What is a collocate?

Collocates are lexemes that co-occur with each other in natural texts.

Collocates may be characterized as follows:

• Syntactically and semantically permissible

  Example:

  'There was green grass growing everywhere.'

• Syntactically permissible but semantically impermissible (commonly referred to as collocational clashes)

  Example:

  'There were green ideas growing everywhere.'

• Syntactically impermissible but semantically permissible

  Example:

  'There was green grass grows everywhere.'

• Syntactically and semantically impermissible

  Example:

  'There was green ideas grows everywhere.'

Collocates may also be characterized as follows:

• Syntactically and semantically permissible, but incidental, as in live metaphors

  Example:

  'The barn was painted red like a tomato.'

• Syntactically and semantically permissible, but fixed in usage, as in dead metaphors

  Example:

  'He turned as red as a beet.'

Context for this page:

• Concept module: collocate
• In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): C
• In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
• In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 18 September 1998

© 2004 SIL International