Collocations are partly or fully fixed expressions that become established through

repeated context-dependent use. Such terms as 'crystal clear', 'middle

management', 'nuclear family', and 'cosmetic surgery' are examples of collocated
pairs of words.
Collocations can be in a syntactic relation (such as verbobject: 'make' and
'decision'), lexical relation (such as antonymy), or they can be in no linguistically
defined relation. Knowledge of collocations is vital for the competent use of a
language: a grammatically correct sentence will stand out as awkward if
collocational preferences are violated. This makes collocation an interesting area
for language teaching.
Corpus Linguists specify a Key Word in Context (KWIC) and identify the words
immediately surrounding them. This gives an idea of the way words are used.
The processing of collocations involves a number of parameters, the most
important of which is the measure of association, which evaluates whether the co-
occurrence is purely by chance or statistically significant. Due to the non-random
nature of language, most collocations are classed as significant, and the association
scores are simply used to rank the results. Commonly used measures of association
include mutual information, t scores, and log-likelihood.
Rather than select a single definition, Gledhill proposes that collocation involves at
least three different perspectives: (i) cooccurrence, a statistical view, which sees
collocation as the recurrent appearance in a text of a node and its collocates, (ii)
construction, which sees collocation either as a correlation between a lexeme and a
lexical-grammatical pattern, or as a relation between a base and its collocative
partners and (iii) expression, a pragmatic view of collocation as a conventional unit
of expression, regardless of form. It should be pointed out here that these
different perspectives contrast with the usual way of presenting collocation in
phraseological studies. Traditionally speaking, collocation is explained in terms of
all three perspectives at once, in a continuum:
Free Combination Bound Collocation Frozen Idiom

Sample Collocations
There are several different types of collocation. Collocations can be adjective +
adverb, noun + noun, verb + noun and so on. Below you can see seven main types of
collocation in sample sentences.
1. adverb + adjective
Invading that country was an utterly stupid thing to do.
We entered a richly decorated room.
Are you fully aware of the implications of your action?
2. adjective + noun
The doctor ordered him to take regular exercise.
The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage.
He was writhing on the ground in excruciating pain.
3. noun + noun
Let's give Mr Jones a round of applause.
The ceasefire agreement came into effect at 11am.
I'd like to buy two bars of soap please.
4. noun + verb
The lion started to roar when it heard the dog barking.
Snow was falling as our plane took off.
The bomb went off when he started the car engine.
5. verb + noun
The prisoner was hanged for committing murder.
I always try to do my homework in the morning, after making my bed.
He has been asked to give a presentation about his work.
6. verb + expression with preposition
We had to return home because we had run out of money.
At first her eyes filled with horror, and then she burst into tears.
Their behaviour was enough to drive anybody to crime.
7. verb + adverb
She placed her keys gently on the table and sat down.
Mary whispered softly in John's ear.
I vaguely remember that it was growing dark when we left.