COLLOCATIONS IN WRITTEN TEXTS OF PHILIPPINE ENGLISH

Collocations are considered to be significant in learning English; however, they are less explored and the method on how to analyze them remains fuzzy. With this, the study primarily aimed to describe and analyze collocations in written texts of Philippine English (PE). Specifically, it described collocations in terms of lexicogrammar construed through experiential clauses and they were analyzed below the clause or phrasal level in view of systemic functional grammar. The study employed corpus-based approach in expounding collocations while AntConc corpus analysis tool kit (Windows 2018) was used to identify collocations in the corpus. After the extraction of clauses, they were identified among the experiential clauses. From these clauses, the collocational patterns were determined and their frequency counts were recorded. The number of occurrences of process with other parts of speech was also noted. After eliciting the collocations from the corpus and recording the frequency counts, qualitative analysis was done into two phases. The first phase is based on the analysis of collocations within the clause through experiential metafunction and lexicogrammar. The second phase was done by focusing the analysis in the phrasal level. Results revealed that among the six types of experiential clauses, collocations in written texts of Philippine English frequently occur in material clause and relational clause. Also, the grammatical choice predicts the kind of experiential clause where collocations occur. Likewise, process types affect their realization in the clause. With this, their functions differ depending on the type of experiential clause that they occur. As output of the study, a booklet and gloss of collocations in PE was crafted.