Collocations

Collocation is the term used to describe the tendency for one language item to occur in the same sentence as another language item, usually in the context of a corpus of the language.

Example:

crime collocates with words such as violent, inner-city, increase, rate, as in:


 * Violent crime is a growing problem.


 * There has been an increase in crime in the town center.


 * Crime is not just an inner-city issue.


 * Crime rates have fallen slightly this month.

Collocations show the ways a word is used in the “real-world”. All the examples above are possible uses, but only the first set are common.