Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Part I What Formulaic Sequences Are
- 1 The Whole and the Parts
- 2 Detecting Formulaicity
- 3 Pinning Down Formulaicity
- Part II A Reference Point
- Part III Formulaic Sequences in First Language Acquisition
- Part IV Formulaic Sequences in a Second Language
- Part V Formulaic Sequences in Language Loss
- Part VI An Integrated Model
- Notes
- References
- Index
1 - The Whole and the Parts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Part I What Formulaic Sequences Are
- 1 The Whole and the Parts
- 2 Detecting Formulaicity
- 3 Pinning Down Formulaicity
- Part II A Reference Point
- Part III Formulaic Sequences in First Language Acquisition
- Part IV Formulaic Sequences in a Second Language
- Part V Formulaic Sequences in Language Loss
- Part VI An Integrated Model
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
‘Twelve-inches-one-foot. Three-feet-make-a-yard. Fourteen-pounds-make-a-stone. Eight-stone-a-hundred-weight’.… Unhearing, unquestioning, we rocked to our chanting, hammering the gold nails home. ‘Twice-two-are-four. One-God-is-Love. One-Lord-is-King. One-King-is-George. One-George-is-Fifth …’ So it was always; had been, would be for ever; we asked no questions; we didn't hear what we said; yet neither did we ever forget it.
Laurie Lee: Cider with Rosie. Penguin:53–4She would go and smile and be nice and say ‘So kind of you. I'm so pleased. One is so glad to know people like one's books’. All the stale old things. Rather as you put a hand into a box and took out some useful words already strung together like a necklace of beads.
Agatha Christie: Elephants Can Remember. Pan:12Introduction
In a series of advertisements run on British TV early in 1993 by the breakfast cereal manufacturer Kellogg, people were asked what they thought Rice Krispies were made of, and expressed surprise at discovering that the answer was rice. Somehow they had internalized this household brand name without ever analyzing it into its component parts. It was as if the name of the product had taken on a life of its own, and required no more reference back to its ‘meaning’ than do words of foreign origin such as chop suey (‘mixed bits’) and spaghetti (‘little cords’). But how could this come about in the case of a name which, although oddly spelled, so transparently refers to crisp rice? In actual fact, overlooking the internal composition of names is a far more common phenomenon than we might at first think.
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- Formulaic Language and the Lexicon , pp. 3 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
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