Previously, the terms ‘collocation’ and ‘colligation’ were believed to be first used by J. R. Firth in 1951 and 1957 respectively. However, Firth himself made an explicit reference to H. F. Simon in Reference B.
Actually, the term ‘colligation’ was proposed at page 327 of Reference C (The page was also strangely paginated as page 25, but judging from the page range of the article, the page is meant to be page 327--the first page of the article), meaning ‘the syntactic juxtaposition of two or more categories’. What makes this more interesting is that Note 1 at page 327 of Reference C refers us to Dr. S. A. Birnbaum as the very person who coined or proposed the term ‘colligation’, despite that the first half of the word ‘colligation’ was not correctly scanned.
A little bit more about the use of ‘collocation’.
I think what the new term that J. R. Firth proposed was not ‘collocation’ (p. 194), but ‘meaning by collocation’, because ‘collocation’ was used as a linguistic term long before Firth (1951). For example, Palmer (1933) is a systemic study of English collocations (see Reference D).
Meaning by 'collocation' (1951)
A:
Firth, J. R. 1951/1957. Modes of Meanings. Reprinted in Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951. London: Oxford University Press. Pp. 190-215.
Link to the article:
Colligation (1957)
B:
Firth, J. 1957. A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory, 1930-55. Studies in Linguistic Analysis (Special Volume of the Philological Society). Reprinted in F. Palmer. 1968. Selected Papers of J. R. Firth 1952-59. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press. Pp. 168-205.
Link to the article:
Colligation (1953)
C:
Simon, H. F. 1953. Two Substantival Complexes in Standard Chinese. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS) 15.2: 327-355.
Link to the article:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&pdftype=1&fid=3921532&jid=BSO&volumeId=15&issueId=02&aid=3921524
or
Collocation (1933)
D:
Palmer, Harold E. 1933. Second Interim Report on English Collocations. Tokyo: Institute for Research in English Teaching.
If this were the second report, then there must have been something before that.
Link to the article:
(I’d thank Prof. Kawazaki of Daito Benka University for having photocopied this important document.)
