Further Practice 1

Task
Analyse the form of the three lexical items in bold below.

Extract from the brochure ‘Catch a Bus in Auckland’ produced by Stagecoach Auckland.

Catch a bus in Auckland…Both the one-day and 3-day pass give you unlimited travel…. Go to the bus
stop. Buses usually stop every 400 metres at posted signs

When you have finished, scroll down for the Answers on the next page.
Answers
Catch a bus
Collocation / lexical phrase / lexical chunk / verb phrase: made up of a irregular, transitive verb
‘catch’ and a singular countable noun with an indefinite article ‘a bus’. ‘Catch’ appears as an
imperative.

Bus stop
Compound noun / noun phrase / collocation: made up of a noun ‘bus’ + noun ‘stop’. Bus acts as a
modifier and has an adjectival function. Although it is a high frequency compound, the two nouns
are not joined or hyphenated. This may be because it is perceived as being clumsy in terms of
orthography (spelling).

3-day pass
Compound noun / noun phrase / collocation: made up of a number/determiner ‘3’ + hyphen + noun
‘day’ + noun ‘pass’. ‘3-day’ has an adjectival function. As the first noun ‘day’ acts as a modifier, it
does not take a plural form, despite being preceded by a plural number.