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FOLLOWING THE PATTERNS

Colligation & the need for a bottom-up approach to grammar

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What’s in a word?

Colligation comes from the Latin verb colligare:Col- means togetherLigare means bind / tie

Colligation came to mean a binding or twisting together of things.

J. R. Firth

Colligation is “the interrelation of grammatical categories in syntactical structures.” (1957)

Collocation describes words that co-occur:Heavy traffic, lose face, gain respect, etc.

Colligation describes the grammatical patterns that frequently with individual words.

Michael Hoey

“The basic idea of colligation is just that as a lexical item may be primed to co-occur with another lexical item, so it may also be primed to occur in or with a particular grammatical function. Alternatively, it may be primed to avoid appearance in or co-occurrence with a particular function.”

(2005)

A few quick examples

Verbs of perception such as hear, notice, see, watch and so on colligate with an object that follows them and an –ing clause. There’s also often then an adverbial of time or place.

I heard you coming in last night.I noticed him hanging around outside the house.I heard someone screaming outside.I saw him playing live when I was in Belgrade.

Peculiar features of colligation

Hoey noted that:(a)Where a common sense of a word favours common colligations, then the rare sense of that word will avoid those colligations.(b)Where two sense of a word are approximately as common – or rare – as each other, both will avoid the colligational patterns of the other.(c)Where either (a) or (b) do not apply, the effect will be humour, ambiguity, or a new meaning combining the two senses.

A case in pointCause: (1)An event, thing or person that makes something happen

This meaning of cause colligates with the preposition of, with definite articles and with a further noun / noun phrase:

The main cause of these accidents is drivers going too fast.An essay on the causes of the First World War.

A case in pointCause:(3) An aim, organisation or idea that you support, for example in politics. This kind of causeoften brings benefits to those in need.

This meaning of cause is more usually found near the end of sentences; indefinite / zero articles abound – as do a wider range of prepositions.

It’s hard work, but it’s all in a good cause.I’m not very sympathetic to their cause.Give what you can. It’s for a worthy cause.

And so it goes . . . for all words.

Different meanings of the same word take different collocations, but also operate in very different ways grammatically.

This grammar is grammar that frequently lies outside the tense-dominated ELT canon.

Different meanings of words pattern differently.

So what?

Students often claim to “know words,” but to “have problems with grammar.”

This may well mean they struggle when they try to use words then think they know – as these words neither collocate nor colligate in expected ways.

Often this is because students bring L1 primings with them into L2.

Are these grammar errors?

I’m agree.It’s depend of my girlfriend.

NOT grammar errors in the traditional ELT sense.

Rather, this is micro-grammatical.

It’s problems with the way grammar attaches itself to the words students think they ‘know’ – agree, depend, want.

All our students bring L1 primings

ОН ХОЧЕТ, ЧТОБЫ Я ИЗУЧАЛ(А) ПРАВО.МНЕ ХОЛОДНО.КАК ОНА ВЫГЛЯДИТ?

And L1 primings colour L2

He wants that I study Law.To me, cold.How she looks?

Correct colligation and co-textI agree (with you).I totally agree with you.I half-agree, I suppose / I guess.I agree up to a point.

It depends on my girlfriend.I’m not really sue yet, to be honest. It depends what my girlfriend wants to do.It depends what time my girlfriend gets home.It depends whether my girlfriend is going out that night.

Correct colligation and co-textHe wants me to study Law.My dad’s quite pushy. He wants me to study Business, but I’m not really sure that I want to.

It’s really cold today.It’s freezing!I’m freezing!

What does she look like?> Oh, she’s quite tall . . . long hair . . . quite good-looking, actually. Well, I think so anyway.

Hard work, but necessary workThis kind of correction ensures:– students are made aware of how the way they think the language works differs from how it really works.– they get the chance to learn better ways of saying what they were trying to say.– they get exposure to more grammatically complex / subtle ways of expressing themselves.

Classroom material can do some of this – especially if written with colligation in mind – but teacher is most crucial element.

Errors often lie outside of the canonAnother example

Drive carefully. It’s a really think fog outside.

Where’s the error lie?

Further implicationsWhen teaching ‘words’, we need to pay more attention to colligation, collocation and co-text.

Examples are as important as definitions. They prime students for normal usage.

Hoey has shown the real route to proficiency is sufficient exposure. Teachers can shortcut the priming process by providing high-reward input that condenses experience and saves time.

Think more about your examplesThe fog was so thick that we couldn’t even see fifty feet in front of us.

All flights out of Heathrow have been cancelled because of the fog.

Be careful how you drive tonight. The fog is really thick out there.

More is moreIt helps prime students in the micro-grammar (and collocation . . . and co-text) of the word in question.

Allows space for the teacher to ask about macro-grammar too.

“HAVE BEEN CANCELLED” – what tense is that?And why use that tense here, do you think?And is it active or passive? Why?

The power of two-way translationHe wants me to study Law.(= ОН ХОЧЕТ, ЧТОБЫ Я ИЗУЧАЛ(А) ПРАВО.)

Translating into L1 is easy.Translating well back into L2 is much harder.It catches the tendency to bring L1 primings over.It forces greater noticing and attention to patterns.

Final thoughtsBelieving that EFL Big Grammar is the main problem is to miss the point.

Most learners understand the basic sense of many words, but lack exposure to - and awareness of – the way these words interacts with grammar and with other words.

Therefore, we need to be correcting more cleverly.We need to be reformulating output.We need to teach vocabulary from this perspective.

Further readingJ. R. Firth (1968) Linguistic Analysis as a Study of Meaning

J. R. Firth (1968) A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory 1930-1955

M. Hoey (2005) Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language.