文档介绍：Collocative meaning
Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquires on account of the meanings of words which tend to occur in its environment.
Pretty and handsome mon ground in the meaning "good-looking", but may be distinguished by the range of nouns with which they are likely to co-occur.
Girl boy
boy man
woman car
flower vessel
pretty garden handsome overcoat
colour airliner
village typewriter
etc. etc.
The ranges may well, of course, overlap: handsome woman and pretty woman are both acceptable, although they suggest a different kind of attractiveness because of the collocative associations of the two adjectives.
Further examples are quasi-synonymous verbs such as wander and stroll (cows may wander, but may not stroll ) or tremble and quiver (one trembles with fear, but quivers with excitement).
Not all differences in potential co-occurrence need to be explained as collocative meaning: some may be due to stylistic differences, others to conceptual differences.
It is the incongruity bining unlike styles that makes " He mounted his gee-gee" or " He got on his steed "an bination.
On the other hand, the acceptability of “The donkey ate hay", as opposed to “The donkey ate silence", is a matter patibility on the level of conceptual semantics
Only when explanation in terms of other categories of meaning does not apply do we need to invoke the special category of collocative meaning.
Collocative meaning is simply an idiosyncratic property of individual words.