The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English: A Guide to Word Combinations

PREFACE
The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English gives essential grammatical and lexical recurrent word combinations, often called collocations; when
necessary, it provides definitions, paraphrases, and Usage Notes. The methods and terminology used to present these collocations in the Dictionary are explained in the Introduction.
Much of the material provided in this Dictionary has never before been published. This material is of vital importance to those learners of English who
are native speakers of other languages. Heretofore, they have had no source that would consistently indicate, for example, which verbs are used with which nouns; they could not find in any existing dictionary such collocations as call an alert, lay down a barrage, hatch a conspiracy, impose an embargo, roll a hoop, draw up a list, administer an oath, enter (make) a plea, crack a smile, punch a time clock, inflict a wound, etc. This Dictionary provides such collocations; in order to enable the user of the Dictionary to find them quickly and easily, they are given in the entries for the nouns.
Knowledge of other languages is normally of no help in finding English collocations. For administer an oath, French has faire preter serment, Spanish —
hacer prestar juramento, German — den Eid abnehmen, Russian—privesti k prisjage, etc. Thousands of similar examples could be cited.
Use of the Combinatory Dictionary will help learners avoid such errors as *they mentioned him the book, *a stranger was lurking, *we are very fond, *we send you hearty greetings, *she told when she would arrive, etc.
The BBI Dictionary is a companion volume to the Lexicographic Description of English. The latter work deals with the major problems facing compilers
of general-purpose dictionaries of English, includes background information about the lexicographic treatment of collocations, describes the lexical,
grammatical, and orthographic differences between American English (AE) and British English (BE), and provides an extensive bibliography. This
bibliography indicates the major secondary sources used for the BBI Dictionary.
In the BBI Dictionary, attention is consistently paid to lexical and collocational differences between AE and BE. These differences are noted in the
entries and Usage Notes. The Introduction gives details concerning their treatmcnt AE spelling is used in the BBI Dictionary; however, in the headwords,
the BE spelling is also given.
We should like to express our gratitude for the help and advice that many persons gave us during the compilation of the Dictionary. All cannot be named here. We should, however, like to mention Mrs. Anne Zarit of Philadelphia, whose help was greatly appreciated. In closing, we note with appreciation the guidance, support, and encouragement of our friends at John Benjamins BV.
The authors will be grateful for comments and suggestions from users of the Dictionary.
M.B.,E.B.,R.I.