Sunday, June 19, 2005
Multi-word Items are Multiplying!
The other day, one of my students was looking up some words in the online dictionary in order to understand a text. She was having problems. She couldn't understand 'in order to'. She began looking up each word: first 'in', then 'order' then 'to'. It was of no use! I saw her doing this and I told her "you have to think of 'in order to' as one word." After I said that another student said "Oh! I've heard that! ..but what does it mean again?" I told her "何々をするように、という目的で” and she said "Oh yeah, now I remember!"
This made me think about how often words are connected to other words. There are many terms for this kind of thing like 'collocation', 'fixed expressions', 'formulaic speech', or 'multi-word items', but the message is the same. Words are involved in relations with other words and recognizing these phrases or combinations as one unit of meaning is neccessary. You have to look to the right and to the left of a word to understand it. You don't believe me? Look at how many multi word items were in this text:
the other day
one of (determiner, plural noun)
look up
online dictionary
to have a problem
to begin (~ing)
in order to
be of no use
to have to (v)
think of (noun phrase) as (noun phrase)
Now I remember.
think about (noun phrase)
how often
to be connected to
this/that kind of (singular noun)
fixed expressions
formulaic speech
multi words item
the message is [that] (clause)
to be the same
to be involved in relations with
as (noun phrase)
to the right/left
to look at (noun phrase)
how many
