The collocations of modern Polish: the case of kolaborować [to collaborate] and ambasador [an ambassador]

The aim of the article was to confirm whether or not the modification of words meaning is associated with their collocations. Based on the analysis performed on the collocation of the verb kolaborować [to collaborate] and the noun ambasador [an ambassador] we proved the existence of the aforementioned correlation. The language material for research was collected using PELCRA search engine for Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego [The National Corpus of Polish] and Monco PL searching tool for web sides. The analysis of the authentic examples of word combinations reveals the relation between node terms and their collocates. The article listed the word pairs whom recurrence has high co-occurrence frequency. In the case of the verb kolaborować, excerpt collocations refer to the negative contexts associated with cooperation with the enemy and neutral about the cooperation of people and companies. The contexts of the noun ambasador are related to the work of a diplomatic representative to a foreign country, an action spokesperson or a brand ambassador. Our research indicated that collocations are not accidental or arbitrary. It has been also noted that collocations study are a valuable starting point for linguistic analyses.