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Questions and Answers
What does ESP stand for in the context of the text?
In the context of the text, what is an example of a dedicated vocabulary for a specific profession?
What is the purpose of using specialist words and jargons within a group according to the text?
Which profession mentioned in the text uses specific language to discuss product specifications with customers?
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What is one aspect that distinguishes Business English from everyday language according to the text?
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In the context of the text, what does 'gearing' most likely refer to?
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Which group is more likely to use a phrase like 'We’ve had some SF6 leakage'?
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'Business communities use specific language to communicate in specific context,' implies that:
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What type of communication takes on a different dimension when applied within a business context?
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Which term is used to describe language that is inaccessible to individuals outside of a particular language community?
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Study Notes
Collocation and Colligation
- Collocation refers to groups of words with related or similar meanings, e.g., "letter" collocates with verbs like "write", "post", "read", and "open", and adjectives like "covering", "follow-up".
- "Market" collocates with adjectives denoting place (e.g., "European", "French", "South East Asian") and size (e.g., "huge", "large", "big", "small").
Colligation
- Colligation is a phenomenon in which words tend to occur in particular grammatical patterns, e.g., "letter of application", "letter of complaint", but not "market of Europe".
- Written and spoken grammar can be very different, and word forms acceptable in one type may not be acceptable in the other.
Spoken Grammar
- Spoken grammar is used in real-time interaction and has different word-order rules, uses contractions (e.g., "can't", "won't"), hesitations (e.g., "er", "uh"), repetition, ellipsis (words left out), and is often vernacular.
- Utterances are often left incomplete or change their form halfway through.
- Common features of spoken grammar include fronting and tags.
Functional Words
- Functional words deal with the relationship between lexical words or indicate how they are to be interpreted.
- Examples of functional words include:
- Determiners (e.g., "the", "some", "a", "any")
- Pronouns (e.g., "it", "they")
- Modals (e.g., "can", "should")
- Prepositions (e.g., "in", "to")
- Coordinators (e.g., "and", "but", "or")
- Wh-words (e.g., "why", "whose")
- Inserts (e.g., "yeah", "well", "ouch")
Multi-Word Units
- Multi-word units consist of two or more words that act together as a single unit.
- Examples include "nevertheless", "how do you do", and phrasal verbs like "start off" and "bring up".
- These units are not complete utterances, but rather function as a single word.
- Studies have shown that it is easier to store "chunks" of language than individual parts.
Idioms
- Idioms are a type of multi-word unit where the meaning is not clear from the individual words.
- Examples include "It's going to crop up", "We've missed the boat", and "He's in the driving seat".
- Idioms often have no particular logic to their formation, they simply exist as a fixed expression.
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Description
Test your knowledge on collocations and colligations, which are groups of words that are commonly found together or demonstrate a mutual grammatical relationship. Explore how words like 'letter' and 'market' collocate with verbs or adjectives in different contexts.
