1998), specialized corpora are preferable in ESP classes since they offer access to specialized
vocabulary in specialized contexts. In a specialized corpus, context has considerable influence
on the language choice; and the choice of language in turn plays an essential role in the
shaping of the text genre.


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II.2. Sense and sense relations
In Nguyen Hoa‘s words (Nguyen Hoa, 2004:56), "sense is a philosophical term for meaning".
Meaning and sense are closely related; however, sense is sometimes distinguished from
meaning. The meaning of a word is seen as part of the language system whereas sense is the
realization of this meaning in speech. According to John Lyons (1995:80), the sense of an
expression may be defined as the set, or network, of sense-relations that hold between it and
other expressions of the same language.
Sense relation is the kind of relationship between vocabulary items when they are arranged in
texts, spoken or written: how they are related to one another in terms of their meaning; how
they may or may not substitute for one another; how similar or how different they are to each
other and so on.
Nguyen Hoa(2004:121) points out that sense relations may be of two types: subsitutional and
combinatorial which roughly correspond to the two Saussurean terms paradigmatic and
syntagmatic. Subsitutional or paradigmatic relations are those which hold between
intersubstitutable members of the same grammatical category; combinational or syntagmatic
relations hold normally hold between expressions of different grammatical categories which
can be put together in grammatically well-formed combinations. For example, a subsitutional
relation hold between the noun bachelor and spinster, whereas the relation that holds between
the adjective unmarried and the nouns man and woman is combinatorial.
In discussion of combinatorial relations, there emerges a question whether any adjective can
combine with any noun or any verb can go with any noun. Actually, English, as well as every
other language, the combinations of words of different grammatical categories are restricted.
Each word tends to co-occur with a certain range of words, which is referred to as collocation
relation. In fact, lexemes are so highly restricted with respect to collocation acceptability that
it is almost impossible to predict their combinational relations on the basis of an independent
characterization of their sense.


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II.3. Transference of meaning
In English, there are basically two types of meaning transference, namely metaphor and
metonymy.
II.3.1. Metaphor
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:105), "metaphor is the transference of meaning from one
object to another based on the similarity between these two objects". Traditionally, metaphors
have been viewed as implicit comparisons. Flood…poured in, oozes, and stern in the
following sentences are all examples of metaphors.


A flood of protects poured in following the announcement.
(a large quantity of…came in)



He oozes geniality.



The government still hopes to stern the tide of inflation.

(displays all over)

(resist the force of)
However, if the fact of resemblance is explicitly signaled, by a word such as like, as in protest
came in like a flood, this is considered not to be metaphor but simile.
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:109), metaphors may be of three types.
Living metaphors are those involving words used in unusual meaning and metaphors may be felt
as such. (Beauty is a flower which wrinkles will devour.)

Faded metaphors lost their freshness because of long use and became habitual. (dying capitalism,
to fall in love, golden youth)
Dead metaphors are words which have lost their direct meanings and are used only figuratively.
(to ponder, capital, sarcasm)


8

Additionally, metaphors may be divided into different subgroups. Following are some
commonly and widely used subgroups of metaphors in English.


A subgroup of metaphors comprises names of human body transferred to other objects.

Typical examples include the nose of a plane, the head of the school, or the leg of the table.


A subgroup of metaphors comprises names of animals transferred to the human beings.

For example, a cunning person is a fox; or a hard working person is a bee.


A subgroup of metaphors comprises proper names transferred to common ones. For

instance, a jealous person is called an Othello; and an eloquent speaker is a Cicero.
II.3.2. Metonymy
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:112), metonymy can be defined as "the substitution of one
word for another with which it is associated". Thus, metonymy works by continuity rather
than similarity, which means that instead of the name of one object or notion we use the name
of another because these objects are associated or closely related. Examples of metonymy

include eye, shirt, and breathe in the following sentences.


Keep your eye on the ball. (gaze)



He is always chasing shirts. (girls)



It will not happen while I still breathe. (live)

According to Lyons (1995:314), body parts are favourite sources of metonymy, and many
such expressions have been incorporated into the language, with words like hand, heart, head
as in have a hand in, bear one's heart, or keep your head.
Some common substitutions in metonymy include:
 place-for-institution (The White House objected to the plan.)
 thing-for-perception (There goes my knee.)
 object-for-possessor (The crown was angry with the Prime Minister's proposal.)


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 part-for-whole (We do not like long hairs.)
 place-for-event (Watergate strikes at the heart of the American political system.)
In tradition, according to Nguyen Hoa (2004:113), the following cases of metonymy are often
presented.
The name of container is used instead of the thing contained. (to drink a glass)
Names of parts of human body may be used as symbols. (to have a good eye, kind heart)

The concrete is used instead of abstract. (from the cradle to the grave)
The materials are used for the things made of the materials. (Canvas, glass)
The name of the author is used for his works. (Watts, Picasso)
Part is used for the whole and vice versa. (We all live under the same roof; She is wearing a
fox)

A subtype of metonymy is called synecdoche in which a whole is represented by naming one
of its parts, or vice versa. Roof, strings, and bite in the following sentences are examples of
synecdoche.


They all live under the same roof.(in one house)



At this point the strings take over. (stringed instruments)



Let's go and have a bite.(have a meal)

II.3.3. Other types of meaning transference
Besides metaphor and metonymy, there are other types of meaning transference involving
hyperbole, litotes, irony, and euphemisms.


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Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement not meant to be understood literally. However, the
effect is powerful.

For example:


It is a nightmare.



A thousand thanks

Litotes is really an understatement. It is traditionally defined as expressing something in the
affirmative by the negative of its contrary. For instance, not bad is often used to mean good; or
rather unwise to mean very silly.
Irony is used to express meaning by words of the opposite sense. In irony, intonation plays an
essential role. For example, nice in "You have got us into a nice mess." means bad.
Euphemisms involve the use of a milder expression for something unpleasant. For instance,
restroom or bathroom are used instead of WC.
II.4. Collocation
II.4.1. Definition of collocation
It is not easy to define what collocation is. In the linguistic literature, it is often discussed in
contrast with free word combination at one extreme and idiomatic expression at the other;
collocation occurs somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. A free word combination can be
described using general rules; that is, in terms of semantic constraints on the words which
appear in a certain syntactic relation with a given headword. An idiom, on the other hand, is a
rigid word combination to which no generalities apply; neither can its meaning be determined
from the meaning of its parts nor can it participate in the usual word-order variations.
Collocation falls between these extremes and it can be difficult to draw the line between
categories. A word combination fails to be classified as free and is termed as collocation when


11

the number of words which occur in a syntactic relation with a given headword decreases to
the point where it is not possible to describe the set using semantic regularities.
Thus, example of free word combinations include put + (object) or run + (object) (i.e.
manage) where the words that can occur as object are virtually open-ended. In the case of put,
the semantic constraint on the object is relatively open-ended (any physical object can be
mentioned) and thus the range of words that can occur is relatively unrestricted. In the case of
run (in sense of manage or direct) the semantic restrictions on the object are tighter but still
follow a semantic generality: any institution or organization can be managed such as
businesses, ice cream parlor. In contrast to these free word combinations, a phrase such as
explore a myth is a collocation. In its figurative sense, explore illustrates a much more
restricted collocation range. Possible objects are limited to words such as brief, idea, theory.
At the other extreme, phrase such as fill the bill or fit the bill function as idioms, where no
words can be interchanged and variation in usage is not generally allowed.
Different linguists have different definitions of collocation. Moira Runcie in Oxford
Collocation Dictionary gives a general definition in which collocation is defined as the way
words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing. To a native
speaker, these combinations are highly predictable; to a learner they are anything but.
Specifically speaking, Chitra Fernando, Richards and others (1996:62) states that collocation
refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together, for examples which prepositions
are used with particular verbs or which verbs and nouns are used together. It is defined in
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary that collocation is "a combination of words in a
language that happens very often and more frequently than would happen by chance". In
Kjellmer (1994:xiv& xxxiii), collocation is "such recurring sequences of items as are
grammatically well formed". Kathleen R. McKeown and Dragomir R. Radev in their paper on
Collocations regard collocations as word pairs and phrases that are commonly used in
language with no general syntactic or semantic rules applied.


12

Additionally, many linguists have tried to define collocation by presenting its functions.
Halliday (1966) and Sinclair (1966) introduced the notion that patterns of collocation can form
the basis for a lexical analysis of language alternative to, and independent of, the grammatical
analysis. They regarded the two levels of analysis as being complementary, with neither of the
two being subsumed by the other. Holding the same idea, McIntosh (1961:328) and Mitchell
(1971) presented the lexical and grammatical analyses as interdependent: "Collocations are to
be studied within grammatical matrices which in turn depend for their recognition on the
observation of collocation similarities" (Mitchell, 1971:65). Later, Halliday (1966:151&157)
argued that the collocation patterns of lexical items can lead to generalization at the lexical
level. Sinclair (1966:412 & 1974:16) proposed that a lexical item can be defined from its
collocation pattern.
In conclusion, definitions of collocation vary across research projects by different linguists.
The fact that collocation is observable in large samples of language has led to the important
role collocation plays. Actually, collocation is used in various applications and the information
about collocation is significant to many linguistic areas such as dictionary writing, natural
language processing, and language teaching. "In all kinds of texts collocations are essential,
indispensable elements…with which our utterances are very largely made" (Kjellmer,
1987:140); "Even very advanced learners often make inappropriate or unacceptable
collocations" (McCarthy,1990:13). The above quotes make two points relevant to the English
learners in the learning of collocation. Firstly, collocation relations are an important part of the
language to be mastered. Secondly, it is an area which "resists" tuition and, therefore, requires
special and systematic attention.
II.4.2. Properties of collocation
In discussion of the nature of collocation, linguists have been trying to generalize what
characteristics collocation has in common. Generally, collocation has three major features as
follow.


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II.4.2.1. Collocation is arbitrary.
In the first place, collocation is typically characterized as arbitrary, which means that words
are often combined with each other without any particular reasons.
According to Gains and Redman (1986:37), a statement on collocation is never absolute.
Items, as they said, may co-occur simply because the combination reflects a common real
world state of affairs. For instance, pass and salt collocate since people want other people to
pass them the salt. The notion of arbitrariness captures the fact that substituting a synonym for
one of the words in a collocation word pair may result in an infelicitous lexical combination.
For example, a phrase such as make an effort is acceptable, but make an exertion is not.
Similarly, a running commentary, commit treason, warm greetings are all true collocations,
but a running discussion, commit treachery, and hot greetings are not acceptable lexical
combinations.
However, Gains and Redman (1986:37) added, there may exist an element of linguistic
convention in collocation. Thus, English speakers have chosen to say, for example, that lions
roar rather than bellow. It is because of the linguistic conventions collocation bears that
joining together semantically compatible parts does not always produce an acceptable
collocation. For instance, quiet and noise appear perfectly acceptable to co-occur; however, in
reality native speakers do not say quiet noise.
II.4.2.2. Collocation is language-specific.
Secondly, collocation is language-specific as is nature persists across languages. As Larson
(1984:141) points out, every language interprets the physical worlds in its own way and has its
own convention; therefore, it governs different collocability of words. For instances, in
French, the phrase régler la circulation is used to refer to a policeman who directs traffic, the
English collocation. In Russian and German, the direct translation of regulate is used; only in
English is direct used in place of regulate. Similarly, American and British English exhibit
differences in similar phrases. Thus, in American English one says set the table and make a


14

decision; whereas in British English, the corresponding phrases are lay the table and take a
decision.
The characteristics above lead to the fact that what is perfectly acceptable collocation in one
language may be unacceptable in another. Take the case of eat in English and ăn (eat) in
Vietnamese as a typical example. Although these two words are equivalent to each other, they
cannot go with the same range of nouns. While such collocations as ăn hối lộ, ăn bữa tối,
không ăn lương, ăn Tết are acceptable in Vietnamese, the verb eat in English actually cannot
co-occur with these corresponding nouns. Instead, the equivalent phrases must be take bribes,
have dinner, without pay, enjoy Tet in which different verbs are employed.
As collocation differs from language to language, students are put to a lot of troubles in
learning collocation of a foreign language. Unconsciously, students fall into the habit of
translating a word combination from their first language to the foreign language and
eventually get an unacceptable collocation. For example, instead of saying ride bicycle,
Vietnamese learners sometimes says go bicycle because đi xe đạp (go bicycle) is totally
correct in Vietnamese.
II.4.2.3. Collocation is recurrent in context.
While the two properties mentioned above indicate difficulties in determining what is an
acceptable collocation, on the positive side it is clear that collocation occurs frequently in
similar contexts. It is possible to observe collocations in samples of language. Generally,
collocations are those word pairs which occur frequently together in the same environment,
but do not include lexical items which have a high overall frequency in language. This
property, in fact, has exploited by many researchers in natural language processing in identify
collocation automatically.


15

II.4.3. Classifications of collocation
In an effort to characterize collocation, linguists present a wide variety of individual

collocations, attempting to categorize them as part of a general scheme. Eventually, linguists
end up in different classifications of collocation corresponding to their view of collocation.
By examining a huge number of collocates of the same syntactic category, Kathleen R.
McKeown and Dragomir R. Radev in their paper on Collocations identify similarities and
differences in their behavior. Distinctions are made between grammatical collocations and
semantic collocations. In their opinion, grammatical collocations often contain prepositions,
including paired syntactic categories such as verb + preposition, adjective + preposition, and
noun + preposition. In these cases, the open-class word is called the base and determines the
words it can collocate with, the collocation indicator. Semantic collocations are lexically
restricted word pairs, where only a subset of the synonyms of the collocation indicator can be
used in the same lexical context.
In Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary(Moira Runcie:2002) collocation is classified both
in terms of the grammatical pattern and the strength of collocation. Firstly, according to the
grammatical pattern, there exist thirteen types of collocations as follows.
1. adjective + noun: heavy traffic
2. quantifier + noun: a hand/bunch of bananas
3. verb + noun: make/ deliver/ give speech
4. noun + verb: proportion grows/ increases/ rises
5. noun + noun: project management
6. preposition + noun: along/across the road
7. noun + preposition: the light from the window
8. adverb + verb: strongly recommend
9. verb + verb: be willing to risk
10. verb + preposition: depend on
11. verb + adjective: make/ keep/ declare something safe


16

12. adverb + adjective: downright/ completely/ absolutely ridiculous

13. adjective + preposition: pleased with
Secondly, according to the strength of collocation, collocations are categorized into four types:
1. Unique collocations are the most restricted ones in which the patterns have almost no
expected variations. Usually, a unique collocation often forms a particular meaning rather than
a structure. For example, the phrase kick the bucket is considered a unique collocation,
meaning "to die" used for bad men like thieves or murders. While other nouns and verbs can
be substituted in the phrase to form other meaning phrases such as kick the door, and lift the
bucket, the word combinations in these other phrases are no longer cohesive patterns in the
way that kick the bucket is.
2. Strong collocations are those in which any knowledge of a pattern can be incomplete
without some idea of its strong collocate. Trenchant criticism and rancid butter are two
examples of collocations of this type.
3. Medium-strength collocations form the great part of what we say and write. This is
considered the most common and typical type of collocations. Instances of medium-strength
collocations include hold a conversation, highly complicated, or direct equivalent.
4. Weak collocations are often common patterns that help structure a sentence but do not
carry much specific meaning by themselves. For instance, a weak collocation might be let's +
verb, which is used for suggestion. This is a commonly used structural pattern into which a
variety of verbs can be inserted without any changes in meaning of the phrase as a whole.


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CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The study is a corpus-based analysis of the data in business articles. It attempted to investigate
high-frequency words together with their collocations in a comparative number of different
business articles and reports. The following chapter, as denoted by its name, will outline the
methodology of the research. It starts with the fundamental data collecting instruments

employed in the study. Procedures for data collection are addressed next, followed by
procedures for data analysis.
III.1 Data collecting instruments
III.1.1 Construction of Corpus
Since the study is primarily a corpus-based analysis of collocations, its findings come from a
linguistic analysis of a substantial number of written articles. The corpus of the study is
constructed from 15 extracted articles from four databases.
III.1.1.1 Database
The database in this thesis refers to the set of publications from which articles for analysis
have been extracted. It consists of the following journals:
The New York Times
With continuous publication since its foundation in 1851, The New York Times is the third
largest newspaper overall in America, behind The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Its
websites is the most popular American online newspapers website, receiving more than 30
million visitors every month.


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Washington Post
Along with The New York Times, The Washington Post is generally considered one of the
leading daily American newspapers. While it has distinguished itself through its particular
emphasis on the operation of the US government, economic issues have increasingly become a
central topic of discussion in the newspaper.
The Guardian
Founded in 1821, The Guardian is a British national daily newspaper grown from a local
paper in the nineteenth century. The Guardian in paper form had a certified circulation of
230,541 in October 2011. The newspaper‘s online offering is the second most popular
newspaper website in Britain.
CNNmoney.com

CNNmoney.com is the online home of the Fortune and Money, the two famous global business
magazines published by Time Warner Inc, the world largest media company. Providing
readers with business, finance, and personal finance news, CNNmoney.com is a highly reputed
business website worldwide with millions of unique visitors per month.
Bloomberg.com
This is the official website of Bloomberg L.P, an American multinational mass media
corporation situated in New York City, New York. Bloomberg has established a privileged
position in the world of economics and finance, making up one third of the global financial
market data with estimated revenue of $6.25 billion in 2009.
The mentioned-above newspapers were chosen to serve as the database for the study because
of their reliability and reputation for famous authors, prestige presses and worldwide use in the
world of economy.