Phraseological View of Language : A Tribute to John Sinclair

This volume presents the results of the international symposium Chunks in Corpus Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistics, held at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg to honour John Sinclair''s contribution to the development of linguistics in the second half of the twentieth century.

The main theme of the book, highlighting important aspects of Sinclair''s work, is the idiomatic character of language with a focus on chunks (in the sense of prefabricated items) as extended units of meaning. To pay tribute to Sinclair''s enormous impact on research in this field, the volume contains two contributions which deal explicitly with his work, including material from unpublished manuscripts. Beyond that, the articles cover different aspects of chunks ranging from more theoretically-oriented to more applied papers, in which foreign language teaching and the computational application of the insights about the nature of language provided by corpus research play an important role.

The volume demonstrates the wide applicability and relevance of the notion of chunks by bringing together research from different fields of linguistics such as theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics and foreign language teaching, and thus provides an interdisciplinary view on the impact of idiomaticity in language.

"Overall, however, the collection offers a valuable insight into the legacy of
John McHardy Sinclair and his enormous contribution to the fields of lexicography, language pedagogy and discourse analysis. Given a wide range of topics covered, the volume will prove to be a useful reference book for anyone interested in the phenomenon of prefabricated language in the context of corpus linguistics."
Anna Siyanova-Chanturia in: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 4/2012

"''The phraseological view of language'' is a book that has achieved a difficult balance between the theoretical and the practical. Its comprehensive coverage of the diversity of aspects of phraseology will be welcomed by readers who share an interest in corpus, lexis and lexicography."
Phoebe M. S. Lin in: Linguist List 23.2248