We used to think of grammar as the bones of the language and vocabulary as the flesh to be added given that language consisted largely of life generated chunks of lexis. This “skeleton image” has been proverbially used to refer to that central feature of lexis named collocation- an idea that for the first 15 years of language study and analysis gave a moment‟s thought to English classroom material and methodology.
The work of John Sinclair, Dave Willis, Ron Carter, Michael McCarthy, Michael Lewis, and many others have all contributed to the way teachers today approach the area of lexis and what it means in the teaching/learning process of the language. This also seems to have incorporated lexical ideas into the teaching mechanism and highlighted that the present knowledge of the nature of English lexis and collocation in particular raises a set of important issues for teachers in the first place. Such issues are:
1. Given that grammar still rules the sentence, lexis should be one of the principle organizing parts of the syllabus;
2. The need for different strategies for vocabulary learning at different stages of learning, both in and outside the classroom;
3. The need for more developed techniques that would help the students record and store lexis in ways that could enable them to retrieve and revise the proper words for examinations, i.e., lead them to become „lexis collectors‟.
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4. The need for a fresh look at bilingual dictionaries every now and then given that conventional dictionaries cannot give all the information necessary about collocation.
5. Lexis is an area where literal translation is often impossible; a collocation in English may be totally different in Spanish or German and thus the implication of translation should not be discarded as it is essential in English. (The translation skills of the non-native speaking teachers must be recognized in this area.)
6. The two main components of language (grammar and vocabulary) merge into one another and the dividing line is much less clear cut than teachers and textbooks often operate; yet accuracy must be treated as a late-acquired skill.
This study aims at shedding light on the linguistic significance of collocation networks in the academic writing context. Following Firth’s principle “You shall know a word by the company it keeps.” The study intends to examine three selected nodes (i.e. research, study, and paper) shared collocations in an academic context. This is achieved by using the corpus linguistic tool; GraphColl in #LancsBox software version 5 which was announced in June 2020 in analyzing selected nodes. The study focuses on academic writing of two corpora which were designed and collected especially to serve the purpose of the study. The corpora consist of a collection of abstracts extracted from two different academic journals that publish for writ
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DBN Rashid, Rimak International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2020
This paper studies the demonstratives as deictic expressions in Standard Arabic and English by outlining their phonological, syntactic and semantic properties in the two languages. On the basis of the outcome of this outline, a contrastive study of the linguistic properties of this group of deictic expressions in the two languages is conducted next. The aim is to find out what generalizations could be made from the results of this contrastive study.
Media has become a common platform for communication as a tool of offense. English language has many insult words which are commonly used in the world of media. This study investigates the socio-pragmatic aspect of insulting in English news. It aims at identifying and analysing insult words and expressions used by news presenters. To specify the problem of the study, language has a harmful power that hurts the addressees and seriously harm their psychological well-being. The insulting words that are an element of all human languages are the source of this abusive power. The study questions sought to find out are if news presenters use insult words, which insult words, and in what social contexts. In this study, the descriptive method is use
... Show MoreThe present study aims at analyzing the polysemy of the English preposition in from the cognitive linguistic (CL) point of view using Evans' and Tyler's approach (2003). The perplexity faced by Iraqi second language learners (L2) due to the multi-usages of this preposition has motivated the researcher to conduct this study. Seventy-six second year university students participated in this experimental study. The data of the pre-test and post-test were analyzed by SPSS statistical editor. The results have shown the following: First, a progress of more than (0.05≤) has been detected as far as students' understanding of the multiple usages of the preposition in is concerned. Second, the results of the questionnaire have s
... Show MoreIt is axiomatic that languages mirror the world view of their users. Manipulating honorific forms among people inevitably reflects this truth . Honorifics are conventionalized forms or expressions manifested in all the world's languages and are used to express the social status of the participants in the verbal interaction and to convey indications like politeness and respect . English is no exception. However the question is what exactly creates these forms and their meanings. Although honorifics have been extensively researched from a grammatical and semantic angle , yet they haven’t received that significant attention i
... Show MoreAssimilation is defined ,by many phoneticians like Schane ,Roach ,and many others, as a phonological process when there is a change of one sound into another because of neighboring sounds.This study investigates the phoneme assimilation as a phonological process in English and Arabic and it is concerned specifically with the differences and similarities in both languages. Actually ,this study reflects the different terms which are used in Arabic to refer to this phenomenon and in this way it shows whether the term 'assimilation ' can have the same meaning of 'idgham' in Arabic or not . Besides, in Arabic , this phenomenon is discussed from&nb
... Show MoreThis piece of research deals with assimilation as one of the phonological processes in the language. It is a trial to give more attention to this important process in English language with deep explanation to its counterpart in Arabic. in addition, this study sheds light on the points of similarities and differences concerning this process in the two languages. Assimilation in English means two sounds are involved, and one becomes more like the other.
The assimilating phoneme picks up one or more of the features of another nearby phoneme. The English phoneme /n/ has t
... Show MoreThe present study attempts to give a detailed discussion and analysis of parenthetical constructions in English and Arabic, the aim being to pinpoint the points of similarity and difference between the two languages in this particular linguistic area.The study claims that various types of constructions in English and Arabic could be considered parenthetical; these include non-restrictive relative clauses, non-restrictive appositives, comment clauses, vocatives, interjections, among others. These are going to be identified, classified, and analyzed according to the Quirk grammar - the approach to grammatical description pioneered by Randolph Quirk and his associates, and published in a series of reference grammars during the 1970
... Show MoreDBN Rashid, International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change, 2020