Collocational Range
Collocational range refers to the number and variety of collocates a word typically combines with. Words with wide collocational range are versatile and combine freely; words with narrow range are restricted to a small set of partners.
Wide vs Narrow Range
| Word | Range | Collocates | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| strong | Wide | coffee, argument, wind, accent, evidence, desire, team | High-frequency, polysemous |
| make | Wide | decision, mistake, progress, effort, noise, money | Delexical verb |
| rancid | Narrow | butter, oil, fat, meat | Semantically specific |
| auburn | Narrow | hair | Highly restricted |
| blond(e) | Narrow | hair, woman, ale | Slightly wider but still limited |
Factors Affecting Range
- Frequency — High-frequency words generally have wider collocational range because they appear in more contexts
- Polysemy — Words with multiple meanings collocate differently in each sense (light bag vs light colour vs light meal)
- Semantic specificity — The more specific a word's meaning, the narrower its range (rancid applies only to fats/oils going bad)
- Register — Some collocations are register-specific (lodge a complaint is formal; make a complaint is neutral)
Delexical Verbs
Verbs like make, do, take, have, get, and give have exceptionally wide collocational range precisely because they carry little meaning on their own — the noun collocate does the semantic work. These "delexical" or "light" verbs are a major source of Collocation errors for L2 learners (do a mistake instead of make a mistake).
Teaching Implications
- Prioritise wide-range collocates — Teaching that strong collocates with coffee, argument, evidence, wind gives learners versatile building blocks
- Flag narrow-range items — When teaching a word like rancid, note its restricted partners explicitly
- Corpus Linguistics tools reveal range — Concordancers show the full spread of a word's collocational behaviour
- Range as a measure of Vocabulary Depth — Knowing a word's collocational range is part of knowing the word deeply, beyond simple definition
Collocational range also helps explain why some vocabulary is harder to learn: narrow-range words are encountered less often in varied contexts, giving fewer opportunities for incidental acquisition.