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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Hi all,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Today, when I was checking the page number
of the term ‘colligation’ in J. R. Firth’s 1957 article ‘A Synopsis of Linguistic
Theory, 1930-55’, I got
surprised by a footnote--Note 49--which points to Reference C below.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Previously, the terms ‘collocation’ and ‘colligation’
were believed to be first used by J. R. Firth in 1951 and 1957 respectively.
However, Firth himself made an explicit reference to H. F. Simon in Reference
B.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Actually, the term ‘colligation’ was
proposed at page 327 of Reference C (The page was also strangely paginated as
page 25, but judging from the page range of the article, the page is meant to
be page 327--the first page of the article), meaning ‘the syntactic juxtaposition
of two or more categories’. What makes this more interesting is that Note 1 at
page 327 of Reference C refers us to Dr. S. A. Birnbaum as the very person who
coined or proposed the term ‘colligation’, despite that the first half of the
word ‘colligation’ was not correctly scanned.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">A little bit more about the use of ‘collocation’.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I think what the new term that J. R. Firth
proposed was not ‘collocation’ (p. 194), but ‘meaning by collocation’, because ‘collocation’
was used as a linguistic term long before Firth (1951). For example, Palmer
(1933) is a systemic study of English collocations (see Reference D).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Meaning by 'collocation' (1951)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">A: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Firth, J. R. 1951/1957. Modes of Meanings.
Reprinted in Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951. London:
Oxford University Press. Pp. 190-215.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Link to the article:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/Firth_Collocation_1951.zip"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/Firth_Collocation_1951.zip</span></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Colligation (1957)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">B: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Firth, J. 1957. A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory,
1930-55. Studies in Linguistic Analysis (Special Volume of the Philological Society).
Reprinted in F. Palmer. 1968. Selected Papers of J. R. Firth 1952-59. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press. Pp. 168-205.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Link to the article:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/JR_Firth_Colligation_1957.zip"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/JR_Firth_Colligation_1957.zip</span></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Colligation (1953)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">C:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Simon, H. F. 1953. Two Substantival
Complexes in Standard Chinese. Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies (BSOAS) 15.2: 327-355.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Link to the article:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&pdftype=1&fid=3921532&jid=BSO&volumeId=15&issueId=02&aid=3921524">http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&pdftype=1&fid=3921532&jid=BSO&volumeId=15&issueId=02&aid=3921524</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">or</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/HF_Simon_Colligation_1953.zip"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/HF_Simon_Colligation_1953.zip</span></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Collocation (1933)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">D: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Palmer, Harold E. 1933. Second Interim
Report on English Collocations. Tokyo:
Institute for Research in English Teaching.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">If this were the second report, then there
must have been something before that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Link to the article:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/Palmer_Collocation_Report_1933.zip"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/Palmer_Collocation_Report_1933.zip</span></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">(I’d thank Prof. Kawazaki of Daito Benka
University for having
photocopied this important document for me.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Best,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Jiajin XU</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Ph.D., Professor</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">National Research Centre for Foreign
Language Education</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Beijing</span><span lang="EN-GB"> Foreign Studies
University</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Beijing</span><span lang="EN-GB"> 100089</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">China</span></p>
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