Re: Help with collocations, please

Django Cat wrote:

> The paper is not about overuse of hackneyed expressions - cliches.  It's
about
> collocations - multi-word combinations such as the ones you're using
above, and
> which native speakers use every day - 'mother tongue' is a good example,
as is
> 'abundantly clear'. These combinations are neither defective or
deplorable,
> they just exist.
> 
> Though Howarth doesn't use the term, it's also about 'chunking'; the way
we
> learn language in multi-word elements and learn which words go together.
 So
> blonde might mean 'pale browny-yellow', but even if you had a pale
> browny-yellow car, you wouldn't say 'I've got a blonde car'; we learn
that
> blonde is an adjective that only goes with hair, by extension with
people with
> blond/e hair (usually women), and, at a push, some continental lagers. 
If
> you're looking for a place to stay for the night you may want somewhere
to
> sleep and a meal the next morning, but you're going to get strange looks
and
> not get very far if you ask for *'breakfast and bed' instead of 'bed and
> breakfast'.
> 
> It's unfortunate that some of the first examples he gives - 'when in
Rome'
> 'Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...' are also pretty cliched,
and may
> have given you the wrong impression of what the article is about - and
if I was
> to teach these expressions I'd think of them as 'idioms', not
collocations.
> How about two better examples from the next page - 'make a claim' and
'redress
> the balance' - should those be avoided as cliches?  Next time you need
to claim
> on your insurance policy are you going to think of another way of saying
'make
> a claim' so as to avoid sounding cliched?  And isn't the person who
reads you
> writing, lets say, *'propose a claim', going to think "that sounds a bit
> weird... must be a foreigner"?  Are you going to try to find another way
of
> saying 'mother tongue' now?  How about *'maternal language'?  That may
mean the
> same thing semantically, but nobody's going to have a clue what you're
on
> about.  Like our man says:
> 
> 'Pawley and Syder' s widely quoted study of lexicalization of word
combinations
> comes to a similar conclusion: "Memorized sentences and phrases are the
normal
> building blocks of fluent spoken discourse .... The attempt to find a
novel
> turn of phrase to describe the familiar is ... likely to produce
dysfluencies:
> it is easier to be commonplace." (1983: 208)' (But note they aren't
saying that
> 'the attempt to find a novel turn of phrase' is a bad thing in all
> cir***stances - see what Howarth says later about newspaper leader
writiers)
> 
> Lack of knowledge of collocation is one of the things that makes
non-native
> speakers - and writers - sound non-native. Here's Howarth again:
> 
> "Acceptance of the broad foundations of this approach would mean at the
minimum
> that 'phraseological competence' is recognised as a component of a
native
> speaker's knowledge of the language. As Bolinger says: "a speaker who
does not
> command this array [100s of 1000s of memorised sentence stems] does not
know
> the language." (1985:69) If phraseological competence is essential for
native
> speakerness, what does this mean for language learners? Do they have it?
and if
> not, do they need it? and if so, how do they get it?"
> 
> I've spent much of the last 25 years wondering what the answer to that
last
> question is.  What a bloody waste[1]; I could have been a brain
surgeon[2].
> 
> Anyway.  One of the early things we teach is collocation with 'make' and
'do' -
> 'do the shopping', 'make the beds' 'do the wa****ng up'.  Is 'make the
bed' a
> cliche?  Or shall we all start doing the beds, instead?
> 
Thanks for that very interesting clarification. From my own experience 
of learning foreign languages, I'd say that learning set phrases and 
trotting them out in appropriate situations is a good way of making 
native speakers believe your competence in their language is greater 
than it really is. The only problem is, you can then find yourself in 
deeper linguistic waters than you'd bargained for, when your 
interlocutor stops making allowances for your learner status and 
launches into high speed fully idiomatic mode -- but that bracing 
experience does motivate further learning.

A German-speaking friend commented once on an interview given by the 
then British Ambassador on German TV: "He's impressively fluent, until 
you realise all he's doing is repeating cliches". I thought she was 
rather underestimating his ability, but I got her point. (There's 
another one for you).

I remember once  hailing a taxi in Paris, and being treated after a 
brief exchange of courtesies to a long diatribe about the iniquitous 
taxi-driver strike that was just about to start. I only understood about 
a half of it, but made appropriate interjections from time to time, such 
"alors!" "vraiment?" "merde!" and so on. Paying him after 25 minutes of 
this, he said "Vous parlez tres bien Francais Monsieur".