Tracking the incidence of formulaic expressions in everyday speech: methods for classification and verification [An article from: Language and Communication]

This digital document is a journal article from Language and Communication, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The importance in communication of speech formulas, idioms, proverbs and other formulaic expressions (FEs) has recently been recognized, but studies of their actual usage are still few, and methods of classification remain unrefined. The incidence of FEs in a screenplay, Some Like It Hot, was examined, and found to make up nearly 25% of the phrases in the text. These results are compared with other corpus studies. To verify the classification method used, a survey provided a quantification of native speakers' knowledge of FEs. These findings support a dual model of language ability that includes both configurational and combinatorial modes.