Why use a collocation dictionary?
A normal dictionary, whether monolingual or bilingual, splits up meaning into individual words; it has a lot of power in dissecting the meaning of a text. Its power is more limited when it comes to constructing texts. Good learner’s dictionaries give as much help as they can with usage, with grammar patterns clearly explained, register labels and example sentences showing words in context. Modern dictionaries are increasingly giving attention to collocation. But they are still hampered by trying to provide a whole range of information about any word besides its collocations. A grammar provides an analysis of the general patterns that exist in a language. But its productive power is limited by the degree to which it generalizes in order to come up with ‘grammatical rules’. A collocational dictionary doesn’t have to generalize to the same extent: it covers the entire language (or a large part of it!) on a word by word, collocation by collocation basis. It manages this by not attempting t
