Colligational And Collocational Behaviour Of Similar Words

Vocabulary is the basic element of a language. However, for a long history it has not drawn the same attention as grammar from linguistic researchers and foreign language teachers, who have been holding the conventional theoretical framework that "grammar is the foremost, and vocabulary is subordinate". Up till now, a great deal of second or foreign language teachers have contended that the focus of classroom instruction should be language competence, that is, abstract grammar rules. In addition, lexis and grammar are often inappropriately separated by linguists, although they are actually closely associated in language system. Since the late 1980s, corpus linguistics has created new conditions and opportunities for the exploration of the relationship between lexis and grammar.Lexical behaviour generally consists of colligation and collocation. The former mainly describes the syntactic properties of a word, and the latter focuses on the lexical properties of a word. From the perspective of the close association between lexis and grammar, based on two news corpora (China Daily corpus and NewYork Times corpus), this paper intends to investigate the use of two high-frequency verbs GET and MAKE by Chinese learners in terms of colligation and collocation, compared with that by native speakers, and to explore the sources. This statistical study is a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses. In view of the difficulties that Chinese learners have encountered in the two aspects of word behaviour, this paper proposes a new notion—patterning, that is, an integration of lexical and syntactic environment. Patterning-driven approach is a new one to describe language use, accompanied with the development of corpus linguistics. It stengthens the close association among lexis, syntax and semantics in language system. Finally this paper primarily discusses the challenges that patterning theory poses to conventional linguistics and its implications for pedagogical practice.The important conclusions that this study has achieved are addressed as follows:(1) Chinese learners tend to underuse high-frequency verbs, which is in accordance with Sinclair's argument in the work Corpus, Concordance and Collocation.(2) There are significant differences in the use of the verbs GET and MAKE in terms of colligation and collocation between Chinese learners and native speakers. The chief sources can be attributed to the learners* mother-tongue transfer and their incomplete mastery of the target language.(3) The similarity between GET and MAKE in the causative use determines their similar colligational behaviour.(4) Different forms of the same word are inclined to have different colligational behaviour(5) Lexical patterning emphasizes the inseparability of lexis and grammar, which is helpful for Chinese learners to achieve the fluency, accuracy and idiomaticity of the target language. It should be included as a promising component in pedagogical content.(6) Lexis, syntax and semantics are intertwined in language system.