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

Tue Feb 11 18:47:14 UTC 2014

Hi all
#1 Professor Jiajin Xu said:
"Previously, the terms 'collocation' and 'colligation' were believed to be first used by J. R. Firth in 1951 and 1957 respectively."
I think Firth (1951) and (1957) are regarded as important stepping-stones in the story of collocation/colligation, rather than the
first uses, although some papers may not express this accurately. Barnbrook et al (2013) mentions some earlier stepping-stones:
the word was probably borrowed from Latin/French into English in the 17th C or earlier; it is listed as a Latin word in bilingual
Latin-English dictionaries in the 16th C, and as an English word in monolingual ('Hard Words') English-English dictionaries in the 17th C.
We probably cannot pinpoint its acquisition of a specialist linguistic usage, but OED provides a quote from an 1862 work ('rattling rhymes
and quaint collocations') which is clearly a usage of this kind. However, I would agree that Firth first described collocation as responsible for
for generating meaning at a *separate level*, the syntagmatic level, and as distinct from the 'conceptual or idea approach to the meaning of
words'.
A further source of confusion is that Firth's ideas - and indeed the initial versions of his papers - may have long preceded the date of any attested
publications (eg 1951/57). I know that many of John Sinclair's ideas were first aired in seminars and workshops long before publication (eg the
'naked eye' example which appeared in Textus 1996 'The Search for Units of Meaning'); and Sinclair, Jones and Daley's seminal 1970 publication
on collocation, English Lexical Studies, remained available in only as a dozen or so duplicated typescript copies, with equations added manually
in felt-tip pen, until its (re-)publication in 2004! Many of his ideas in earlier attested publications were updated and reissued in later works, often
under the same heading/title.

#2 Professor Jiajin Xu said of Palmer (1933) Second Interim Report on English Collocations:
"If this were the second report, then there must have been something before that."
Indeed there was, but I think there is an unfortunate ambiguity in the title of Palmer (1933),
which suggests that there was a previous work specifically *on collocations*. But I no longer think
that is the case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_E._Palmer lists (among his other publications)...
1930-Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection, The Principles of Romanization
1931-Second Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection
1933-Second Interim Report on English Collocations, A New Classification of English Tones

As far as I know, none of Palmer's publications - other than (1933) - focussed on collocation.
Palmer invited Hornby to work with him in 1931, and his influence is evident in Hornby's
Idiomatic and Syntactic Dictionary (1942) and the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
of Current English / Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (1943-8, according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Advanced_Learner%27s_Dictionary).

I hope this helps.
best
Ramesh
Visiting Academic Fellow, Aston University, UK
-------------
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 11:16:02 +0000
From: Michael Pace-Sigge <michael.pace-sigge at uef.fi>
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Corpora Digest, Vol 80, Issue 11 - JR
        Firth
To: "corpora at uib.no" <corpora at uib.no>

J. R. Firth not collocated with 'collocation' or
      'colligation' in the first place (Xu Jiajin)

Dear Jiajin,
I do not believe Firth made the claim of being first. I think H.F. Simon and Firth worked closely together and palmer's work was, until the 1960s, the gold-standard for Applied Linguistics and Firth would have been aware of Palmer's (and Hornby's) work. The term COLLIGATION is also used will before the 20th century - Wundt, an early psychologist, makes specific use of it. Details can be found in my own (2013) publications.

Best,

M.

Dr. Michael Pace-Sigge
Senior Lecturer,
Room 155 Agora
Tel.+ 358 (0) 294452154

School of Humanities
University of Eastern Finland
P.O. Box 111
FI-80101 Joensuu
Finland
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=668070
---
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 09:44:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Linda Bawcom <linda.bawcom at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] J. R. Firth not collocated with
        'collocation' or        'colligation' in the first place
To: Xu Jiajin <ustcxujj at gmail.com>, "corpora at uib.no" <Corpora at uib.no>
Cc: "frankliang0086 at 163.com" <frankliang0086 at 163.com>,
        "laolee_wz at 163.com" <laolee_wz at 163.com>
Dear Jiajin,

There apparently was a First Interim Report "presented as a mimeographed copy to the Eighth Annual Conference (Palmer, 1933, 1)." See Barnbrook, Mason & Krishnamurthy (2013) Collocation: applications and implications. Palgrave Macmillan p.23
---
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 21:33:21 +0800
From: Xu Jiajin <ustcxujj at gmail.com>
Subject: [Corpora-List] J. R. Firth not collocated with 'collocation'
        or 'colligation' in the first place
To: "corpora at uib.no" <Corpora at uib.no>
Cc: frankliang0086 at 163.com, laolee_wz at 163.com
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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