The idiom principle and the open choice principle

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 of the 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 both 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. © Walter de Gruyter.