collocational
- adjective
- /ˌkɒləˈkeɪʃənl/
- Specialized
- Linguists study collocational patterns to understand how words typically fit together in a sentence.
Examples
-
Resorting to dictionaries to decode stories does not appeal to them, and they perceive the allusions, collocational puzzles, and syntactic variety as requiring them to do too much work.
Academic text (1990) -
The register of high-tech psychology creates interesting collocational mixes with the poetry of metaphor and alliteration:
Academic text (1990) -
For example, in his article, "Collocational Analysis as a Stylistic Discovery Procedure: The Case of Flannery
Academic text (2004) -
His writing is rich with collocational phrases that make the text sound natural and fluid.
-
Learning collocational differences between languages can help students sound more like native speakers.
Surface Forms
Morphology
collocational = collocation (semi-transparent) = collocate + ion + al
The adjective is built regularly from 'collocation', but the meaning is somewhat technical and may not be fully obvious to all learners.
Etymology
Collocational comes from parts that mean 'together' (co-) and 'place', the same root as location. So something collocational is about words that are often 'placed together', which is why it describes common word combinations.
