Collocations & Multi Word Expressions

Collocations is a group of words used as a single unit of word in sentence . All idioms and Phrasal verbs and Multi word expressions are collocations . Example of collocations is "Many thanks to you" . Here "Many thanks" is a collocations . One property of collocations is non substitutability . It means if you replace word in collocations with its synonym then it will no longer be a collocations . Such as if you replace "many" to "several" then "several thanks" will not be a collocations and it is not used in good English. Collocations can be of two types . Decomposable collocations and non decomposable collocations . Decomposable collocations are those whose meaning can be derived from its constituent words . Such as "Spill the bean" ---- its meaning can be derived from the word "Spill" . Non decomposable collocations are those whose meaning can not be derived from its constituent words . Such as "Kick the bucket " -- its meaning "to die" can not be derived from its constituent words "kick", "the","bucket" . All nominal compounds , Determiner less preposition phrases , Verb particle constructions are examples of collocations . There are several methods to detect collocations in English language . Such tests are t - test , chi square test , P M I test , log likelihood test etc.