THE ENGLISH ADJECTIVE LEXICAL COLLOCATION

Abstract

The aims of this research are to describe the English adjective collocations, other word classes that collocate with the English adjective, the most frequent combination of adjective collocations, and to describe the meaning of adjective collocations. This research discussed the English adjective lexical (medium-strength) collocation. In case of speaking and writing, there are some problems non-native speakers may have with English vocabulary use in particular with the appropriate combinations of words. This research uses a qualitative descriptive method, because all of the data are in the form of words and sentences not numbers. Besides, this research is also a descriptive research, because it involves the collecting of data is to answer research questions concerning the current status of the subject of the study (David, Wilkinson. 2000:7). After finding 200 data, the writer classified two main categories, namely adjective + noun (L3) and adverb + adjective (L6). The writer also classified six subcategories, they are derivational adjective + noun, describing adjective + noun, intensifying adjective + noun, adverb + derivational adjective, adverb + inherent quality, and adverb + physical state. The most frequent combination of adjective lexical collocations is adverb + derivational adjective; there are 94 data or 47% of the whole data. All of the collocations in this research have common meaning