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Luận văn tiếng Anh: A Corpus-based study on collocations of keywords in English business articles about the European debt crisis = Nghiên cứu tập hợp cụm từ của các từ khóa trong các bài báo kinh tế tiếng Anh về cuộc khủng hoảng nợ Châu Âu. M.A Thesis Linguistics: 60 22 15
Nhà xuất bản: University of Languages and International Studies
Ngày: 2012
Chủ đề: Ngôn ngữ
Tiếng Anh
Từ vựng
Miêu tả: 70 p. + CD-ROM
M.A. Thesis English Linguistics -- University of Languages and International Studies. Vietnam National University, Hanoi, 2012
One of the most problematic areas when vocabulary is dealt with is collocation. It is often seen as arbitrary and overwhelming, a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to the attainment of native like fluency. This piece of work presents a study on collocations of keywords within a 20,000-word corpus of various English business articles about the European debt crisis 2011. The aim of the present study is to find out high-frequency words used within the corpus, and above all, to examine collocation patterns of keywords that distinguish the business genre of the selected texts. Concordance Program 3.3 is the main methods employed throughout the study for the data collection and analysis. The major findings of the research are a good number of striking collocation patterns some of the most recurrent keywords possess. The major findings drawn from the research is the basis for the recommendation of pedagogical implications and suggestions for raising students' consciousness of the English collocation acquisition
TABLE OF CONTENT
Declaration ...................................................................................................................i
Abstract....................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgement..................................................................................................... iii
List of tables ............................................................................................................. vii
List of figures..............................................................................................................ix
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................1
I.1. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study..............................................1
I.2. Aims of the study....................................................................................................2
I.3. Scope of the study ..................................................................................................3
I.4. Organization ...........................................................................................................3
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................4
II.1. Corpus linguistics..................................................................................................4
II.2. Sense and sense relations ......................................................................................6
II.3. Transference of meaning.......................................................................................7
II.3.1. Metaphor ..................................................................................................7
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II.3.2. Metonymy ................................................................................................8
II.3.3. Other types of meaning transference........................................................9
II.4. Collocations.........................................................................................................10
II.4.1. Definitions of collocations .....................................................................10
II.4.2. Properties of collocations.......................................................................12
II.4.2.1. Collocations are arbitrary............................................................13
II.4.2.2. Collocations are language-specific. ............................................13
II.4.2.3. Collocations are recurrent in context. .........................................14
II.4.3. Classifications of collocations................................................................15
CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.................................................17
III.1. Data collection instrument .................................................................................17
III.1.1. Construction of corpus..........................................................................17
III.1.1.1. Database.............................................................................................17
III.1.1.2. Extracted business articles ................................................................19
III.1.2. Concordance program...........................................................................20
III.2. Data collection procedures.................................................................................21
CHAPTER IV: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION....................................................22
IV.1. Quantitative results ............................................................................................23vi
IV.2. Collocation analysis of content keywords .........................................................26
IV.2.1. DEBT and CRISIS ................................................................................26
IV.2.2. ECONOMIC .........................................................................................44
IV.2.3. MARKETS............................................................................................50
Chapter V: CONCLUSION.....................................................................................57
V.1. Major findings.....................................................................................................57
V.2. Pedagogical implications and suggestions..........................................................59
V.2.1 Improving collocation competence among language learners ................59
V.2.2 Corpus-based activities for learner‘s collocation development in ESP
class ...................................................................................................................62
V.3. Suggestions for further studies............................................................................67
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................68
APPENDIX
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: List of the selected articles
Table 2: Top 100 high-frequency words from the constructed corpus
Table 3: First 25 keywords from the corpus
Table 4: CRISIS Concordance (Adjective collocations)
Table 5: Adjectives collocating with CRISIS
Table 6: DEBT Concordance (Adjective collocations)
Table 7: Adjectives collocating with DEBT
Table 8: CRISIS Concordance (Noun collocations)
Table 9: DEBT Concordance (Noun collocations)
Table 10: Nouns collocating with CRISIS
Table 11: Nouns collocating with DEBT
Table 12: CRISIS Concordance (Verb collocations)
Table 13: DEBT Concordance (Verb collocations)
Table 14: Verbs collocating with CRISIS
Table 15: Verbs collocating with DEBTviii
Table 16: Other patterns of CRISIS in the corpus
Table 17: Other patterns of DEBT in the corpus
Table 18: ECONOMIC Concordance (Noun collocations)
Table 19: Nouns collocating with ECONOMIC in the corpus
Table 20: Composite nominal containing ECONOMIC (with modification within the head)
Table 21: Composite nominal containing ECONOMIC (with coordination in the modifier)
Table 22: MARKETS Concordance (markets as ‗the total amount of trade in a particular kind
of goods‘)
Table 23: MARKETS Concordance (markets as ‗people who buy and sell goods in
competition with each other‘)
Table 24: MARKETS Concordance (markets as ‗a particular country, area or section of
population that might buy goods‘)
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Concordance Program‘s main screen
Figure 2: String matching of CRISIS from the corpus
Figure 3: String matching of DEBT from the corpus
Figure 4: String matching of ECONOMIC from the corpus
Figure 5: String matching of MARKETS from the corpus1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
I.1.Statement of the problem and rationale of the study
The importance of vocabulary in language learning has always and long been recognized,
although there were times when vocabulary was treated as separated from grammar and skills.
However, under the light of recent studies, vocabulary has even gained much more attention.
Essential and crucial as it has become, vocabulary has been highlighted as the basis of
language and communication. Wilkins, an outstanding British linguist, once stated "without
vocabulary nothing can be conveyed". Obviously, a rich knowledge of vocabulary not only
makes one's ability of using the language recognized and appreciated but also makes him or
her be more successful in communication.
However, no matter how convinced learners of English in principles of the importance of
vocabulary, the vocabulary acquisition actually poses enormous difficulties to them. One of
the most complicated problems arising when vocabulary is dealt with is how to combine and
use words appropriately in accordance with culture or language conventions, which is often
referred to as ―collocation competence‖ (Hill,1999).
Collocations are usually defined as words that typically occur in association with other words;
in reality, they run through the whole of the English language and they are as old as the
language itself. No piece of natural spoken and written English is totally free of collocations.
Because of their widespread use, the role that collocations play in the language is absolutely
undeniable.
For learners of English in general, with collocation competence, they should have the ability to
combine lexical (and grammatical) chunks in order to produce fluent, accurate, as well as
semantically and stylistically appropriate utterances. For business English learners in
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particular, a good knowledge of collocation patterns in English is also of great importance.
The most important characteristics of the language of business English, as opposed to the
language of general English, are a sense of purpose, intercultural dimension and a need for
clear, straightforward and concise communication (Ellis & Johnson, 1994). In order to achieve
these broad objectives of business English learners, teachers have to find out the best ways to
teach business performance skills such as socializing, telephoning, meeting, presentation, and
report writing. In all these situations, collocation competence is significantly essential.
With the rise of computing power as well as the acceptance of corpus linguistics since 1990s,
collocations have received serious treatment. The dramatic rise in processing power of
computers now makes it possible to quickly compose lists of frequency for lexical items in a
large corpus. At the same time, there have been a large number of different software programs
installed for keywords and collocations extract from corpus data. Such software packages have
made easier access to the investigation into typical lexical items and their collocations of any
particular text genres.
With the writer‘s personal interest in collocations as a researcher and observations of students‘
tough experience in dealing with collocations in business discourse as a tutor of business
learners, this thesis provides a comprehensive research on collocations of keywords in a
variety of business articles written about a currently hot topic for business learners, the
European debt crisis. The thesis, therefore, is carried out in the hope that it may be of some
Giúp to business learners of English as well as those who find themselves interested in English
semantics and collocation-related issues.
I.2. Aims of the study
The aim of this research is to conduct a close investigation into collocations of keywords from
a corpus of a certain number of business articles written about the European debt crisis. To be
specific, it identifies words with high frequency of occurrence within the chosen corpus and3
examines their collocations. The research, therefore, is carried out to answer the following
research questions:
What are the top high-frequency words in the corpus of written articles about the
European debt crisis?
What are significant patterns and features of collocations of such keywords?
I.3.Scope of the study
This study is about to discuss keywords and their collocations in 15 written articles about the
European debt crisis. The designed corpus of over 20,000 words is taken from online business
articles from websites of high reputation such as The Washington Post, Money CNN,
….Keywords chosen for analysis of significant patterns of collocation within the study are
those which can distinguish the business genre of the selected articles.
I.4. Structure of the thesis
The study is organized as follows:
Chapter I-Introduction- is firstly introduced, briefly stating the rationale, aims, scope and
organization of the study.
Secondly, chapter II-Theoretical Background- deals with the theories setting the
background for the study.
Thirdly, chapter III- Research Methodology- is a presentation on the methodology of the
research, referring to the research design, data collection procedures and data analysis
procedures of the study.
Next, on chapter IV-Results and Discussion-, a detailed discussion of collocations
keywords in the selected corpus is carried out, through which some interesting aspects can
be revealed.
In chapter V-Conclusion- major findings of the study and pedagogical implications and
suggestions are presented.
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CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
This chapter is going to deal with the theories setting the background for the research on
collocations of keywords in business articles about the European debt crisis 2011 under the
light of corpus linguistics. In the first place, an overview of corpus linguistics is presented,
followed by the theories of sense and sense relation. Then, the literature about transference of
meaning is overviewed. The chapter will be closed with a presentation on collocation in an
effort to provide a partial answer to three questions "What is collocation?", "What are
properties of collocation that surface repeatedly across the literature?", and "How is
collocation classified by different researchers?"
II.1. Corpus linguistics
Nowadays, a lot of investigation has been devoted to how computers can facilitate language
learning. With the Giúp of computer technology, the contextual factors that influence
variability in language use can be discovered through examples taken from corpora. A corpus
can be described as a large collection of authentic texts that have been gathered in electronic
form according to a specific set of criteria (Bowker& Pearson, 2002).
Corpus linguistics (hereafter CL) deals with the principles and practice of using such corpora
in language study. As a branch of linguistics, it differs from traditional linguistics as it is
related to the study of authentic examples of language (Sinclair, 1997). The main focus on CL
is to discover pattern of authentic language in order to verify a hypothesis about language, for
example, to determine how the usage of a particular sound, word, or syntactic construction
varies. This, in turn, allows learners and researchers to ascertain related linguistic patterns and
structures for the goals of their research.
Conducting a corpus analysis is the very fundamental technique used by CL. Corpus analysis
is a means of accessing a corpus of text to show how any given word or phrase in the text is5
used in the immediate contexts in which it appears. By grouping the uses of a particular word
or phrase on the computer screen or in printed form, the researcher shows the patterns in
which the given word or phrase is typically used. A large collection of a word‘s patterns then
can be created very quickly and effectively. Thus, CL has been widely employed in other
areas of linguistics and lexicography, where corpora can be used to Giúp dictionary markers to
spot new words and identify contexts for new meanings (Meyer, 2002).
In addition to its crucial function in language study in general, the role of CL in language
pedagogy has become increasingly prominent. McEnery and Wilson (1996) argue that foreign
language teachers usually produce simplified examples, which will raise difficulties for
students when these are confronted with real, more complex language that sometimes they are
incapable of processing. CL can thus contribute to rendering learning a foreign language more
effective since students will be faced with real language. Authentic materials can motivate
learners in the language classroom whereas non-authentic materials may not because they do
not reflect real applications of language and thus students will lose motivation in learning in a
target language.
The essence of exposure to authentic materials even becomes more accurate in the case of ESP
classes where all lessons are highly purpose-driven. CL, therefore, takes an essential part in
ESP, bringing a great deal of benefit to the teaching and learning on ESP courses. However,
among the many different types of corpora available such as written and spoken corpora,
general reference corpora, special purpose corpora, monolingual and multilingual corpora,
synchronic and diachronic corpora, open and closed corpora, and learner corpora (Biber,
1998), specialized corpora are preferable in ESP classes since they offer access to specialized
vocabulary in specialized contexts. In a specialized corpus, context has considerable influence
on the language choice; and the choice of language in turn plays an essential role in the
shaping of the text genre.
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II.2. Sense and sense relations
In Nguyen Hoa‘s words (Nguyen Hoa, 2004:56), "sense is a philosophical term for meaning".
Meaning and sense are closely related; however, sense is sometimes distinguished from
meaning. The meaning of a word is seen as part of the language system whereas sense is the
realization of this meaning in speech. According to John Lyons (1995:80), the sense of an
expression may be defined as the set, or network, of sense-relations that hold between it and
other expressions of the same language.
Sense relation is the kind of relationship between vocabulary items when they are arranged in
texts, spoken or written: how they are related to one another in terms of their meaning; how
they may or may not substitute for one another; how similar or how different they are to each
other and so on.
Nguyen Hoa(2004:121) points out that sense relations may be of two types: subsitutional and
combinatorial which roughly correspond to the two Saussurean terms paradigmatic and
syntagmatic. Subsitutional or paradigmatic relations are those which hold between
intersubstitutable members of the same grammatical category; combinational or syntagmatic
relations hold normally hold between expressions of different grammatical categories which
can be put together in grammatically well-formed combinations. For example, a subsitutional
relation hold between the noun bachelor and spinster, whereas the relation that holds between
the adjective unmarried and the nouns man and woman is combinatorial.
In discussion of combinatorial relations, there emerges a question whether any adjective can
combine with any noun or any verb can go with any noun. Actually, English, as well as every
other language, the combinations of words of different grammatical categories are restricted.
Each word tends to co-occur with a certain range of words, which is referred to as collocation
relation. In fact, lexemes are so highly restricted with respect to collocation acceptability that
it is almost impossible to predict their combinational relations on the basis of an independent
characterization of their sense.7
II.3. Transference of meaning
In English, there are basically two types of meaning transference, namely metaphor and
metonymy.
II.3.1. Metaphor
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:105), "metaphor is the transference of meaning from one
object to another based on the similarity between these two objects". Traditionally, metaphors
have been viewed as implicit comparisons. Flood…poured in, oozes, and stern in the
following sentences are all examples of metaphors.
A flood of protects poured in following the announcement.
(a large quantity of…came in)
He oozes geniality. (displays all over)
The government still hopes to stern the tide of inflation.
(resist the force of)
However, if the fact of resemblance is explicitly signaled, by a word such as like, as in protest
came in like a flood, this is considered not to be metaphor but simile.
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:109), metaphors may be of three types.
Living metaphors are those involving words used in unusual meaning and metaphors may be felt
as such. (Beauty is a flower which wrinkles will devour.)
Faded metaphors lost their freshness because of long use and became habitual. (dying capitalism,
to fall in love, golden youth)
Dead metaphors are words which have lost their direct meanings and are used only figuratively.
(to ponder, capital, sarcasm)
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Additionally, metaphors may be divided into different subgroups. Following are some
commonly and widely used subgroups of metaphors in English.
A subgroup of metaphors comprises names of human body transferred to other objects.
Typical examples include the nose of a plane, the head of the school, or the leg of the table.
A subgroup of metaphors comprises names of animals transferred to the human beings.
For example, a cunning person is a fox; or a hard working person is a bee.
A subgroup of metaphors comprises proper names transferred to common ones. For
instance, a jealous person is called an Othello; and an eloquent speaker is a Cicero.
II.3.2. Metonymy
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:112), metonymy can be defined as "the substitution of one
word for another with which it is associated". Thus, metonymy works by continuity rather
than similarity, which means that instead of the name of one object or notion we use the name
of another because these objects are associated or closely related. Examples of metonymy
include eye, shirt, and breathe in the following sentences.
Keep your eye on the ball. (gaze)
He is always chasing shirts. (girls)
It will not happen while I still breathe. (live)
According to Lyons (1995:314), body parts are favourite sources of metonymy, and many
such expressions have been incorporated into the language, with words like hand, heart, head
as in have a hand in, bear one's heart, or keep your head.
Some common substitutions in metonymy include:
place-for-institution (The White House objected to the plan.)
thing-for-perception (There goes my knee.)
object-for-possessor (The crown was angry with the Prime Minister's proposal.)9
part-for-whole (We do not like long hairs.)
place-for-event (Watergate strikes at the heart of the American political system.)
In tradition, according to Nguyen Hoa (2004:113), the following cases of metonymy are often
presented.
The name of container is used instead of the thing contained. (to drink a glass)
Names of parts of human body may be used as symbols. (to have a good eye, kind heart)
The concrete is used instead of abstract. (from the cradle to the grave)
The materials are used for the things made of the materials. (Canvas, glass)
The name of the author is used for his works. (Watts, Picasso)
Part is used for the whole and vice versa. (We all live under the same roof; She is wearing a
fox)
A subtype of metonymy is called synecdoche in which a whole is represented by naming one
of its parts, or vice versa. Roof, strings, and bite in the following sentences are examples of
synecdoche.
They all live under the same roof.(in one house)
At this point the strings take over. (stringed instruments)
Let's go and have a bite.(have a meal)
II.3.3. Other types of meaning transference
Besides metaphor and metonymy, there are other types of meaning transference involving
hyperbole, litotes, irony, and euphemisms.
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Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement not meant to be understood literally. However, the
effect is powerful.
For example:
It is a nightmare.
A thousand thanks
Litotes is really an understatement. It is traditionally defined as expressing something in the
affirmative by the negative of its contrary. For instance, not bad is often used to mean good; or
rather unwise to mean very silly.
Irony is used to express meaning by words of the opposite sense. In irony, intonation plays an
essential role. For example, nice in "You have got us into a nice mess." means bad.
Euphemisms involve the use of a milder expression for something unpleasant. For instance,
restroom or bathroom are used instead of WC.
II.4. Collocation
II.4.1. Definition of collocation
It is not easy to define what collocation is. In the linguistic literature, it is often discussed in
contrast with free word combination at one extreme and idiomatic expression at the other;
collocation occurs somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. A free word combination can be
described using general rules; that is, in terms of semantic constraints on the words which
appear in a certain syntactic relation with a given headword. An idiom, on the other hand, is a
rigid word combination to which no generalities apply; neither can its meaning be determined
from the meaning of its parts nor can it participate in the usual word-order variations.
Collocation falls between these extremes and it can be difficult to draw the line between
categories. A word combination fails to be classified as free and is termed as collocation when11
the number of words which occur in a syntactic relation with a given headword decreases to
the point where it is not possible to describe the set using semantic regularities.
Thus, example of free word combinations include put + (object) or run + (object) (i.e.
manage) where the words that can occur as object are virtually open-ended. In the case of put,
the semantic constraint on the object is relatively open-ended (any physical object can be
mentioned) and thus the range of words that can occur is relatively unrestricted. In the case of
run (in sense of manage or direct) the semantic restrictions on the object are tighter but still
follow a semantic generality: any institution or organization can be managed such as
businesses, ice cream parlor. In contrast to these free word combinations, a phrase such as
explore a myth is a collocation. In its figurative sense, explore illustrates a much more
restricted collocation range. Possible objects are limited to words such as brief, idea, theory.
At the other extreme, phrase such as fill the bill or fit the bill function as idioms, where no
words can be interchanged and variation in usage is not generally allowed.
Different linguists have different definitions of collocation. Moira Runcie in Oxford
Collocation Dictionary gives a general definition in which collocation is defined as the way
words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing. To a native
speaker, these combinations are highly predictable; to a learner they are anything but.
Specifically speaking, Chitra Fernando, Richards and others (1996:62) states that collocation
refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together, for examples which prepositions
are used with particular verbs or which verbs and nouns are used together. It is defined in
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary that collocation is "a combination of words in a
language that happens very often and more frequently than would happen by chance". In
Kjellmer (1994:xiv& xxxiii), collocation is "such recurring sequences of items as are
grammatically well formed". Kathleen R. McKeown and Dragomir R. Radev in their paper on
Collocations regard collocations as word pairs and phrases that are commonly used in
language with no general syntactic or semantic rules applied.
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Additionally, many linguists have tried to define collocation by presenting its functions.
Halliday (1966) and Sinclair (1966) introduced the notion that patterns of collocation can form
the basis for a lexical analysis of language alternative to, and independent of, the grammatical
analysis. They regarded the two levels of analysis as being complementary, with neither of the
two being subsumed by the other. Holding the same idea, McIntosh (1961:328) and Mitchell
(1971) presented the lexical and grammatical analyses as interdependent: "Collocations are to
be studied within grammatical matrices which in turn depend for their recognition on the
observation of collocation similarities" (Mitchell, 1971:65). Later, Halliday (1966:151&157)
argued that the collocation patterns of lexical items can lead to generalization at the lexical
level. Sinclair (1966:412 & 1974:16) proposed that a lexical item can be defined from its
collocation pattern.
The seemingly endless series of euro zone crises has European officials pushing for a banking
union that would watch over and bind together the currency group‘s faltering financial
institutions.
But on the ground in the euro zone, there seems little appetite for such a compact right now. In
fact, banks and their national regulators, anxious about the Greek elections and Spain‘s hastily
arranged bailout, are behaving more parochially than ever.
That poses a threat to the interbank lending across borders that is crucial to maintaining
liquidity — the free flow of money that is the lifeblood of the global financial system.
French and German banks have clamped off much of the lending to their counterparts in Italy
and Spain, which in turn are mainly giving loans only to their own debt-strapped governments.
With interbank cooperation at perhaps its lowest level since the creation of the euro currency
union, European officials say they are moving toward a broader solution.
Experts warn, though, that what is needed now is not another working paper proposing new
levels of euro bureaucracy, but a clear action plan that addresses the root issue: Markets and
investors have lost faith in Europe‘s ability to regulate its banks.
Potentially important first steps were taken at a summit meeting in Brussels in late June.
European officials decided that the bailout fund could provide money directly to the Spanish
banks in need of rescue than requiring it to go through the Spanish government, which feared
the effect of adding another $100 billion or so to its debt burden.
And the leaders agreed to work to establish a common banking supervisor for euro zone
countries. Officials envisioned the role being played by the European Central Bank, the only
institution with the firepower to credibly rescue a wobbly financial sector.59
In the short term, a signal of tighter regulation in the future — along with bailouts for troubled
banks — is needed to stem the flight of capital from countries with banking problems, which
threatened to spread to financial institutions throughout Europe.
In the longer term, by agreeing to cede power over banks, European countries hope Germany
will trust them more and eventually stand ready to share euro zone debt, which could help
them ease austerity measures and adopt pro-growth plans to revive their struggling economies.
Background
The debt crisis first surfaced in Greece in October 2009, when the newly elected Socialist
government of Prime Minister George A. Papandreou announced that his predecessor had
disguised the size of the country‘s ballooning deficit.
But its roots of the crisis go back further, beginning with a strong euro and the rock-bottom
interest rates that prevailed for much of the previous decade. Greece took advantage of this
easy money to drive up borrowing by the country‘s consumers and its government, which built
up $400 billion in debt.
In Spain and Ireland, government spending was kept under control, but easy money helped
turn real-estate booms there into bubbles — a process helped in Ireland‘s case by the
aggressive deregulation of its banks that helped draw investment from around the world. After
the bubble burst, the Irish government made the banks‘ problems its own by guaranteeing all
their liabilities.
After the extent of Greek debt was revealed, markets reacted by sending interest rates up not
only for its debt, but also for borrowing by Spain, Portugal and Ireland.
In early 2010, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund put together a series
of bailout packages for Greece that totalled 110 billion euros ($163 billion) in a process that
critics said ended up costing more because European leaders failed to get ahead of the curve.
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In May, leaders approved a contingency fund of 500 billions euro (about $680 billion) for the
union at large.
The hope was that the fund would never have to be tapped, as its existence would calm
investors. But in the fall of 2010 interest rates began creeping up again, as countries that
reduced spending to meet tough deficit targets found themselves falling farther behind, as their
economies slowed and revenues declined. In November, European officials arranged a bailout
of 85 billion euros (roughly $112 billion) for Ireland, after overcoming the resistance of Irish
officials to the move, which they saw an attack on sovereignty. (In fact, news of the deal led
Prime Minister Brian Cowen to announce that he would step down after passing a new round
of budget cuts, and his party was ousted at the next election).
In the spring of 2010, after much hesitation, the European Union and the International
Monetary Fund combined first to offer Greece a bailout package of 110 billion euros ($163
billion), followed by a broader contingency fund of 500 billions euro (about $680 billion).
The hope was that this show of financial force would reassure markets about the solvency of
euro countries.
But the new loans, combined with the effect of the austerity measures demanded of Greece,
Ireland and Portugal, drove them into recession and did little to ease their debt burden
— Greece‘s debt load even increased. As the debt crisis renewed over the winter of
2010 and spring of 2011 it led to the fall of governments in Ireland and Portugal, and saw
unrest rise in Spain, where unemployment remained close to 20 percent.
Contagion Fears Return
By the summer of 2011, it was clear that Greece would need a second big bailout package, and
worries rose again about contagion, as Italy and Spain saw the interest rates charged on its
borrowing rise steeply. The European Central Bank responded by buying large amounts of
Italian and Spanish bonds, as leaders put together a plan that would increase the powers of the61
European Financial Stability Facility to head off a ―run‘' on governments seen as in danger of
default.
By September, with growth slowing, stalled or in reverse across the continent, European
leaders were increasingly discussing the creation of a central financial authority — with
powers in areas like taxation, bond issuance and budget approval — that could eventually turn
the euro zone into something resembling a United States of Europe.
But talk of long-term solutions did little to calm markets worried about the weakness of banks
in France and elsewhere that held large amounts of debt from Greece and other shaky
governments. And the resignation of Jürgen Stark, a top German official at the European
Central Bank, highlighted the depth of policy discord among senior policymakers. Mr. Stark,
like many German officials, had opposed the bank‘s large-scale purchases of government debt.
Another potential crisis bubbled up in September, as European officials angrily warned Greece
that the next installment of its bailout funding would be withheld in October — a step
that would lead to certain bankruptcy — unless further radical cuts in government
spending were pushed through.
Earlier that summer, Greece, which had started the crisis, faced its more dire fiscal emergency,
as it stood to run out of cash in August without a new installment of money from the first
bailout. European leaders refused to release the funds until a second, more drastic round of
austerity measures were adopted, including the sale of $72 billion in state assets. The
government of Prime Minister George Papandreou teetered, but the measure was pushed
through after days of giant street protests.
The basic conflict over the shape of a new bailout plan was between Germany‘s chancellor,
Angela Merkel, who insisted that private banks pay part of the cost by taking losses on Greek
bonds, and the European Central Bank, who opposed even a voluntary ―haircut‘' for banks,
saying it would be seen as a default.
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July Agreement Falls Behind the Curve
The deal reached in late July included $157 billion in new funds for Greece and a modest
reduction of its debt burden; private lenders saw their bonds rolled over into longer maturities
but also had them guaranteed. And the European Financial Stability Facility, the eurozone
rescue fund, saw its contingency fund grow to 440 billion euros, or $632 billion, and was
given new, amplified powers and the ability to use the money to bail out Portugal and Ireland
if necessary.
The response to the package was not what leaders hoped: investors began driving up interest
rates in Italy and Spain, economies too large to be bailed out by the new arrangements. At the
same time, the fall in confidence threatened to undermine the big banks in those countries,
whose large holdings of government bonds began to lose value.
On Aug. 7, 2011, the European Central Bank said it would ―actively implement‖ its bondbuying program to address ―dysfunctional market segments,‖ a statement interpreted as a sign
that it will intervene to prevent borrowing costs for Italy and Spain from becoming
unsustainable.
Vowing Closer Paths
To address the growing debt crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President
Nicolas Sarkozy of France met on Aug. 16, 2011 at the Élysée Palace in Paris. The leaders
promised to take concrete steps toward a closer political and economic union of the 17
countries that use the euro. They called for each nation in the euro zone to enshrine a ―golden
rule‖ into their national constitutions to work toward balanced budgets and debt reduction, a
level of discipline well beyond the current, oft-broken commitment. They also pledged to push
for a new tax on financial transactions, and for regular summit meetings of the zone‘s
members.63
Both leaders ruled out issuing collective bonds, known as eurobonds, to share responsibility
for government debt across member states, and they opposed a further increase in a bailout
fund that will not be put into place until late September 2011 at the earliest. Mrs. Merkel said
there was ―no magic wand‖ to solve all the problems of the euro, arguing that they must be
met over time with improved fiscal discipline, competitiveness and economic growth among
weaker states.
But a growing number of leaders in September began quietly discussing a broader plan for
greater fiscal integration — since the alternatives could include the collapse of the euro
or increasing conflict over bailouts.
Officials said a major overhaul of the way Europe conducts fiscal policy was likely to take a
long time and require changes in the treaties governing the euro. But they pointed to the
smaller changes that were already taking place as evidence that euro area financial ministries
see that they have little choice but to move together if they want to avoid a catastrophic
breakdown.
Increasing Distress
The talks took place against a background of increasing continent-wide distress. Official
figures released in August 2011 showed that quarterly growth in the euro zone fell to its
lowest rate in two years. Germany — the Continent‘s powerhouse — slowed almost to a
standstill. Most of Europe‘s main stock indexes lost ground after the data suggested that the
debt and economic problems in countries like Greece and Italy were infecting the rest of the
17-country euro zone.
Meanwhile, leaders groped for a way to expand the effective firepower of the bailout fund, the
European Financial Stability Facility, amid a general agreement that the boost agreed to in
July was no longer adequate to calm the market‘s fears about big economies like Spain and
Italy. One suggestion, pushed by the Obama administration, was to use the facility‘s funds to
guarantee loans from the European Central Bank rather than to make loans directly.
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Also in September, Greece pushed through a hugely unpopular property tax increase as part of
a new austerity package needed to keep installments of the first bailout package flowing. And
the eurozone‘s members crept through the process of signing off on the July agreement, with
crucial votes in favor coming from Germany and Finland, which had threatened to block it
unless it got higher levels of collateral on its contribution.
Under the fretful gaze of investors, the meandering approval process has revealed ever more
fissures, layers of decision making and complexity in Europe that adds up to a worrisome
inability to react quickly and decisively to upheaval in fast-moving financial markets.
Fall of 2011: Fears Grow
In the fall of 2011, even as European leaders struggled to come up with a new bailout plan for
Greece, much larger fears loomed. Interest rates soared for Italy, the continent‘s third largest
economy, and rose for France, whose banks hold large amounts of Italian government bonds,
and where government finances are strained. The continent‘s economy was teetering on the
brink of a second recession.
A growing number of economists called for the European Central Bank to step forward as a
lender of last resort, as the Federal Reserve has done, to stop the contagion. But the bank,
whose mandate is focused solely on preventing inflation, has resisted, saying a political
solution is required.
As the crisis deepened, banks in Europe began to hoard capital, straining the finances of their
counterparts and hurting companies across the globe that depend on them for loans.
In December, leaders of the countries that use the euro agreed to an intergovernmental pact
adopting tighter fiscal controls. All 17 of the countries that use the euro agreed to join, as did
six others. But Britain refused, raising questions about its future in which it has become
increasingly isolated.65
The agreement, which can be adopted more quickly than a change to the European Union
treaty — and without Britain‘s consent — would reassert rules limiting deficits
to 3 percent of gross domestic product and total debt to 60 percent. Violators would be hit with
sanctions unless a majority of other countries agreed.
After the summit, the familiar pattern of market relief followed by new market worries was
repeated. But on Dec. 21, banks borrowed more than $600 billion from the European Central
Bank at the extraordinarily easy terms of 1 percent interest for a three-year loan. Analysts
suggested that the Bank had hit upon an indirect method of stopping the market spiral
threatening Italy, Spain and other governments, by flooding banks with money they could use
to lock in guaranteed profits by buying sovereign debt.
Greece Dodges Default With a Second Bailout
By early 2012, the sense of crisis had returned, as the leaders of France and Germany
threatened to withhold the second aid package without further cuts and promises of structural
economic changes. At the same time, Greece plunged into meetings with banks and hedge
funds about deeper writedowns on its debt — up to as much as 70 percent.
The proposed austerity package included 20-percent cuts to base pay for workers in private
companies and a loosening of public sector job protections. With elections looming as soon as
April, the three parties that make up Mr. Papademos‘s coalition feared that they were
essentially being told to commit political suicide to save the country.
The European Union‘s plan of tax increases, spending cuts and now wage cuts has pushed the
country into a deep recession; the economy shrunk by almost 12 percent between 2009 and
2011 and is expected to shrink by up to 6 percent in 2012. The crisis also stripped Greece‘s
political center, weak to begin with, of its last shreds of political legitimacy. With
unemployment at 21 percent, businesses closing, credit scarce and the proposed new wage
cuts expected to further decimate the shrinking middle class, the hard left and extreme right
are rising.
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Nhà xuất bản: University of Languages and International Studies
Ngày: 2012
Chủ đề: Ngôn ngữ
Tiếng Anh
Từ vựng
Miêu tả: 70 p. + CD-ROM
M.A. Thesis English Linguistics -- University of Languages and International Studies. Vietnam National University, Hanoi, 2012
One of the most problematic areas when vocabulary is dealt with is collocation. It is often seen as arbitrary and overwhelming, a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to the attainment of native like fluency. This piece of work presents a study on collocations of keywords within a 20,000-word corpus of various English business articles about the European debt crisis 2011. The aim of the present study is to find out high-frequency words used within the corpus, and above all, to examine collocation patterns of keywords that distinguish the business genre of the selected texts. Concordance Program 3.3 is the main methods employed throughout the study for the data collection and analysis. The major findings of the research are a good number of striking collocation patterns some of the most recurrent keywords possess. The major findings drawn from the research is the basis for the recommendation of pedagogical implications and suggestions for raising students' consciousness of the English collocation acquisition
TABLE OF CONTENT
Declaration ...................................................................................................................i
Abstract....................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgement..................................................................................................... iii
List of tables ............................................................................................................. vii
List of figures..............................................................................................................ix
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................1
I.1. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study..............................................1
I.2. Aims of the study....................................................................................................2
I.3. Scope of the study ..................................................................................................3
I.4. Organization ...........................................................................................................3
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................4
II.1. Corpus linguistics..................................................................................................4
II.2. Sense and sense relations ......................................................................................6
II.3. Transference of meaning.......................................................................................7
II.3.1. Metaphor ..................................................................................................7
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II.3.2. Metonymy ................................................................................................8
II.3.3. Other types of meaning transference........................................................9
II.4. Collocations.........................................................................................................10
II.4.1. Definitions of collocations .....................................................................10
II.4.2. Properties of collocations.......................................................................12
II.4.2.1. Collocations are arbitrary............................................................13
II.4.2.2. Collocations are language-specific. ............................................13
II.4.2.3. Collocations are recurrent in context. .........................................14
II.4.3. Classifications of collocations................................................................15
CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.................................................17
III.1. Data collection instrument .................................................................................17
III.1.1. Construction of corpus..........................................................................17
III.1.1.1. Database.............................................................................................17
III.1.1.2. Extracted business articles ................................................................19
III.1.2. Concordance program...........................................................................20
III.2. Data collection procedures.................................................................................21
CHAPTER IV: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION....................................................22
IV.1. Quantitative results ............................................................................................23vi
IV.2. Collocation analysis of content keywords .........................................................26
IV.2.1. DEBT and CRISIS ................................................................................26
IV.2.2. ECONOMIC .........................................................................................44
IV.2.3. MARKETS............................................................................................50
Chapter V: CONCLUSION.....................................................................................57
V.1. Major findings.....................................................................................................57
V.2. Pedagogical implications and suggestions..........................................................59
V.2.1 Improving collocation competence among language learners ................59
V.2.2 Corpus-based activities for learner‘s collocation development in ESP
class ...................................................................................................................62
V.3. Suggestions for further studies............................................................................67
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................68
APPENDIX
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: List of the selected articles
Table 2: Top 100 high-frequency words from the constructed corpus
Table 3: First 25 keywords from the corpus
Table 4: CRISIS Concordance (Adjective collocations)
Table 5: Adjectives collocating with CRISIS
Table 6: DEBT Concordance (Adjective collocations)
Table 7: Adjectives collocating with DEBT
Table 8: CRISIS Concordance (Noun collocations)
Table 9: DEBT Concordance (Noun collocations)
Table 10: Nouns collocating with CRISIS
Table 11: Nouns collocating with DEBT
Table 12: CRISIS Concordance (Verb collocations)
Table 13: DEBT Concordance (Verb collocations)
Table 14: Verbs collocating with CRISIS
Table 15: Verbs collocating with DEBTviii
Table 16: Other patterns of CRISIS in the corpus
Table 17: Other patterns of DEBT in the corpus
Table 18: ECONOMIC Concordance (Noun collocations)
Table 19: Nouns collocating with ECONOMIC in the corpus
Table 20: Composite nominal containing ECONOMIC (with modification within the head)
Table 21: Composite nominal containing ECONOMIC (with coordination in the modifier)
Table 22: MARKETS Concordance (markets as ‗the total amount of trade in a particular kind
of goods‘)
Table 23: MARKETS Concordance (markets as ‗people who buy and sell goods in
competition with each other‘)
Table 24: MARKETS Concordance (markets as ‗a particular country, area or section of
population that might buy goods‘)
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Concordance Program‘s main screen
Figure 2: String matching of CRISIS from the corpus
Figure 3: String matching of DEBT from the corpus
Figure 4: String matching of ECONOMIC from the corpus
Figure 5: String matching of MARKETS from the corpus1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
I.1.Statement of the problem and rationale of the study
The importance of vocabulary in language learning has always and long been recognized,
although there were times when vocabulary was treated as separated from grammar and skills.
However, under the light of recent studies, vocabulary has even gained much more attention.
Essential and crucial as it has become, vocabulary has been highlighted as the basis of
language and communication. Wilkins, an outstanding British linguist, once stated "without
vocabulary nothing can be conveyed". Obviously, a rich knowledge of vocabulary not only
makes one's ability of using the language recognized and appreciated but also makes him or
her be more successful in communication.
However, no matter how convinced learners of English in principles of the importance of
vocabulary, the vocabulary acquisition actually poses enormous difficulties to them. One of
the most complicated problems arising when vocabulary is dealt with is how to combine and
use words appropriately in accordance with culture or language conventions, which is often
referred to as ―collocation competence‖ (Hill,1999).
Collocations are usually defined as words that typically occur in association with other words;
in reality, they run through the whole of the English language and they are as old as the
language itself. No piece of natural spoken and written English is totally free of collocations.
Because of their widespread use, the role that collocations play in the language is absolutely
undeniable.
For learners of English in general, with collocation competence, they should have the ability to
combine lexical (and grammatical) chunks in order to produce fluent, accurate, as well as
semantically and stylistically appropriate utterances. For business English learners in
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particular, a good knowledge of collocation patterns in English is also of great importance.
The most important characteristics of the language of business English, as opposed to the
language of general English, are a sense of purpose, intercultural dimension and a need for
clear, straightforward and concise communication (Ellis & Johnson, 1994). In order to achieve
these broad objectives of business English learners, teachers have to find out the best ways to
teach business performance skills such as socializing, telephoning, meeting, presentation, and
report writing. In all these situations, collocation competence is significantly essential.
With the rise of computing power as well as the acceptance of corpus linguistics since 1990s,
collocations have received serious treatment. The dramatic rise in processing power of
computers now makes it possible to quickly compose lists of frequency for lexical items in a
large corpus. At the same time, there have been a large number of different software programs
installed for keywords and collocations extract from corpus data. Such software packages have
made easier access to the investigation into typical lexical items and their collocations of any
particular text genres.
With the writer‘s personal interest in collocations as a researcher and observations of students‘
tough experience in dealing with collocations in business discourse as a tutor of business
learners, this thesis provides a comprehensive research on collocations of keywords in a
variety of business articles written about a currently hot topic for business learners, the
European debt crisis. The thesis, therefore, is carried out in the hope that it may be of some
Giúp to business learners of English as well as those who find themselves interested in English
semantics and collocation-related issues.
I.2. Aims of the study
The aim of this research is to conduct a close investigation into collocations of keywords from
a corpus of a certain number of business articles written about the European debt crisis. To be
specific, it identifies words with high frequency of occurrence within the chosen corpus and3
examines their collocations. The research, therefore, is carried out to answer the following
research questions:
What are the top high-frequency words in the corpus of written articles about the
European debt crisis?
What are significant patterns and features of collocations of such keywords?
I.3.Scope of the study
This study is about to discuss keywords and their collocations in 15 written articles about the
European debt crisis. The designed corpus of over 20,000 words is taken from online business
articles from websites of high reputation such as The Washington Post, Money CNN,
….Keywords chosen for analysis of significant patterns of collocation within the study are
those which can distinguish the business genre of the selected articles.
I.4. Structure of the thesis
The study is organized as follows:
Chapter I-Introduction- is firstly introduced, briefly stating the rationale, aims, scope and
organization of the study.
Secondly, chapter II-Theoretical Background- deals with the theories setting the
background for the study.
Thirdly, chapter III- Research Methodology- is a presentation on the methodology of the
research, referring to the research design, data collection procedures and data analysis
procedures of the study.
Next, on chapter IV-Results and Discussion-, a detailed discussion of collocations
keywords in the selected corpus is carried out, through which some interesting aspects can
be revealed.
In chapter V-Conclusion- major findings of the study and pedagogical implications and
suggestions are presented.
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CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
This chapter is going to deal with the theories setting the background for the research on
collocations of keywords in business articles about the European debt crisis 2011 under the
light of corpus linguistics. In the first place, an overview of corpus linguistics is presented,
followed by the theories of sense and sense relation. Then, the literature about transference of
meaning is overviewed. The chapter will be closed with a presentation on collocation in an
effort to provide a partial answer to three questions "What is collocation?", "What are
properties of collocation that surface repeatedly across the literature?", and "How is
collocation classified by different researchers?"
II.1. Corpus linguistics
Nowadays, a lot of investigation has been devoted to how computers can facilitate language
learning. With the Giúp of computer technology, the contextual factors that influence
variability in language use can be discovered through examples taken from corpora. A corpus
can be described as a large collection of authentic texts that have been gathered in electronic
form according to a specific set of criteria (Bowker& Pearson, 2002).
Corpus linguistics (hereafter CL) deals with the principles and practice of using such corpora
in language study. As a branch of linguistics, it differs from traditional linguistics as it is
related to the study of authentic examples of language (Sinclair, 1997). The main focus on CL
is to discover pattern of authentic language in order to verify a hypothesis about language, for
example, to determine how the usage of a particular sound, word, or syntactic construction
varies. This, in turn, allows learners and researchers to ascertain related linguistic patterns and
structures for the goals of their research.
Conducting a corpus analysis is the very fundamental technique used by CL. Corpus analysis
is a means of accessing a corpus of text to show how any given word or phrase in the text is5
used in the immediate contexts in which it appears. By grouping the uses of a particular word
or phrase on the computer screen or in printed form, the researcher shows the patterns in
which the given word or phrase is typically used. A large collection of a word‘s patterns then
can be created very quickly and effectively. Thus, CL has been widely employed in other
areas of linguistics and lexicography, where corpora can be used to Giúp dictionary markers to
spot new words and identify contexts for new meanings (Meyer, 2002).
In addition to its crucial function in language study in general, the role of CL in language
pedagogy has become increasingly prominent. McEnery and Wilson (1996) argue that foreign
language teachers usually produce simplified examples, which will raise difficulties for
students when these are confronted with real, more complex language that sometimes they are
incapable of processing. CL can thus contribute to rendering learning a foreign language more
effective since students will be faced with real language. Authentic materials can motivate
learners in the language classroom whereas non-authentic materials may not because they do
not reflect real applications of language and thus students will lose motivation in learning in a
target language.
The essence of exposure to authentic materials even becomes more accurate in the case of ESP
classes where all lessons are highly purpose-driven. CL, therefore, takes an essential part in
ESP, bringing a great deal of benefit to the teaching and learning on ESP courses. However,
among the many different types of corpora available such as written and spoken corpora,
general reference corpora, special purpose corpora, monolingual and multilingual corpora,
synchronic and diachronic corpora, open and closed corpora, and learner corpora (Biber,
1998), specialized corpora are preferable in ESP classes since they offer access to specialized
vocabulary in specialized contexts. In a specialized corpus, context has considerable influence
on the language choice; and the choice of language in turn plays an essential role in the
shaping of the text genre.
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II.2. Sense and sense relations
In Nguyen Hoa‘s words (Nguyen Hoa, 2004:56), "sense is a philosophical term for meaning".
Meaning and sense are closely related; however, sense is sometimes distinguished from
meaning. The meaning of a word is seen as part of the language system whereas sense is the
realization of this meaning in speech. According to John Lyons (1995:80), the sense of an
expression may be defined as the set, or network, of sense-relations that hold between it and
other expressions of the same language.
Sense relation is the kind of relationship between vocabulary items when they are arranged in
texts, spoken or written: how they are related to one another in terms of their meaning; how
they may or may not substitute for one another; how similar or how different they are to each
other and so on.
Nguyen Hoa(2004:121) points out that sense relations may be of two types: subsitutional and
combinatorial which roughly correspond to the two Saussurean terms paradigmatic and
syntagmatic. Subsitutional or paradigmatic relations are those which hold between
intersubstitutable members of the same grammatical category; combinational or syntagmatic
relations hold normally hold between expressions of different grammatical categories which
can be put together in grammatically well-formed combinations. For example, a subsitutional
relation hold between the noun bachelor and spinster, whereas the relation that holds between
the adjective unmarried and the nouns man and woman is combinatorial.
In discussion of combinatorial relations, there emerges a question whether any adjective can
combine with any noun or any verb can go with any noun. Actually, English, as well as every
other language, the combinations of words of different grammatical categories are restricted.
Each word tends to co-occur with a certain range of words, which is referred to as collocation
relation. In fact, lexemes are so highly restricted with respect to collocation acceptability that
it is almost impossible to predict their combinational relations on the basis of an independent
characterization of their sense.7
II.3. Transference of meaning
In English, there are basically two types of meaning transference, namely metaphor and
metonymy.
II.3.1. Metaphor
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:105), "metaphor is the transference of meaning from one
object to another based on the similarity between these two objects". Traditionally, metaphors
have been viewed as implicit comparisons. Flood…poured in, oozes, and stern in the
following sentences are all examples of metaphors.
A flood of protects poured in following the announcement.
(a large quantity of…came in)
He oozes geniality. (displays all over)
The government still hopes to stern the tide of inflation.
(resist the force of)
However, if the fact of resemblance is explicitly signaled, by a word such as like, as in protest
came in like a flood, this is considered not to be metaphor but simile.
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:109), metaphors may be of three types.
Living metaphors are those involving words used in unusual meaning and metaphors may be felt
as such. (Beauty is a flower which wrinkles will devour.)
Faded metaphors lost their freshness because of long use and became habitual. (dying capitalism,
to fall in love, golden youth)
Dead metaphors are words which have lost their direct meanings and are used only figuratively.
(to ponder, capital, sarcasm)
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Additionally, metaphors may be divided into different subgroups. Following are some
commonly and widely used subgroups of metaphors in English.
A subgroup of metaphors comprises names of human body transferred to other objects.
Typical examples include the nose of a plane, the head of the school, or the leg of the table.
A subgroup of metaphors comprises names of animals transferred to the human beings.
For example, a cunning person is a fox; or a hard working person is a bee.
A subgroup of metaphors comprises proper names transferred to common ones. For
instance, a jealous person is called an Othello; and an eloquent speaker is a Cicero.
II.3.2. Metonymy
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:112), metonymy can be defined as "the substitution of one
word for another with which it is associated". Thus, metonymy works by continuity rather
than similarity, which means that instead of the name of one object or notion we use the name
of another because these objects are associated or closely related. Examples of metonymy
include eye, shirt, and breathe in the following sentences.
Keep your eye on the ball. (gaze)
He is always chasing shirts. (girls)
It will not happen while I still breathe. (live)
According to Lyons (1995:314), body parts are favourite sources of metonymy, and many
such expressions have been incorporated into the language, with words like hand, heart, head
as in have a hand in, bear one's heart, or keep your head.
Some common substitutions in metonymy include:
place-for-institution (The White House objected to the plan.)
thing-for-perception (There goes my knee.)
object-for-possessor (The crown was angry with the Prime Minister's proposal.)9
part-for-whole (We do not like long hairs.)
place-for-event (Watergate strikes at the heart of the American political system.)
In tradition, according to Nguyen Hoa (2004:113), the following cases of metonymy are often
presented.
The name of container is used instead of the thing contained. (to drink a glass)
Names of parts of human body may be used as symbols. (to have a good eye, kind heart)
The concrete is used instead of abstract. (from the cradle to the grave)
The materials are used for the things made of the materials. (Canvas, glass)
The name of the author is used for his works. (Watts, Picasso)
Part is used for the whole and vice versa. (We all live under the same roof; She is wearing a
fox)
A subtype of metonymy is called synecdoche in which a whole is represented by naming one
of its parts, or vice versa. Roof, strings, and bite in the following sentences are examples of
synecdoche.
They all live under the same roof.(in one house)
At this point the strings take over. (stringed instruments)
Let's go and have a bite.(have a meal)
II.3.3. Other types of meaning transference
Besides metaphor and metonymy, there are other types of meaning transference involving
hyperbole, litotes, irony, and euphemisms.
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Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement not meant to be understood literally. However, the
effect is powerful.
For example:
It is a nightmare.
A thousand thanks
Litotes is really an understatement. It is traditionally defined as expressing something in the
affirmative by the negative of its contrary. For instance, not bad is often used to mean good; or
rather unwise to mean very silly.
Irony is used to express meaning by words of the opposite sense. In irony, intonation plays an
essential role. For example, nice in "You have got us into a nice mess." means bad.
Euphemisms involve the use of a milder expression for something unpleasant. For instance,
restroom or bathroom are used instead of WC.
II.4. Collocation
II.4.1. Definition of collocation
It is not easy to define what collocation is. In the linguistic literature, it is often discussed in
contrast with free word combination at one extreme and idiomatic expression at the other;
collocation occurs somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. A free word combination can be
described using general rules; that is, in terms of semantic constraints on the words which
appear in a certain syntactic relation with a given headword. An idiom, on the other hand, is a
rigid word combination to which no generalities apply; neither can its meaning be determined
from the meaning of its parts nor can it participate in the usual word-order variations.
Collocation falls between these extremes and it can be difficult to draw the line between
categories. A word combination fails to be classified as free and is termed as collocation when11
the number of words which occur in a syntactic relation with a given headword decreases to
the point where it is not possible to describe the set using semantic regularities.
Thus, example of free word combinations include put + (object) or run + (object) (i.e.
manage) where the words that can occur as object are virtually open-ended. In the case of put,
the semantic constraint on the object is relatively open-ended (any physical object can be
mentioned) and thus the range of words that can occur is relatively unrestricted. In the case of
run (in sense of manage or direct) the semantic restrictions on the object are tighter but still
follow a semantic generality: any institution or organization can be managed such as
businesses, ice cream parlor. In contrast to these free word combinations, a phrase such as
explore a myth is a collocation. In its figurative sense, explore illustrates a much more
restricted collocation range. Possible objects are limited to words such as brief, idea, theory.
At the other extreme, phrase such as fill the bill or fit the bill function as idioms, where no
words can be interchanged and variation in usage is not generally allowed.
Different linguists have different definitions of collocation. Moira Runcie in Oxford
Collocation Dictionary gives a general definition in which collocation is defined as the way
words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing. To a native
speaker, these combinations are highly predictable; to a learner they are anything but.
Specifically speaking, Chitra Fernando, Richards and others (1996:62) states that collocation
refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together, for examples which prepositions
are used with particular verbs or which verbs and nouns are used together. It is defined in
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary that collocation is "a combination of words in a
language that happens very often and more frequently than would happen by chance". In
Kjellmer (1994:xiv& xxxiii), collocation is "such recurring sequences of items as are
grammatically well formed". Kathleen R. McKeown and Dragomir R. Radev in their paper on
Collocations regard collocations as word pairs and phrases that are commonly used in
language with no general syntactic or semantic rules applied.
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Additionally, many linguists have tried to define collocation by presenting its functions.
Halliday (1966) and Sinclair (1966) introduced the notion that patterns of collocation can form
the basis for a lexical analysis of language alternative to, and independent of, the grammatical
analysis. They regarded the two levels of analysis as being complementary, with neither of the
two being subsumed by the other. Holding the same idea, McIntosh (1961:328) and Mitchell
(1971) presented the lexical and grammatical analyses as interdependent: "Collocations are to
be studied within grammatical matrices which in turn depend for their recognition on the
observation of collocation similarities" (Mitchell, 1971:65). Later, Halliday (1966:151&157)
argued that the collocation patterns of lexical items can lead to generalization at the lexical
level. Sinclair (1966:412 & 1974:16) proposed that a lexical item can be defined from its
collocation pattern.
The seemingly endless series of euro zone crises has European officials pushing for a banking
union that would watch over and bind together the currency group‘s faltering financial
institutions.
But on the ground in the euro zone, there seems little appetite for such a compact right now. In
fact, banks and their national regulators, anxious about the Greek elections and Spain‘s hastily
arranged bailout, are behaving more parochially than ever.
That poses a threat to the interbank lending across borders that is crucial to maintaining
liquidity — the free flow of money that is the lifeblood of the global financial system.
French and German banks have clamped off much of the lending to their counterparts in Italy
and Spain, which in turn are mainly giving loans only to their own debt-strapped governments.
With interbank cooperation at perhaps its lowest level since the creation of the euro currency
union, European officials say they are moving toward a broader solution.
Experts warn, though, that what is needed now is not another working paper proposing new
levels of euro bureaucracy, but a clear action plan that addresses the root issue: Markets and
investors have lost faith in Europe‘s ability to regulate its banks.
Potentially important first steps were taken at a summit meeting in Brussels in late June.
European officials decided that the bailout fund could provide money directly to the Spanish
banks in need of rescue than requiring it to go through the Spanish government, which feared
the effect of adding another $100 billion or so to its debt burden.
And the leaders agreed to work to establish a common banking supervisor for euro zone
countries. Officials envisioned the role being played by the European Central Bank, the only
institution with the firepower to credibly rescue a wobbly financial sector.59
In the short term, a signal of tighter regulation in the future — along with bailouts for troubled
banks — is needed to stem the flight of capital from countries with banking problems, which
threatened to spread to financial institutions throughout Europe.
In the longer term, by agreeing to cede power over banks, European countries hope Germany
will trust them more and eventually stand ready to share euro zone debt, which could help
them ease austerity measures and adopt pro-growth plans to revive their struggling economies.
Background
The debt crisis first surfaced in Greece in October 2009, when the newly elected Socialist
government of Prime Minister George A. Papandreou announced that his predecessor had
disguised the size of the country‘s ballooning deficit.
But its roots of the crisis go back further, beginning with a strong euro and the rock-bottom
interest rates that prevailed for much of the previous decade. Greece took advantage of this
easy money to drive up borrowing by the country‘s consumers and its government, which built
up $400 billion in debt.
In Spain and Ireland, government spending was kept under control, but easy money helped
turn real-estate booms there into bubbles — a process helped in Ireland‘s case by the
aggressive deregulation of its banks that helped draw investment from around the world. After
the bubble burst, the Irish government made the banks‘ problems its own by guaranteeing all
their liabilities.
After the extent of Greek debt was revealed, markets reacted by sending interest rates up not
only for its debt, but also for borrowing by Spain, Portugal and Ireland.
In early 2010, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund put together a series
of bailout packages for Greece that totalled 110 billion euros ($163 billion) in a process that
critics said ended up costing more because European leaders failed to get ahead of the curve.
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In May, leaders approved a contingency fund of 500 billions euro (about $680 billion) for the
union at large.
The hope was that the fund would never have to be tapped, as its existence would calm
investors. But in the fall of 2010 interest rates began creeping up again, as countries that
reduced spending to meet tough deficit targets found themselves falling farther behind, as their
economies slowed and revenues declined. In November, European officials arranged a bailout
of 85 billion euros (roughly $112 billion) for Ireland, after overcoming the resistance of Irish
officials to the move, which they saw an attack on sovereignty. (In fact, news of the deal led
Prime Minister Brian Cowen to announce that he would step down after passing a new round
of budget cuts, and his party was ousted at the next election).
In the spring of 2010, after much hesitation, the European Union and the International
Monetary Fund combined first to offer Greece a bailout package of 110 billion euros ($163
billion), followed by a broader contingency fund of 500 billions euro (about $680 billion).
The hope was that this show of financial force would reassure markets about the solvency of
euro countries.
But the new loans, combined with the effect of the austerity measures demanded of Greece,
Ireland and Portugal, drove them into recession and did little to ease their debt burden
— Greece‘s debt load even increased. As the debt crisis renewed over the winter of
2010 and spring of 2011 it led to the fall of governments in Ireland and Portugal, and saw
unrest rise in Spain, where unemployment remained close to 20 percent.
Contagion Fears Return
By the summer of 2011, it was clear that Greece would need a second big bailout package, and
worries rose again about contagion, as Italy and Spain saw the interest rates charged on its
borrowing rise steeply. The European Central Bank responded by buying large amounts of
Italian and Spanish bonds, as leaders put together a plan that would increase the powers of the61
European Financial Stability Facility to head off a ―run‘' on governments seen as in danger of
default.
By September, with growth slowing, stalled or in reverse across the continent, European
leaders were increasingly discussing the creation of a central financial authority — with
powers in areas like taxation, bond issuance and budget approval — that could eventually turn
the euro zone into something resembling a United States of Europe.
But talk of long-term solutions did little to calm markets worried about the weakness of banks
in France and elsewhere that held large amounts of debt from Greece and other shaky
governments. And the resignation of Jürgen Stark, a top German official at the European
Central Bank, highlighted the depth of policy discord among senior policymakers. Mr. Stark,
like many German officials, had opposed the bank‘s large-scale purchases of government debt.
Another potential crisis bubbled up in September, as European officials angrily warned Greece
that the next installment of its bailout funding would be withheld in October — a step
that would lead to certain bankruptcy — unless further radical cuts in government
spending were pushed through.
Earlier that summer, Greece, which had started the crisis, faced its more dire fiscal emergency,
as it stood to run out of cash in August without a new installment of money from the first
bailout. European leaders refused to release the funds until a second, more drastic round of
austerity measures were adopted, including the sale of $72 billion in state assets. The
government of Prime Minister George Papandreou teetered, but the measure was pushed
through after days of giant street protests.
The basic conflict over the shape of a new bailout plan was between Germany‘s chancellor,
Angela Merkel, who insisted that private banks pay part of the cost by taking losses on Greek
bonds, and the European Central Bank, who opposed even a voluntary ―haircut‘' for banks,
saying it would be seen as a default.
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July Agreement Falls Behind the Curve
The deal reached in late July included $157 billion in new funds for Greece and a modest
reduction of its debt burden; private lenders saw their bonds rolled over into longer maturities
but also had them guaranteed. And the European Financial Stability Facility, the eurozone
rescue fund, saw its contingency fund grow to 440 billion euros, or $632 billion, and was
given new, amplified powers and the ability to use the money to bail out Portugal and Ireland
if necessary.
The response to the package was not what leaders hoped: investors began driving up interest
rates in Italy and Spain, economies too large to be bailed out by the new arrangements. At the
same time, the fall in confidence threatened to undermine the big banks in those countries,
whose large holdings of government bonds began to lose value.
On Aug. 7, 2011, the European Central Bank said it would ―actively implement‖ its bondbuying program to address ―dysfunctional market segments,‖ a statement interpreted as a sign
that it will intervene to prevent borrowing costs for Italy and Spain from becoming
unsustainable.
Vowing Closer Paths
To address the growing debt crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President
Nicolas Sarkozy of France met on Aug. 16, 2011 at the Élysée Palace in Paris. The leaders
promised to take concrete steps toward a closer political and economic union of the 17
countries that use the euro. They called for each nation in the euro zone to enshrine a ―golden
rule‖ into their national constitutions to work toward balanced budgets and debt reduction, a
level of discipline well beyond the current, oft-broken commitment. They also pledged to push
for a new tax on financial transactions, and for regular summit meetings of the zone‘s
members.63
Both leaders ruled out issuing collective bonds, known as eurobonds, to share responsibility
for government debt across member states, and they opposed a further increase in a bailout
fund that will not be put into place until late September 2011 at the earliest. Mrs. Merkel said
there was ―no magic wand‖ to solve all the problems of the euro, arguing that they must be
met over time with improved fiscal discipline, competitiveness and economic growth among
weaker states.
But a growing number of leaders in September began quietly discussing a broader plan for
greater fiscal integration — since the alternatives could include the collapse of the euro
or increasing conflict over bailouts.
Officials said a major overhaul of the way Europe conducts fiscal policy was likely to take a
long time and require changes in the treaties governing the euro. But they pointed to the
smaller changes that were already taking place as evidence that euro area financial ministries
see that they have little choice but to move together if they want to avoid a catastrophic
breakdown.
Increasing Distress
The talks took place against a background of increasing continent-wide distress. Official
figures released in August 2011 showed that quarterly growth in the euro zone fell to its
lowest rate in two years. Germany — the Continent‘s powerhouse — slowed almost to a
standstill. Most of Europe‘s main stock indexes lost ground after the data suggested that the
debt and economic problems in countries like Greece and Italy were infecting the rest of the
17-country euro zone.
Meanwhile, leaders groped for a way to expand the effective firepower of the bailout fund, the
European Financial Stability Facility, amid a general agreement that the boost agreed to in
July was no longer adequate to calm the market‘s fears about big economies like Spain and
Italy. One suggestion, pushed by the Obama administration, was to use the facility‘s funds to
guarantee loans from the European Central Bank rather than to make loans directly.
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Also in September, Greece pushed through a hugely unpopular property tax increase as part of
a new austerity package needed to keep installments of the first bailout package flowing. And
the eurozone‘s members crept through the process of signing off on the July agreement, with
crucial votes in favor coming from Germany and Finland, which had threatened to block it
unless it got higher levels of collateral on its contribution.
Under the fretful gaze of investors, the meandering approval process has revealed ever more
fissures, layers of decision making and complexity in Europe that adds up to a worrisome
inability to react quickly and decisively to upheaval in fast-moving financial markets.
Fall of 2011: Fears Grow
In the fall of 2011, even as European leaders struggled to come up with a new bailout plan for
Greece, much larger fears loomed. Interest rates soared for Italy, the continent‘s third largest
economy, and rose for France, whose banks hold large amounts of Italian government bonds,
and where government finances are strained. The continent‘s economy was teetering on the
brink of a second recession.
A growing number of economists called for the European Central Bank to step forward as a
lender of last resort, as the Federal Reserve has done, to stop the contagion. But the bank,
whose mandate is focused solely on preventing inflation, has resisted, saying a political
solution is required.
As the crisis deepened, banks in Europe began to hoard capital, straining the finances of their
counterparts and hurting companies across the globe that depend on them for loans.
In December, leaders of the countries that use the euro agreed to an intergovernmental pact
adopting tighter fiscal controls. All 17 of the countries that use the euro agreed to join, as did
six others. But Britain refused, raising questions about its future in which it has become
increasingly isolated.65
The agreement, which can be adopted more quickly than a change to the European Union
treaty — and without Britain‘s consent — would reassert rules limiting deficits
to 3 percent of gross domestic product and total debt to 60 percent. Violators would be hit with
sanctions unless a majority of other countries agreed.
After the summit, the familiar pattern of market relief followed by new market worries was
repeated. But on Dec. 21, banks borrowed more than $600 billion from the European Central
Bank at the extraordinarily easy terms of 1 percent interest for a three-year loan. Analysts
suggested that the Bank had hit upon an indirect method of stopping the market spiral
threatening Italy, Spain and other governments, by flooding banks with money they could use
to lock in guaranteed profits by buying sovereign debt.
Greece Dodges Default With a Second Bailout
By early 2012, the sense of crisis had returned, as the leaders of France and Germany
threatened to withhold the second aid package without further cuts and promises of structural
economic changes. At the same time, Greece plunged into meetings with banks and hedge
funds about deeper writedowns on its debt — up to as much as 70 percent.
The proposed austerity package included 20-percent cuts to base pay for workers in private
companies and a loosening of public sector job protections. With elections looming as soon as
April, the three parties that make up Mr. Papademos‘s coalition feared that they were
essentially being told to commit political suicide to save the country.
The European Union‘s plan of tax increases, spending cuts and now wage cuts has pushed the
country into a deep recession; the economy shrunk by almost 12 percent between 2009 and
2011 and is expected to shrink by up to 6 percent in 2012. The crisis also stripped Greece‘s
political center, weak to begin with, of its last shreds of political legitimacy. With
unemployment at 21 percent, businesses closing, credit scarce and the proposed new wage
cuts expected to further decimate the shrinking middle class, the hard left and extreme right
are rising.
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