The idiom principle and the open choice principle

TLDR

The study assumes language users rely on preconstructed phrases and that text production alternates between word‑for‑word combinations (open choice principle) and multi‑word idiomatic combinations (idiom principle). The study aims to assess how the alternation between open choice and idiom principles affects text structure. The authors developed an analytical framework to examine how multi‑word combinations interact with each other and with open‑choice words. The study reveals that roughly half of spoken and written texts are prefabricated, showing that idioms and multi‑word combinations are central rather than marginal phenomena.

Abstract

The assumptions forming the basis of this study are that the language user has available a number of more-or-less preconstructed phrases and that the production of texts involves alternation between word-for-word combinations—which we refer to as adherence to the open choice principle (after Sinclair 1991)—and preconstructed multi-word combinations, which we refer to as making use of the idiom principle (again after Sinclair). The main aim of the study is to gain an Impression ofthe impact that this alternation has on the structure of texts. Therefore a mode of analysis has been worked out revealing how multi-word combinations combine with each other and with words combined according to the open choice principle. This is the main contribution of the study. Another important contribution is the revelation that there is a large amount of prefabricated language in bot h spoken and written texts (on average around half of the texts), which makes it impossible to consider idioms and other multi-word combinations as marginal phenomena.