Lexical Diversity and Native-Like Selection: the Bonus of Studying Abroad

Abstract

Part of a child’s task in becoming a competent language user is to gain control of a system of rules (i.e. a grammar) which has prodigious generative power, allowing the creation of a potentially infinite number of utterances, and conferring the ability to distinguish word combinations that are grammatical from those which are not. This generative model of language (Chomsky, 1965) has been widely accepted for some time although, as has been pointed out by many (e.g. Becker, 1975; Pawley and Syder, 1983; Widdowson, 1989) it cannot fully account for language use. No first language speaker uses the creative power of grammar to anything remotely like its full extent, and out of the infinite variety of utterances which could be generated by a grammar, only a limited variety are attested in speech. As extensive corpus analysis shows, samples of authentic language are characterized not by infinite originality, but by the pervasive recycling of common word combinations (Sinclair, 1991). These can be simple collocates (e.g. Happy Birthday! worst-case scenario, fish and chips), whole utterances (e.g. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you) or complex syntactic frameworks needing a few additions (NP is the sort of person who goes around V-ing NP). Such fixed or partially fixed word combinations are named ‘native-like selections’ by Pawley and Syder (1983). They are familiar to native speakers because they have been encountered many times before, whereas their paraphrased grammatical equivalents sound odd because they have not been encountered before: Enjoyable Birthday! chips and fish, window-breaking while going around is done by this sort of person.

The study on which this chapter is based was funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-000-22-1155).