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:
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xii
1 Introduction 1
Incidence of Familiar Language Exemplars 12
Where Do Fixed, Familiar Expressions Come From? 16
2 Classification 26
Identification 36
Three Classes of Familiar Expressions: Formulaic Expressions, Lexical Bundles, Collocations 37
Formulaic Expressions 40
Lexical Bundles 80
Collocations 86
Overview of Characteristics and Functions of Familiar Language 104
How Formulaic Expressions, Lexical Bundles, and Collocations Differ 114
3 How Is Familiar Language Acquired? 117
Frequency of Exposure: History and Veridicality 118
Acquisition: Role of Emotion and Familiarity 123
Acquisition: Memory for Speech and Language 127
4 Acquisition 131
Several Conditions Converge to Promote Acquisition 132
Acquisition of Fixed, Familiar Expressions in the First Language 136
Acquisition of Fixed, Familiar Expressions in the Second Language 143
Familiar Language Representation Compared in First and Second Language 150
5 Prosodic and Phonetic Characteristics of Fixed, Familiar Expressions 155
Stereotyped Prosodic Form in Fixed Expressions 157
Detailed Knowledge of Prosodic Features 160
Acoustic Studies 163
6 Familiar Language in Psychiatric and Neurologic Disorders 169
Psychiatric Disorders 170
The Neurology of Familiar Language 181
Stroke: Residual Speech and Familiar Phrases 187
Familiar Phrases in Speech Therapy 203
Specialized Functions of the Cerebral Hemispheres 217
The Right Hemisphere and Familiar Language 222
Cortical–Subcortical Dimension 224
Functional Imaging Studies of Fixed Expressions 241
7 Summing Up: Dual- or Multiprocess Model of Language Function? 251
The Linguistic View 251
The Psychological Perspective 253
Observations from Cerebral Processing 255
Familiar Language – Its Daunting Heterogeneity 258
Appendix I: Listing Accumulated by C. Fillmore, 1973 (2050 items) 263
Appendix II: Russell Baker: New York Times, the 1978 Commandments 287
Appendix III: Selected Familiar Expressions Listed in Chiardi, 1987 289
Appendix IV: Familiar Expressions Contributed by Students as Heard in Daily Communicative Interactions 291
Appendix Va: Formulaic Expressions as Encountered Every Day Over a Few Years 295
Appendix Vb: Lexical Bundles Encountered Every Day Over the Past Few Years 302
Appendix Vc: Collocations Encountered Every Day in the Past Few Years 305
Appendix VI: Schemata Accumulated from Current Communications 309
Appendix VII: German Proverbs Drawn from Hain (1951), Set Up in Survey Style to Assess Knowledge of Current Native Speakers of German 317
Appendix VIII: A Dialogue Composed Entirely of Movie Titles 321
Appendix IX: Formulaic Expressions Captured from On-line Viewing of the Film “Some Like It Hot” 323
Appendix X: Familiar Expressions from Newspapers: Class, Subset, Provenance, and Change of Form or Meaning 331
Appendix XI: Essential Nomenclature for Cerebral Structures: Definition, Location, and Function 343
Appendix XII: Matched Novel and Familiar Expressions; Stimuli for Rammell, Pisoni, and Van Lancker Sidtis (2018) Study 345
Appendix XIIIa: Northridge Evaluation of Formulas, Idioms, and Proverbs in Social Situations 348
Appendix XIIIb: Northridge Evaluation of Formulas, Idioms, and Proverbs in Social Situations 351
Appendix XIV: Familiar and Novel Language Comprehension Protocol: Instructions and Answer Sheet 355
Appendix XV: Test Format for Survey: Some Like It Hot Protocol 365
Appendix XVI: Sample “Grid” from 2006 Used in Preliminary Studies to Document Subsets of Familiar Expressions in Healthy and Neurological Persons 368
Appendix XVII: Responsive Naming Test with Expected Answers (Garidis et al., 2009) 377
Appendix XVIII: Selected Books and Articles Listing Formulaic Expressions, Lexical Bundles, and Collocations 379
Glossary 381
References 386
Index 439
About the Author :
Diana Sidtis (formerly Van Lancker), PhD, CCC/SLP, is Professor Emerita of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at New York University and Research Scientist at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, New York. She is the co-author of Foundations of Voice Studies, which won the 2011 Prose Award for Scholarly Excellence in Linguistics from the American Publishers Association. Her research examining voice, aphasia, motor speech, prosody, and formulaic language has been published in more than 130 peer-reviewed journals and other publications.
