Introduction
The term 'collocation' has been generally used to refer to a phenomenon in
language whereby a lexical item tends to keep company with other words.The definitions of collocation offered in various books as well as in several
dictionaries lack a precise specification of the relation of co-occurrence between the
lexical items involved in a collocation.grammatical collocation, which is best described by Benson (1985) as a recurrent
combination of a dominant word followed by a grammatical word, typically a
preposition (abide by, admiration for, adjacent to, etc) lies beyond the scope of this
paper.Today, the label 'collocationists' has been coined to refer to
scholars like Cowie, Mackin, Lewis and Hill who have devoted their time, energy and
resources to examine various issues associated with collocation.The notion of 'collocation' has been unanimously viewed by linguists as a
Firthian contribution, although its earliest mention dates back to as early as 1605
(Wouden 1997:7). Later, several other prominent linguists (Halliday 1966, Sinclair
1966, Greenbaum 1970, Mitchel 1971) elaborated and developed the concept of
collocation.Lexicologists and lexicographers like Cruse, Seaton,
Benson, Carter and McCarthy, to mention a few, have maintained a great interest in
studying collocation.The other type of collocation
viz.2.