Collocation in Arabic: the state of the art

Abstract

This article analyzes the situation of the two most under-researched areas in the field of collocations in Arabic: lexicography and phraseology. The authors briefly review the most relevant literature in these areas, from the classical period up to the present day. However, the paper focuses mainly on the modern period, by analysing the research of ten contemporary authors, including the original contribution made to the field by this author: a taxonomy of lexical collocation in Arabic based, on the one hand, on the principles of external breadth and clarity, and, on the other hand, on a larger level of internal consistency and coherence. The starting point of this taxonomy is a macrolevel that contains four categories, from which another eight categories are derived, containing grammatical functions  and detailed parts  of speech. Finally,  there is  a third  level of analysis that consists of five categories and mainly includes lexical information.