Which statement correctly describes collocational range?

• A. It is the frequency of a single word in a corpus.
• B. It is the variety of acceptable word combinations with a given word.
• C. It refers to the number of synonyms a word has.
• D. It only influences pronunciation.

Answer: (B)

Collocational range describes how many and what kinds of words naturally pair with a given word in everyday usage. It’s about the variety of acceptable word combinations you can have with that word. For example, a common verb like “make” has a wide collocational range: you can say “make a decision,” “make progress,” “make money,” “make an effort,” and many other pairings. A word with a narrow collocational range has fewer natural partners. This concept isn’t about how often a word appears in a corpus (that’s frequency), nor about how many synonyms a word has, and it doesn’t relate to pronunciation.