Collocations in Short Stories

Abstract

Collocation is a universal term found in any language, yet it has not got much attention. In comparison to other aspects of language, collocation is new to linguistics because of its nature; it is controversial and open to debate in linguistics. This study investigates the use of collocation in short stories and compares old and modern in terms of employing collocations. The paper attempts to answer these questions: What is collocation? What are the major characteristics of collocations? How do different writers present collocations? How are collocations utilized in old and modern literature and what effect do they have in this discourse? For the purpose of analyzing data, the researcher follows a qualitative method and adopts Haussmann’s (1989) model. Tables that cover percentages and frequencies are provided to support the qualitative analysis. Concerning data, four short stories are chosen. The study concludes that ancient and modern writers employ different structures of collocation. However, the Adjective-Noun pattern is used more frequently than others.