This article discusses the problem of defining formulaic sequences in language use as it is presented in the 2004 volume “Formulaic Sequences”, edited by Norbert Schmitt.

In the past three decades there has been much research done in the area of language patterning. However, as Schmitt & Carter (2004) noticed, the problem is that the diversity of formulaic sequences made it difficult to develop a comprehensive definition of the phenomenon.

Kuiper (2004) states that as early as 1976, Austin observed some utterances that acted as speech acts (greetings, apologies, etc.) were used within particular contexts, and served both as cultural and linguistic artifacts, but he failed to notice that those utterances were relatively fixed formulae.

Schmitt & Carter (2004) and Schmitt et al. (2004a) claim that Pawley & Syder (1983) were the first English-based researchers to notice the magnitude of ‘sentence-length expressions’ (conventionalized language). Pawley and Syder gave an explanation about why word clusters appear to hold such a prominent place in language use: holistic ‘prepackaged’ storing of ‘formulaic sequences’ allows the language user to easily retrieve them and free up cognitive resources for other language processes.

In 1991, as Schmitt & Carter (2004), Jones & Haywood (2004), and Adolphs & Durow (2004) point out, Sinclair (1991) put forward two main structuring principles of organizing language as a whole: ‘an open choice principle’ that assumes free choice of individual lexical items and ‘an idiom principle’ which involves extensive use of formulaic stretches of words, or ‘semi-preconstructed phrases’, and presupposes that words are often selected as part of a ‘co-selection process’ which ‘leads to a strong syntagmatic relationship between individual lexical and grammatical items’.

In 1992, according to Schmitt et al. (2004a), Nattinger & DeCarrico (1992) conducted an investigation of the relationship between ‘lexical phrases’ and functional language use.

In 1995, Jackendoff (1995), and Melcuk (1995) separately echoed the same conclusion but used the terms ‘formulaic sequences’ and ‘phraseology’ respectively (Schmitt & Carter, 2004).

Jones and Haywood (2004) assert that studies of computerized corpus revealed additional patterning in language use. Thus, in 1999, Biber et al. (1999) researched ‘lexical bundles’ that they defined as ‘bundles of words that show a statistical tendency to co-occur’ and also as ‘recurring sequences of three or more words’ (pp. 989-990). They reported that sequences of this length were at least ten times more common than longer sequences.[Return to top]