collocationsphrases

Collocations are sequences of words that tend to occur together more often than would be expected by chance. They form predictable patterns in a language and help speakers sound fluent. Phrases are any multiword units that function as a single unit, including clauses, idioms, and fixed expressions; collocations are an important subtype of phrases. Not every phrase is a collocation, and not every collocation is perfectly fixed, as form can vary with tense, number, or context.

Common collocation types include lexical collocations, such as adjective–noun pairs (heavy rain, strong tea), and grammatical collocations, such as verb–noun combinations (make a decision, take a break) or noun–preposition links (interest in, depend on). Phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions (kick the bucket, by and large) are also multiword units that interact with collocational patterns in different ways. The boundary between collocations and other types of phrases can be fluid.

In corpus linguistics, collocations are identified by analyzing large texts and comparing observed word co-occurrence with what would be expected by chance. Measures such as mutual information, likelihood, or t-scores are used to quantify strength. Researchers also consider collocation windows (words to the left and right of a target word) to detect meaningful partnerships.

Applications of collocation analysis include language teaching, writing improvement, and natural language processing. Knowledge of common collocations enhances fluency and comprehension for learners and informs tools such as grammar checkers, language models, and autocomplete systems. Challenges include variation by dialect, register, and era, as well as the existence of both productive collocations and fixed expressions with unpredictable meanings.