ABSTRACT
Sounds, words, and grammar are the three great layers, more like the layers of atmosphere than layers of cake, for it is impossible to cut cleanly between them. One of the earliest two-word expressions that most English-speaking children learn is all gone. All gone yields all and gone without surrendering its own identity. This blurs the line between words and phrases where some items that we consider words are seldom or never encountered alone. Words in this way to one or a few set phrases are like the smaller elements called affixes, which are rarely if ever pulled loose, the in of inept, the kin of lambkin and which differ from words in that they cannot usually be attached. Countering the word combinations that become so tightly cemented that speakers toss them off like single words are the parts of words that break free and enter into new combinations.
