ABSTRACT
That human beings display infinite creativity in the use of language
has been a powerful axiom within theoretical linguistics for 40 years,
ever since Noam Chomsky first set out his views on the matter in his
paper ‘The Logical Basis of Linguistic Theory’ at the 9th
International Congress of Linguists in 1962. Yet applied linguists
keep bumping up against the limits of such creativity. Research into
collocation, notably that carried out in the COBUILD project led by
John Sinclair, has progressively confirmed the important insight of
J.R. Firth (1890-1960) that language is ‘chunkier’ than non-Firthian
linguistics would have us believe. If a given English word has just
been uttered, we can predict with a surprising degree of accuracy
which words, or which of a limited number of options, will follow it.
This is a significant tempering of the notion that we are constantly
saying things that have never been heard before in human history.
