[Corpora-List] J. R. Firth not collocated with 'collocation' or 'colligation' in the first place

[Xu Jiajin]

Hi all,



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.



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.



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.



A little bit more about the use of 'collocation'.

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).



Meaning by 'collocation' (1951)

A:

Firth, J. R. 1951/1957. Modes of Meanings. Reprinted in Papers in
Linguistics 1934-1951. London: Oxford University Press. Pp. 190-215.

Link to the article:

http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/Firth_Collocation_1951.zip



Colligation (1957)

B:

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.

Link to the article:

http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/JR_Firth_Colligation_1957.zip



Colligation (1953)

C:

Simon, H. F. 1953. Two Substantival Complexes in Standard Chinese. Bulletin
of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS) 15.2: 327-355.

Link to the article:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&pdftype=1&fid=3921532&jid=BSO&volumeId=15&issueId=02&aid=3921524

or

http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/HF_Simon_Colligation_1953.zip



Collocation (1933)

D:

Palmer, Harold E. 1933. Second Interim Report on English Collocations.
Tokyo: Institute for Research in English Teaching.

If this were the second report, then there must have been something before
that.

Link to the article:

http://www.bfsu-corpus.org/static/corpus_classics/Palmer_Collocation_Report_1933.zip

(I'd thank Prof. Kawazaki of Daito Benka University for having photocopied
this important document for me.)



Best,



Jiajin XU

Ph.D., Professor

National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education

Beijing Foreign Studies University

Beijing 100089

China
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