Linked Noun Groups

Opposition and Expansion as Genre and Style Markers

Michael Pace-Sigge

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783030539856
• eBook ISBN: 9783030539863
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book provides a corpus-led analysis of multi-word units (MWUs) in English, specifically fixedpairs of nouns which are linked by a conjunction, such as 'mum and dad', 'bride and groom' and 'law and order'.Crucially, the occurrence pattern of such pairs is dependent on genre, and this book aims to document the structural distribution of some key Linked Noun Groups (LNGs). The authorlooks at the usage patterns found in a range of poetry and fiction dating from the 17th to 20th century, and also highlights the important role such binomials play in academic English, while acknowledging that they are far less common in casual spoken English. His findings will be highly relevant to students and scholars working in language teaching, stylistics, and language technology (including AI).

© The Author(s) 2020

M. Pace-SiggeLinked Noun Groupshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53986-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Michael Pace-Sigge¹

(1)

School of Humanities, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

Michael Pace-Sigge

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

BinomialsLinked noun phrasesMulti-word unitsGenre specificity

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

This book deals with a minor yet essential and highly functional grammatical construction in the English language. Unlike established features of grammar—for example, conjugation or morphology—it does not have a single, widely recognised name. Like many other elements of language (see, for example, Bill Louw’s semantic prosody), the occurrence patterns of these constructions can become more visible by the application of corpus linguistics.

Often, this construction is found under its general heading—binomials. Within a broad perspective of linguistics, binominal phrases have been of interest only relatively recently. Almost all the literature seems to agree that it was first discussed by Richard Abraham, who talked of fixed coordinates, and highlighted this fixedness with the following example: “we say ‘It’s a matter of life and death’ and ‘It’s a matter of death and life’ although logical enough, cannot be considered colloquial or idiomatic English” (1950, 276). Abraham continues that similar fixedness can be found in Romance languages as well as German. His in-depth investigation into binomials in several languages concludes as such:

it is likely that at least twenty per cent of fixed coordinates are unclassifiable semantically and, as we have already seen, although rhythm and phonology doubtless play their part in determining the order of words which are coordinated, one can never predict which of the many principles will be dominant in any given case. (my highlights; Abraham, 1950, 287)

Similarly, Yakov Malkiel, in 1959, observed its very fixed (i.e. hard to reverse) structure. The English language does, indeed, make use of a large number of multi-word units (MWU), and these are often fixed to a high degree. As can be seen, a lot of the groundwork on the use of binomials happened during pre-corpus times. One of the later seminal works comes from Marita Gustafsson, starting with her PhD thesis.¹ The work then undertaken was going manually over thousands of pages from eleven different texts (novels, newspapers, magazines, popular science and law texts) in order to extract 4330 occurrences of 2720 different binomials (Gustafsson 1975, 1976). In her description, these phrases display a characteristic frozenness. Nevertheless, Gustafsson, in her various articles, provided a most comprehensive description of the forms and functions of binomials; her work has become a basis for a lot of research in the field, and this book will keep coming back to her to compare the results produced here with her own research.

Amongst word pairs and trigrams that are idiomatic, binomials are a specific subcategory that is prominent yet cannot be described as highly frequent compared to other types of fixed clusters. Amongst all binomials, a number of research investigations have highlighted the most frequently occurring subcategory, namely a pair of nouns which is linked by a conjunction. Some of these are widely used and easily recognised, for example law and order or boy and girl. However, there are a number of less obvious trigrams of that sort, for example nose and cheekbone, increase or decrease.

Biber and colleagues [1999] (2007) talk of coordinated binomial phrases² (Noun and NOUN). They also state that “[m]ost binominal phrases occur too infrequently to be considered part of recurrent lexical bundles”. Biber and Conrad (1999, 183) define lexical bundles as “extended collocations: sequences of three or more words that show a statistical tendency to co-occur”.³ They contrast them with idioms, highlighting that the main difference is that “lexical bundles are the sequences of words that most commonly co-occur in a register”. The Collins Cobuild English Grammar (Sinclair, 1990), which is based on a Pattern Grammar–led classification, refers to these as Linked Noun Groups (LNG ). Moon (1998) highlights that these linked nouns are typical of fixed expressions found in her contemporary English corpus. A number of possible conjuncts are available to link pairs from the same word class. Biber et al. [1999] (2007) describe their coordinated binomial phrases only with the words and or or as coordinator. It must be noted, however, that this grammatical structure also presents occurrences for conjuncts like as, or but or nor, as links for pairs of nouns—this points to a colligational preference. Be that as it is, the binominal phrases N-[OR]-N and N-[AND]-N are, in all cases, the most frequently occurring Linked Noun Groups.

The conjunct or fulfills, according to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) (2009, 1229), six different functions:

1. 1.
   possibilities / choice (“or anything like that”)
2. 2.
   “and not” (“to mean not one thing and not another either”)
3. 3.
   avoiding bad result (“hand over your money or else”)
4. 4.
   correction (“or rather”)
5. 5.
   proof (“not urgent or else they would not have called”)
6. 6.
   uncertain amounts (“a mile or so”)

The following chapters will highlight which of these functions are fairly prominent when N-[OR]-N LNGs are employed in different text types.

The conjunction of two items with and appears, on the face of it, straightforward. However, the LDOCE, which is corpus-based, gives an indication of the particular usage patterns found to be prevalent. The conjunction and is far more frequent than or. Moreover, it also covers a wider range of functions as described in the LDOCE (2009, 55)⁴:

1. (1)
   join to words, phrases etc. referring to related things (“get some fish and chips”)
2. (2)
   one event following another (“knocked at the door and went in”)
3. (3)
   causation (“I missed supper and I’m starving”)
4. (4)
   adding numbers (“six and four is ten”)
5. (5)
   (British English) after verbs like go, come, try: show intention (“I can try and persuade her”)
6. (6)
   (spoken) to introduce a statement, remark, question etc. (“And who’s the lucky man?”)
7. (7)
   between repeated words to add emphasis (“more and more people are losing their jobs”)
8. (8)
   in numbers (“hundred and five” / “three a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. LNGs in Spoken Interaction and Written Academic Texts
• 3. LNGs in UK and US Poetry
• 4. LNGs in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Fiction
• 5. Findings, Applications and Conclusions
• Back Matter