Does anyone know why?

Question

Why can't we say "high reputation or highly influenced" ?
Why can we say "highly recommended"
This is as taken from the Cambridge University Press
English Collocations in use
Advanced

According to the Cambridge English (book & page info below), it states e.g.
"heavily influenced" is OK but "highly influenced" is not OK.
or
Someone can have a "considerable reputation" or a "well deserved reputation" but not a "high reputation".
That is why I'm asking the question, "why can one not say "highly influenced" or high reputation" etc. as per my vatious examples.
e.g.
The doctor had a high reputation.
The company has a high reputation.
The doctor highly influenced the project's outcome.
The project was highly influenced by the doctor's high reputation.

Cambridge University Press
English Collocations in use
Advanced
Felicity O'Dell
Michael McCarthy
ISBN 978-0-521-70780-0

Unit 29
Page 62
Please help, thank you

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Astarwhy can one not say "highly influenced" or high reputation" etc. as per my vatious examples.

I think you are mistaken in some way. You can use any combination of words you want.

To begin with, you have to understand that a corpus is a selection of many, many writings and written transcriptions of spoken language. Computers are used to search for various collocations (word combinations) within this very large corpus. If the word combination is found quite often within the corpus, it is considered as "an English collocation in use". People who speak English say or write this combination frequently. If the word combination is not found often or not at all, it is considered to be "not in use". That is, people who speak English do not say or write this combination very often.

The advertising for that book says that all the standard language patterns presented in that book "were selected from those identified as significant by the CANCODE corpus of spoken English. CANCODE was developed at the University of Nottingham in association with Cambridge University Press and the Cambridge International Corpus of written and spoken English."

So what does that mean? It means that the people who wrote that book used computers to see if the collocation "high reputation" (for example) was found very often in the CANCODE corpus. They did not find that collocation very often, or maybe they did not find that collocation at all.

You can conclude that if you want to use the English language as it is used in that corpus, you should use the collocations that are found there often (like highly recommended), and you should avoid collocations that are not found there often (like high reputation).

That doesn't mean that you can't use certain collocations at all. It means that if you use certain collocations, you will not be writing or speaking in the same way as is typical for the body of language contained in the corpus. Maybe there are other places outside this corpus where the same collocations are used frequently, and you would prefer to trust your own judgment on whether to use these collocations or not.

CJ

Astar · Answer

Thank you CJ

Astar · Answer

Thank you for your explanation. Does this mean that there is no longer any standard corpus, that one should accept any corpus with which one feels good with. For example Bush and such others often came / come up with words/collocations which did not previously exist and then lots of people seem to start speaking in such a manner (especially in order to conform) so it becomes easy to often find such words/collocations. Could it not be a little bit misleading

CalifJim · Answer

AstarDoes this mean that there is no longer any standard corpus

There never was "a standard corpus". All of the materials within a given corpus are chosen by the organization which builds the corpus. There is no standard way to build a corpus. Although different organizations may use different criteria for constructing a corpus, the final results are usually quite similar -- unless the corpus is designed to focus on a particular sort of language, such as the language of medicine, or the language of sports.

AstarCould it not be a little bit misleading

It might be misleading, but we have to trust that those who compile the corpus will not select materials which give undue emphasis to the new collocations of any particular speaker -- such as Bush, for example.

CJ

Astar · Answer

Thank you CJ<img class='emoticon' style='Width:19px;Height:19px;' data-delaysrc='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' src='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' alt='Emotion: smile'/>

Does anyone know why?

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