Sinclair on collocation

Abstract

This paper reassesses the description of collocation given by Sinclair in Chapter 8 of Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, in particular the implications of this description for models of language production and interpretation, contrasting the open choice and idiom principles. The concepts of independent and dependent meanings are explored, along with the relationship between texts and grammar. The arguments put forward in the Chapter are evaluated against collocation evidence obtained from a large reference corpus.