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86 collapse
elements belonging to the same chain, as in He i saw himself i or He i was
murdered t i (where t i is a trace of he i ).
collapse (v.) A term used in generative grammar to refer to the notational
conflation of two rules into one, in the interests of a simpler and more general
statement, e.g. NP ⇒ D N and NP ⇒ D Adj N, being replaced by NP ⇒
D(Adj)N, where the brackets refer to the optional use of the adjective.
collective (adj.) A term used in grammatical description to refer to a noun
which denotes a group of entities, and which is formally differentiated from
other nouns by a distinct pattern of number contrast (and, in some languages,
morphologically). Collective nouns (e.g. government, army, club, jury, public)
fall into several grammatical subclasses, but their distinctive characteristic is
their ability to co-occur in the singular with either a singular or a plural verb,
this correlating with a difference of interpretation – the noun being seen as a
single collective entity, or as a collection of individual entities (cf. the committee
is wrong v. the committee are wrong). In some languages, ‘collective’ (v. noncollective)
refers to a type of plural formation in which a number of individuals
is seen as forming a coherent set; for example, a plural suffix A attached to
house might express the notion of a ‘village’ (collective), whereas suffix B might
refer to any random group of houses (non-collective). In semantics, the term is
often used for predicates or quantifiers which ascribe a property to a group
as a whole, as opposed to the individual members of the group; it contrasts with
distributive. For example, congregate is a collective predicate: The children
congregated in the hallway means that the group as a whole congregated; an
individual child cannot congregate.
colligation (n.) A term in Firthian linguistics for the process or result of
grouping a set of words on the basis of their similarity in entering into
syntagmatic grammatical relations. For example, a set of verbs which
take a certain kind of complement construction would be said to be ‘in
colligation with’ that construction; e.g. agree, choose, decline, manage, etc.
colligate with to+infinitive constructions, as opposed to -ing forms, as I agree to
go v. *I agree going. Colligation is usually contrasted with collocation.
collocability (n.)
see collocation
collocation (n.) A term used in lexicology by some (especially Firthian)
linguists to refer to the habitual co-occurrence of individual lexical items.
For example, auspicious collocates with occasion, event, sign, etc.; and letter
collocates with alphabet, graphic, etc., on the one hand, and postman, pillarbox,
etc., on the other. Collocations are, then, a type of syntagmatic lexical
relation. They are linguistically predictable to a greater or lesser extent (e.g. the
bond between spick and span is stronger than that between letter and pillarbox),
and this differentiates them from sense associations, which tend to
include idiosyncratic connections (e.g. mother-in-law associating with hippopotamus).
Some words have no specific collocational restrictions – grammatical
words such as the, of, after, in. By contrast, there are many totally predictable
restrictions, as in eke + out, spick + span, and these are usually analysed as