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Although there are some notable definitions of ‘collocation’ in the literature (which often quote Firth’s (1951, 1957) notion directly or indirectly), collocations remain ‘notoriously difficult to define’ (Gorgis and Al-Kharabsheh 2009: 21; Lesniewska 2006: 59; Bahumaid 2006: 133; Poulsen 2005: 25; Martynska 2004: 5; Smadja 1996:1). Laybutt (2009: 6) also note that "while collocation and its influence on linguistic choice maybe readily observed, its precise role within text remains unclear". Similarly, Halliday and Hasan (1976: 284) state that the function of collocation has always been "problematic". Fontenelle (1998: 191) asserts that "there does not seem to be any clear-cut, non-controversial definition of the term 'collocation'".

However, Partington (1998: 15) highlights three different definitions of ‘collocation’. He groups these into 'textual', 'statistical' and 'psychological' definitions.The first definition is that provided by Sinclair (1991), who regards ‘collocation’ as “the occurrence of two or more words within a short space of each other in a text” (ibid: 170). This definition is a 'textual' one, as it suggests that collocations must be defined in terms of their textual occurrence. Gledhill (2000: 202) has similarly argued that the textual view of collocation does not regard the unit of analysis as a grammatical phrase; rather it has a specific textual function that seeks to find significant relations between words in contexts.

The second definition of collocation is 'psychological' or 'associative'. Halliday and Hasan (1976: 287) refer to collocation as a cohesive device and describe it as "a cover term for the kind of cohesion that results from the co- occurrence of lexical items that are in some way or other typically associated with one another, because they tend to occur in similar environments". Similarly, Hoey (2005: 3-4) describes psychological or associative collocation as a 'property of the mental lexicon' that reflects the individual's psychological knowledge of a text.

Apparently, both the textual and psychological definitions of collocations are closely related. Partington (1998: 16) makes it clear that "The learner, child or adult, faced with an unknown word looks to the co-text to gain clues as to what the unfamiliar item might mean. Meaning is function in context, as Firth used to say".

The third definition of ‘collocation’ is a 'statistical' one provided by Hoey (1991), who holds that: “Collocation has long been the name given to the relationship a lexical item has with items that appear with greater than random probability in its (textual) context” (1991: 6-9). The statistical view of collocation helps by allowing the linguist to identify and examine the statistical distribution of collocational patterns that could not be discovered using traditional methods.

In the study of corpus linguistics, the ‘statistical’ definition is considered to be a good working definition, as large amounts of data can be made available for computer analysis. If there are patterns of collocation, the co- occurrence of two items becomes effective (and interesting) as the collocation seems to occur for a purpose. Therefore, measuring the statistics of collocation

is both essential and interesting. This statistical approach is accepted by many corpus-linguistic scholars (e.g. Halliday 1966; Greenbaum 1974, Sinclair 1991; Hoey 1991; Ananiadou 1994; Stubbs 1995; Smadja et al. 1996; Partington 1998; McEnery and Wilson 2001; Hunston 2002).

Following Firth’s notion – “collocations of a given word are statements of the habitual or customary places of that word” (1968: 181) – all the afore- mentioned linguists argue that collocation can be defined as the recurrent co- occurrence of two or more patterns of words.

Hyland differentiates between ‘collocation’ and ‘clusters’, the latter referring to the repeated string of continuous word forms: “Most clusters are structurally incomplete units, but the co-occurrence of two or more items becomes interesting if it seems to happen for a purpose and is repeated across many texts” (2008: 43).

On the other hand, Sinclair (2003) states that ‘collocation’ is similar to another linguistic idiom called ‘colligation’, in that both concern the co- occurrence of linguistic features in a text. The difference between the two idioms is that ‘colligation’ is concerned mainly with the co-occurrence of grammatical classes or structural patterns; whereas ‘collocation’ refers to the co-occurrence of lexical items.

Regarding the effect of collocation, Halliday and Hasan (1976: 286) believe that:

The cohesive effect of such pairs depends not so much on any systematic relationship as on their tendency to share the same lexical environment, to occur in COLLOCATION with one another. In general, any two lexical items having similar patterns of collocation—that is, tending to appear in similar contexts—will generate a cohesive force if they occur in adjacent sentences.

Commenting on Halliday and Hasan’s observation, Dais (2009: 10) says that: “These remarks remind translators of paying attention to the collocations in the translating process; otherwise, they will stumble into the problem of ‘translationese’."

Baker (1992: 48) also supports Halliday and Hasan's view and describes the patterns of collocation as "largely arbitrary and independent of meaning", a fact that is realised both within and across languages. Baker (ibid) provides an

example of the English verb deliver and explains how it collocates with a number of nouns, for each of which Arabic uses a different verb. 'deliver a letter/telegram' is translated into yusallimu khi_{taban/tillighrafan, 'deliver a} speech/lecture' matches the Arabic yulq_{i khutbatan/muhadaratan and 'deliver} news' yanqilu akhb_{aran…etc. This suggests that patterns of collocation reveal} significant information about the preferences of specific language communities for certain modes of expression.