Linked Noun Groups: Opposition and Expansion as Genre and Style Markers

by Michael Pace-Sigge

Overview

This book provides a corpus-led analysis of multi-word units (MWUs) in English, specifically fixed pairs of nouns which are linked by a conjunction, such as 'mum and dad', 'bride and groom' and 'law and order'. Crucially, the occurrence pattern of such pairs is dependent on genre, and this book aims to document the structural distribution of some key Linked Noun Groups (LNGs). The author looks at the usage patterns found in a range of poetry and fiction dating from the 17th to 20th century, and also highlights the important role such binomials play in academic English, while acknowledging that they are far less common in casual spoken English. His findings will be highly relevant to students and scholars working in language teaching, stylistics, and language technology (including AI).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030539856
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	10/31/2020
Edition description:	1st ed. 2020
Pages:	153
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Michael Pace-Sigge is Senior Lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: LNGs in Spoken Interaction and Written Academic Texts.- Chapter 3: LNGs in UK and US Poetry.- Chapter 4: LNGs in 19th and 20th Century British Fiction.- Chapter 5: Findings, Applications and Conclusions.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Michael Pace-Sigge has produced a fascinating, rigorous and at times surprising account of linked noun groups that will become required reading for anyone interested in a corpus-driven description of this phenomenon.”—Michael Hoey, Professor Emeritus, University of Liverpool, UK

 “This book brings a meticulously in-depth focus to the study of how nouns pair with other nouns. What is most laudable and exciting about this book is its contribution to our understanding of these multi-word units in terms of how they differ across spoken and written modes, across specific genres and how they may have changed over time. It also showcases the importance of the findings for enhanced language description for literary stylistics and language teaching.”—Anne O’Keeffe, Senior Lecturer, Mary Immaculate College, Ireland

“This book convinced me of the importance of noun + noun fixed word pairs in discourse or stylistic analysis. Corpus linguistics has a lot to offer to applications like teaching and language technologies of the future. Through a set of interesting case studies, this account illustrates superbly how genre and context dependent these word pairs can be.” —Katie J. Patterson, Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Roehampton, UK

“Michael Pace-Sigge takes us to a new level of understanding on how we see binomials. Using a corpus-led analysis in various texts, he shows how LNGs (Linked Noun Groups) are used in casual conversations, academic writing, poetry, and fiction. Not only useful to those interested in corpus linguistics, this book will help English language teachers, students, and even linguists working on artificial intelligence-based projects in speech recognition tools.” —Toar Sumakul, Lecturer and Educational Technology Researcher, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana, Indonesia