Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In phraseology, a collocation is a type of compositional phraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words that make it up. This contrasts with an idiom , where the meaning of the whole cannot be inferred from its parts, and may be completely unrelated.
Collocation The way words are often used together. For example, “do the dishes” and “do homework”, but “make the bed” and “make noise”. Colloquialism A word or phrase used in conversation – usually in small regions of the English-speaking world – but not in formal speech or writing: “Like, this dude came onto her real bad.”
Compounds are units of meaning formed with two or more words. The words are usually written separately, but some may be hyphenated or be written as one word. Often the meaning of the compound can be guessed by knowing the meaning of the individual words. It is not always simple to detach collocations and compounds. car park; post office; narrow ...
Repetition uses the same word, or synonyms, antonyms, etc. For example, "Which dress are you going to wear?" – "I will wear my green frock," uses the synonyms "dress" and "frock" for lexical cohesion. Collocation uses related words that typically go together or tend to repeat the same meaning. An example is the phrase "once upon a time".
Collocations and compound words pretty much mean what they say. The latter two categories are hierarchical. COLLOCATIONS are more general because they can be either within or across syntactic categories e.g., "row a boat" and "commit suicide" include both verbs and noun or noun phrase; "crystal ball" is a noun phrase.
Such phrases are often considered idiomatic. Another example is the word "white", which has specific meanings when used with "wine", "coffee," "noise," "chess piece," or "person." These usages can be said to be idiomatic because in each case the word "white" changes from its normal usage.
In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause.Thus, in the sentence A fat man quickly put the money into the box, the words quickly put the money into the box constitute a verb phrase; it consists of the verb put and its arguments, but not the subject a fat man.
The distinction between literal and figurative language exists in all natural languages; the phenomenon is studied within certain areas of language analysis, in particular stylistics, rhetoric, and semantics. Literal language is the usage of words exactly according to their direct, straightforward, or conventionally accepted meanings: their ...