All languages are characterized by the regular co-occurrence of certain words. We say in English, for example, tall building, but high mountain. These recurrent combinations or collocations are, of course, peculiar to each individual language and cannot be predicted by a learner of that language. Clearly, the knowledge of one’s own language and its collocations does not facilitate a learner’s ability to form collocations in a second language — there are striking collocational differences between any two languages.








