Foundations of Familiar Language

Formulaic Expressions, Lexical Bundles, and Collocations at Work and Play

Diana Sidtis

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119163282
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

A broad overview of the many kinds of unitary expressions found in everyday verbal and written communication, including their signature meaning, form, and usage, authored by a renowned scholar in the field

Foundations of Familiar Language is renowned scholar Diana Sidtis's new contribution to the study of formulaic language through a wide-ranging overview of a large group of language behaviors that share characteristics of cohesion and familiarity, featuring a rational classification of fixed, familiar expressions into formulaic expressions, lexical bundles, and collocations. This unique volume offers a new approach to linguistic classification and construction grammar through a dual-process model of language competence rooted in linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic observations, combining insights drawn from foundational studies of psychology and neurology with contemporary theories of the differences between formulaic and propositional language. This approach offers a distinct and innovative contribution to scholarship in the field. The text contains resources for further study and research such as examples, research protocols, and lists of fixed, familiar expressions from the past and present. This authoritative volume:

• Describes the current state of knowledge and reviews experimental results, proposals, and models in a clear and straightforward manner
• Offers up-to-date surveys of the role of fixed expressions in education, social sciences, cognitive psychology, and brain science
• Features a wealth of engaging and relatable examples of formulaic expressions (conversational speech formulas, expletives, idioms, and proverbs), lexical bundles, and collocations
• Includes discussion of the use of fixed, familiar expressions in second language learning
• Presents new research data on the neurological foundations of familiar language drawn from clinical observations and experimental studies of stroke, dementia, and Parkinson's disease
• Contains material from social media, magazines, newspapers, speeches, and other sources to illustrate the importance, abundance, and value of familiar language

Sufficiently in-depth for specialists, while accessible to students and non-specialists, Foundations of Familiar Language is an essential resource for a wide range of readers, including linguists, child language specialists, psychologists, social scientists, neuroscientists, philosophers, educators, teachers of English as a second language, and those working in artificial intelligence and speech synthesis.

Table of contents

• Foundations of Familiar Language
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Classification
• 3 How Is Familiar Language Acquired?
• 4 Acquisition
• 5 Prosodic and Phonetic Characteristics of Fixed, Familiar Expressions
• 6 Familiar Language in Psychiatric and Neurologic Disorders
• 7 Summing Up: Dual- or Multiprocess Model of Language Function?
• Appendix I: Listing Accumulated by C. Fillmore, 1973 (2050 items)
• Appendix II: Russell Baker: New York Times, the 1978 Commandments
• Appendix III: Selected Familiar Expressions Listed in Chiardi, 1987
• Appendix IV: Familiar Expressions Contributed by Students as Heard in Daily Communicative Interactions
• Appendix Va: Formulaic Expressions as Encountered Every Day Over a Few Years
• Appendix Vb: Lexical Bundles Encountered Every Day Over the Past Few Years
• Appendix Vc: Collocations Encountered Every Day in the Past Few Years
• Appendix VI: Schemata Accumulated from Current Communications
• Appendix VII: German Proverbs Drawn from Hain (1951), Set Up in Survey Style to Assess Knowledge of Current Native Speakers of German
• Appendix VIII: A Dialogue Composed Entirely of Movie Titles
• Appendix IX: Formulaic Expressions Captured from On-line Viewing of the Film “Some Like It Hot”
• Appendix X: Familiar Expressions from Newspapers: Class, Subset, Provenance, and Change of Form or Meaning
• Appendix XI: Essential Nomenclature for Cerebral Structures: Definition, Location, and Function
• Appendix XII: Matched Novel and Familiar Expressions; Stimuli for Rammell, Pisoni, and Van Lancker Sidtis (2018) Study
• Appendix XIIIa: Northridge Evaluation of Formulas, Idioms, and Proverbs in Social Situations
• Appendix XIIIb: Northridge Evaluation of Formulas, Idioms, and Proverbs in Social Situations
• Appendix XIV: Familiar and Novel Language Comprehension Protocol: Instructions and Answer Sheet
• Appendix XV: Test Format for Survey: Some Like It Hot Protocol
• Appendix XVI: Sample “Grid” from 2006 Used in Preliminary Studies to Document Subsets of Familiar Expressions in Healthy and Neurological Persons
• Appendix XVII: Responsive Naming Test with Expected Answers (Garidis et al., 2009)
• Appendix XVIII: Selected Books and Articles Listing Formulaic Expressions, Lexical Bundles, and Collocations
• Glossary
• References
• Index
• EULA