Fixed phrases

We round off this brief visit to the dictionary by pointing out that we began with the stereotypical view that there are rules that specify syntactic constructions and that words are listed in the dictionary or lexicon, taken out of the dictionary and inserted into syntactic constructions. It turned out that the connection between syntax and lexical items is closer than we might have imagined, not only with respect to the number of connections but also with respect to the powerful role played by individual lexical items, especially verbs. Over the past fifteen years or so, analysts have come to realize that in any language there is a large set of phrases and even whole clauses that are not freely built up but fixed. we can distinguish various types of fixed phrase, as set out in (18)–(21).

Crystal also discusses collocations, restricted sequences of words; examples are in (22). Heavy smoker and heavy drinker qualify as collocations because heavy and light combine with a limited set of nouns – smoker, drinker, eater and sleeper.

The above five types of phrase and clause do not always conform to the syntax of written English and may have idiosyncratic meanings; a heavy smoker is not a smoker with a weight problem. It looks as though these phrases and clauses must be listed as single items in the dictionary, although at the time of writing there are no explicit descriptions of English or other languages that handle fixed phrases in an adequate way. What analysts are more and more certain of is that the number of fixed expressions in English (and other languages) and the frequency with which they are used by speakers and writers is much greater than anyone supposed forty years ago.