Collocation is the tendency of words to co-exist. At its simplest it is a predictable association of words that naturally fall together in certain contexts such as 'cup of tea' or 'bread and butter'. However, on a more deeply erratic and idiomatic level, it demands that one word is used rather than another in particular contexts and this idiomaticity often defies any obvious logic and is thus very difficult for non-native speakers to predict - e.g. a roaring trade, donkeys' years, in the nick of time etc.
One of the characteristics of the way words collocate is that a word in frequent use may often combine with one which is much less widely used. For this reason, many course books, whose selection of lexical material is guided by such criteria as frequency or coverage, are likely to neglect some of the most idiomatic collocations. Native speakers who might under other circumstances never use the rarer element of the collocation, nevertheless have no difficulty in producing the usual phrase, whereas non-native learners will have little guidance in predicting such combinations. Examples of this are: next of kin; run amok; torn asunder; by the skin of his teeth.
However, quite apart from the idiosyncratic nature of many of the collocations in common use, this feature of vocabulary accounts for the choice of words made by native speakers. For example, a common collocation used by learners is 'the amount of crime'. In terms of meaning, there would appear nothing to prevent this combination. Native speakers are, however, much more likely to talk about the 'rate' or perhaps the 'level' of crime. One collocation which seems to enjoy currency is 'train station' as opposed to 'railway station' and I suspect this is a case of a non-native speaker combination actually taking over from the idiomatically correct one. Inexperienced teachers tend to try to explain these matters in terms of nuance of meaning and consequently tie themselves into inextricable knots.
One effect of collocation on meaning is that particular combinations may tip a word towards, for example, being pejorative when the word alone may seem neutral. An example of this is 'element'. Taken out of context this does not appear to carry overtones of any kind of emotion, but combine in such phrases as 'hooligan element', 'fringe element', ' feminist element' and it immediately takes on a disapproving tinge.
Types of collocation
From some of the examples given above, it should be clear that collocations have a varying degree of closeness of association. If we take the cluster 'spick and span' we can say that 'spick' appears so rarely outside this combination that it rally belongs only to this 'cluster'. Such clusters are more like one lexical item than separate items of one word each. The word 'span', however, has a wider range of meanings and collocates freely with other words. For the learner the important message is that distinct meaning is not just a feature of a single item of vocabulary but of combinations as well. It is important to demonstrate, as with 'spick and span' that the cluster has one identity while other components of the cluster may have another life beyond it.
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