The mental corpus. How language is represented in the mind

This book presents a radical reconceptualization of the nature of linguistic knowledge. John Taylor challenges the conventional notion that a language can be understood in terms of the interaction of syntax with a lexicon, the second listing the words and the first the rules for combining them. He proposes instead that an individual's knowledge of a language can be thought of as a repository of memories of linguistic experience. Each encounter with the language, he argues, leaves a trace in our minds. We record the forms of utterances, the concepts and interpretations associated with them, and the contexts in which they were heard or seen. Features of incoming language - a word, a phrase, a meaning, a voice quality, an interactional situation - resonate with items already stored. Similarities between stored items give rise to generalizations of varying degrees of certainty and precision, which in turn are able to sanction new and innovative expressions.0.

Cover; Contents; 1. Conceptualizing language; E-language and I-language; Studying E-language-not such a simple matter!; Corpora and their representativeness; The BNC and linguistic experience; The World Wide Web: a "fabulous linguists' playground"; 2. The dictionary and the grammar book: the generative model of linguistic knowledge; A rule-based approach to linguistic knowledge; Subcategorization; Selectional restrictions; Agreement features; The generative model in relation to data; Explain me; The lexicon; Compounds; Derived words; Syntactic constructions; Compositionality; In conclusion

3. Words and their behaviourLexical categories; Unique distribution of words; Laps and bosoms; Fun; Pluralia tantum; Much; Verbs and their subcategorization; Zero-complements; Defective verbs; In conclusion; 4. Idioms; Semantic idioms; Idiom variability; Allusions to idioms; Syntactic idioms; The more the merrier; Him write a novel!?; What about me?; That idiot of a man; That'll teach you!; What's it doing raining?; Phrasal idioms; Minor (ir)regularities; 5. Speaking idiomatically; Language and context of use; Words and collocations; Learning to speak idiomatically; A case-study: X-minded

6. C…