The Functions of Formulaic Language. An Integrated Model (Alison Wray, Michael R. Perkins, 2000)

Language & Communication 20 (2000) 1±28
www.elsevier.com/locate/langcom
The functions of formulaic language:

an integrated model
Alison Wray a,*, Michael R. Perkins b
a
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardi University,
PO Box 94, Cardi CF10 3XB, UK
b
Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheeld, Sheeld, S10 2TN, UK
1. Introduction
1.1. The nature of formulaic language
`Formulaicity' and `formulaic sequence' will be used in this paper to describe, in a

neutral way, a phenomenon that encompasses various types of wordstring which
appear to be stored and retrieved whole from memory. Our working de®nition of
the formulaic sequence will be:
a sequence, continuous or discontinous, of words or other meaning elements,

which is, or appears to be, prefabricated: that is, stored and retrieved whole
from memory at the time of use, rather than being subject to generation or
analysis by the language grammar.
This includes, at the one extreme, tightly idiomatic and immutable strings, such as
by and large, which are both semantically opaque and syntactically irregular, and, at
the other, transparent and ¯exible ones containing slots for open class items, like NP
be-TENSE sorry to keep-TENSE you waiting (Pawley and Syder, 1983, p. 210).
Perkins (in press) de®nes formulaicity as follows: ``manifested in strings of linguistic
items where the relation of each item to the rest is relatively ®xed, and where the
substitutability of one item by another of the same category is relatively con-
strained''. If we take formulaicity to encompass, as some do, also the enormous set
of `simple' lexical collocations, whose patterns are both remarkable and puzzling
from a formal grammatical point of view (e.g. Sinclair, 1991), then possibly as much
* Corresponding author.
0271-5309/99/$ - see front matter # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0271-5309(99)00015-4
2 A. Wray, M.R. Perkins / Language & Communication 20 (2000) 1±28
as 70% of our adult native language may be formulaic (Altenberg, 1990). A range of
corpus studies (e.g. Kjellmer, 1984; Baayen and Lieber, 1991; Altenberg, 1993; Bar-
kema, 1993) have shown that the patterning of words and phrases in ordinary lan-
guage manifests far less variability than could be predicted on the basis of grammar
and lexicon alone, and in fact most natural language, written or spoken, appears to
consist largely of collocational `sets' or `frameworks' (Renouf and Sinclair, 1991;
Renouf, 1992). As Sinclair (1991) puts it: `àll the evidence points to an underlying
rigidity of phraseology, despite a rich super®cial variation'' (p. 121). Formulaicity
contrasts with productivity, the ability to use the structural system of language
(syntax, semantics, morphology and phonology) in a combinatory way to create
novel utterances and in an analytical way to understand them (Perkins, in press). We
explore the relationship between these in Section 2.
A particularly noteworthy feature of formulaicity is the variability found in the
forms, functions and distributions of sequences across types of language (Wray,
1999). While some adult native forms can already be heard in the output of the
young child or early-stage L2 learner, other formulaic sequences, that are dierent
from anything in the adult native language, also appear during these acquisition
processes, and then disappear again. Formal classroom L2 learners use some for-
mulaic sequences that are native-like and others that are non-nativelike. Items of
both types may later disappear or may persist, and, despite the apparent ease with
which they are adopted during learning, it is often the failure to use native-like for-
mulaic sequences that ultimately marks out the advanced L2 learner as non-native
(Pawley and Syder, 1983). Aphasics of various kinds also make use of formulaic
sequences, some corresponding with the pre-trauma norm, but others idiosyncratic
in their form and meaning.
Wray's (1999) survey of descriptions of formulaic language in the speech and
writing of adult native speakers, ®rst and second language learners and aphasics
demonstrates that its forms and functions are determined, within the output of the
individual, by a complex interaction of factors. The best way to account for the
patterns of distribution is in terms of a dynamic model, and in this paper we propose
such a model. In Section 1 we shall explore the phenomenon of formulaicity in
general terms, considering both the ways in which it has been characterised and the
problems that have arisen from the under-speci®cation of fundamental contrasts.
Section 2 brie¯y summarises the ®ndings of Wray's (1999) survey and identi®es the
nature of the challenge to a processing model, especially the need to accommodate
our capacity for novel utterances. We then present our model (Section 3), which is in
three parts. The ®rst two oer an account of the individual's strategy choices at any
point in time, within the framework of interactional and processing constraints
respectively. The third part describes the developmental aspect of processing, that is,
the role played by formulaic language in the L1 learner across time.
1.2. Clearing the ground
A considerable number of accounts of formulaic language exist, focussing on

adult natives (e.g. Becker, 1975; Bolinger, 1976; Coulmas, 1979; Cowie, 1992,
A. Wray, M.R. Perkins / Language & Communication 20 (2000) 1±28 3
1994a,b, 1998; Moon, 1998), ®rst language learners (e.g. Peters, 1977, 1983; Garvey,
1977; Nelson, 1981; Bates et al., 1988), second language learners (e.g. Wong Fill-
more, 1976; Ellis, 1994; Weinert, 1995; Granger, 1998; Howarth, 1998) and aphasics
(Hughlings Jackson, 1874/1958; Code, 1987, 1997; Van Lancker, 1987; Van Lancker
and Kempler, 1987); for a review of these and many others, see Wray (1999). While
in the early accounts there was a tendency to look only inwards, largely failing to
recognise the existence of the phenomenon beyond the bounds of the speci®c area
under investigation, most later reports feature some measure of cross-referencing,
aimed at demonstrating how the formulaic sequences in each area re¯ect a more
general property of language. While this wider perspective is undoubtedly valid, the
eagerness to contextualise in this way seems to have rather underestimated some
basic problems with the looseness of the terminology, which makes it extremely
dicult to be sure when like is being compared with like (see also Howarth, 1998,
p. 25). Well over 40 terms have been used to refer to one or more type or subtype of
formulaic language, including those in Table 1.
What is the signi®cance of the existence of so many terms? Is it safe to assume that
the only reason for the variation in terminology is that the phenomenon and its sub-
types have been found and named independently in dierent ®elds? Conversely, dare
we assume that where a single term is used by commentators in more than one ®eld,
it actually refers to exactly the same phenomenon? We think not. Rather, it seems
that there are genuinely deep-seated and signi®cant dierences, which have become
obscured by the tolerance of terminological variation on the one hand, and, on the
other, the indiscriminate appropriation of certain favoured terms across data types.
The multi-faceted nature of formulaic language is evident from the variety of ways
in which it has been characterised: according to its form, function, semantic, syn-
tactic and lexical properties, and its relationship with novel (analytic) language. We
shall consider each in turn.
Table 1
Terms used in the literature to describe formulaic sequences and formulaicity
Amalgams Gambits Preassembled speech

Automatic Gestalt Prefabricated routines and
Chunks Holistic patterns
ClicheÂs Holophrases Ready-made expressions
Co-ordinate constructions Idiomatic Ready-made utterances
Collocations Idioms Rote
Composites Irregular Routine formulae
Conventionalized forms Lexical(ised) phrases Schemata
FEIsa Lexicalised sentence stems Semi-preconstructed phrases
Fixed expressions Multiword units that constitute single choices
Formulaic language Non-compositional Sentence builders
Formulaic speech Non-computational Stable and familiar expressions
Formulas/formulae Non-productive with specialized subsenses
Fossilized forms Petri®cation Synthetic
Frozen phrases Praxons Unanalysed chunks of speech
a
Fixed Expressions including Idioms (Moon, 1998).
1.3. Form-based taxonomies
Many have oered descriptions and/or categorizations of formulaic sequences in

adult native language, including Becker (1975), Bolinger (1976), Hatch et al. (1979)
Coulmas (1979, 1994), Yorio (1980), Lattey (1986), Van Lancker (1987), Moon (1992,
1998) and Howarth (1998). Although by no means the most detailed, Becker's (1975)
basic six category taxonomy of adult native speaker formulas is a useful reference point:
. Polywords, e.g. (the) oldest profession; to blow up; for good.
. Phrasal constraints, e.g. by sheer coincidence.
. Meta-messages, e.g. for that matter... (message: Ì just thought of a better way
of making my point'); ...that's all (message: `don't get ¯ustered').
. Sentence builders (person A) gave (person B) a (long) song and dance about (a
topic)1.
. Situational utterances, e.g. how can I ever repay you?
. Verbatim texts, e.g. better late than never; How ya gonna keep èm down on the
farm? (adapted from Becker, 1975, p. 6f).
Becker's categorisation, like Nattinger and DeCarrico's (1992) considerably more
detailed one which draws heavily upon it, suers from diculties in teasing apart
form and function. Furthermore, he does not focus directly on the potential of for-
mulaic sequences to tolerate grammatical and semantic oddity, including the com-
plex relationship they have with metaphor, and he fails to capture the possibility of
placing them on a continuum from ®xed to novel (see Section 1.6).
1.4. Semantic irregularity
In many, but not all, cases, formulaic sequences have relinquished their semantic
compositional meaning in favour of a holistic one (Nattinger and DeCarrico, 1992,
pp. 32±33), and in this respect they coincide in part with idioms and metaphors
(Yorio, 1980; Moon, 1992). It is common for a formulaic sequence to carry a
metaphorical meaning, and in some cases it would be impossible for a hearer to
understand it for the ®rst time without substantial pragmatic or direct explicational
context (e.g. straight from the horse's mouth; to pull someone's leg) (see Gibbs, 1991).
In other cases, the metaphorical meaning can be retrieved more directly (e.g. the autumn
of one's life; I can read you like a book). Semantically opaque sequences have to be
idioms, else they would become unusable, while poetry shows us that transparent
metaphors need not be formulaic at all (e.g. young death sits in a cafe smilingÐe.e.
cummings). This variability in the transparency of sequences makes it super®cially
attractive to useidiom as a de®ning variable in characterising formulaicity. However,
Howarth (1998) demonstrates the usefulness of separating out this variable from the
main structure of the de®nition (see below). The scope of formulaic sequences is,
1
In fact Becker has con¯ated two quite important formal features in his Sentence builders category by
illustrating the sentence template pattern, which can often be literally understood, with a metaphor.
Metaphors are very common in formulaic sequences but there is no primary or speci®c association with
any form-type (see Section 1.4).
however, much wider than idioms, as even the most basic taxonomies, such as
Becker's (1975) above, indicate.
1.5. Syntactic irregularity
Syntactic irregularity comes in various forms. One is a restriction on the normal

scope for in¯exional or transformational manipulation (Verstraten, 1992). For
example, it is not possible to pluralize beat around the bush or passivize face the
music without the sequences losing their formulaic status (Flavell and Flavell, 1992,
p. 6). Nor is it possible to say that you slept a wink last night or to make someone fed
up by feeding them up (Irujo, 1986, p. 237). In another type of irregularity, normal
restrictions may be ¯outed, as when a direct object appears with an intransitive verb,
as in to come a cropper; to go the whole hog (Flavell and Flavell, 1992, p. 7), or non-
identical constituents are co-ordinated, as with by and large. (Etymologically speak-
ing, by and large is a nautical term for steering a boat ``both before and behind...the
beam'' (Flavell and Flavell, 1992, p. 46), and in this context it is a co-ordination of
two adverbs. However, it is rare for a user to know this and doubtful whether even
one who does, actually computes it in this way).
Such oddities seem to be a natural, though not a necessary, consequence of a
sequence becoming formulaic, as fossilization strands it from the normal criteria of
acceptability in the mainstream language (Cowie, 1992, p. 2). This sort of irregular-
ity is a mine-®eld for any account of language processing which prioritises con-
stituent structure over message (see Wray, in preparation b). However, as with
semantic irregularity, and for essentially the same reasons, it is restricted to only one
part of the much larger set of formulaic sequences, the idioms, and, as such, has only
limited value as a measure of the phenomenon as a whole.
1.6. Continua of formulaicity
Several have followed Bolinger (1976) in favouring a categorisation of formulaic

sequences according to the extent of their ®xedness. Bolinger quotes an early version
of Van Lancker's (1987) continuum (Fig. 1), which teases out variation along the
analyticity±cohesion dimension (Van Lancker, 1987, p. 55), according to the criter-
ion of àmount of attention paid'. This leads to the uneasy combination of some
form-based and some function-based categories. Howarth (1998) also favours a
continuum description, and encounters the same necessity to identify some word
combinations in terms of their function, even though his primary emphasis is form.
His basic divisions are:
. functional expressions (sequences with a discourse role such as openers, prov-

erbs, slogans and so on);
. composite units (which retain a syntactic function);
. lexical collocations (consisting of two open class items, such as ulterior motive);
. grammatical collocations (consisting of one open and one closed class item,
such as in advance).
Fig. 1. Van Lancker's continuum (from Van Lancker, 1987, p. 56).
All of these baseline categories span a continuum from non-idiomatic to idio-

matic. This approach enables him to capture the dierence between under the table
(free combination),2 under attack (restricted collocation), under the microscope (®g-
urative idiom) and under the weather (pure idiom), without relinquishing the ¯ex-
ibility of labelling some sequences as borderline (pp. 27±28). However, his somewhat
conservative line (compared with, for example, Bolinger, 1976, pp. 5, 7), excludes
some important criteria. In particular he does not recognise a category of `fused'
sequences. Fusion is a process described by Peters (1983) in the context of ®rst lan-
guage acquisition. Strings created using the grammar can subsequently become
®xed, or `fused', as a single unit if they occur frequently enough for this to be
advantageous. Howarth believes that all `non-institutionalised' phrases, that is, ones
that are transparent in meaning, are products of the online grammar, however
commonplace they may be (pp. 27, 38, 40).
What is important to recognise is the fundamentally descriptive nature of such
continuum models. They focus on de®ning a given sequence of words as more or less
formulaic, according to certain criteria, such as those mentioned above. A shade
closer to an explanatory model would be a continuum that identi®ed stages of the
journey that a given sequence makes across time in the mouth of a given speaker: is
it formulaic when ®rst uttered? Does it remain formulaic or become less so? Can it
sustain a formulaic and non-formulaic identity at once?
1.7. Focus on word frequency
There is undoubtedly some sort of relationship between frequency and for-

mulaicity, both in the sense that some formulaic sequences are very frequent, and
2
Not in the sense of `drunk', which would fall into the idiom category.
that formulaic output is frequently called upon. With regard to the ®rst, we may
note that in the case of idiomatic phrases such as can of worms and bite the dust,
which have a literal counterpart, the frequency of the idiomatic version in a given
language sample is by far the higher (Chafe, 1968; Barkema, 1993; Nunberg et al.,
1994). As for the second, Sinclair (1991) ascribes the prevalence of formulaicity in
language use to ``the recurrence of similar situations in human aairs...a natural
tendency to economy of eort [and]...the exigencies of real-time conversation'' (p.
110). Cognitive grammarians argue that the formulaic nature of the adult lan-
guage system comes about via a process of `schematization' ``through the
reinforcement and progressive entrenchment of recurring commonalities, as well
as the `cancellation' (non-reinforcement) of features that do not recur'' (Lan-
gacker, 1991, p. 107).
Frequency counts in corpus-based studies (e.g. Sinclair, 1991; Altenberg, 1993;
Butler, 1997; Stubbs, 1997) can be word-focussed3 or sequence-focussed. One com-
mon frequency measure for estimating the degree of productivity of a language
sample is the lexical type-token ratio, calculated by dividing the number of dierent
words (types) by the total number of words (tokens). This has been widely used in
areas ranging from language acquisition (Templin, 1957; Hess, 1986) and language
pathology (Wachal and Spreen, 1973; Manschreck et al., 1984) to literary studies
(Yule, 1944; Youmans, 1991). More recently, Perkins (1994) has extended the notion
of type-token ratio beyond the level of the word in an analytical procedure which is
sensitive to the whole range of the formulaicity continuum.
However, it may be premature to judge frequency as a de®ning feature of for-
mulaicity. It has yet to be established that commonness of occurrence is more than a
circumstantial associate. There are certainly many formulaic sequences whose cul-
turally-based familiarity belies their comparative rarity in real text (e.g. That's another
®ne mess you've gotten me into; Time for bed, said Zebedee; Here's one I made earlier).
As Hickey (1993) notes, ``we must not rule out the possibility that an utterance which
does not occur repeatedly is a formula'' (p. 33). In other words, ``phraseological sig-
ni®cance means something more complex and possibly less tangible than what any
computer algorithm can reveal'' (Howarth, 1998, p. 27).
1.8. Function-based accounts of formulaic sequences
Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992, pp. 60 ) oer a lengthy and detailed function-
based description of formulaic sequences in English as a target language for L2
learners. Their major divisions are:
3
Stubbs (1997) oers the following examples of formulaic sequences containing the word care: ``would
you care for a drink?; would you care to join us?; he was too tired to care; I couldn't care less; I don't
care!; I never cared much for...; she was past caring; who cares!; anyone who cares to listen; anything you
care to name; more than I care to think; the utmost care should be taken (not) to...; great care should be
taken (not) to...; treated with great care; soothe away cares; take care of yourself; tender loving care; that
takes care of that!; that's been taken care of; the cares of state; the problem will take care of itself; well
cared for; with studied care; without a care in the world; worldly cares'' (p. 156).
. Social interactions:
conversational maintenance, including:
Ð summoning (e.g. how are you; I didn't catch your name)
Ð clarifying (e.g. what did you mean by X?)
Ð shifting turns (e.g. could I say something here?)
conversational purpose, including:

Ð questioning (e.g. do you X?)
Ð refusing (e.g. I'm sorry but X)
Ð expressing sympathy (e.g. I'm very sorry to hear about X).
. Necessary topics [that is, ``lexical phrases [which] mark topics about which
learners are often asked'' (p. 63)], including:
autobiography (e.g. my name is __ )
time (e.g. what time X?; a __ ago)
location (e.g. what part of the __?)
weather (e.g. it's (very) __ today)
. Discourse devices:
temporal connectors (e.g. the day/week/month/year before/after __ )
exempli®ers (e.g. in other words; it's like X )
summarizers (e.g. to make a long story short; my point (here) is that X )
(Nattinger and DeCarrico, 1992, pp. 60±66).
This typology both gains and loses usefulness as a descriptive tool by having a
large number of sub- and sub-sub-types. However, this is probably inherent to the
nature of the phenomenon, for Aijmer's (1996) functionally-based categorisation
suers the same problem. Based on the London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English,
Aijmer's study is organised under the major headings of thanking, apologies and
requests and oers, each of which occupies an entire chapter that is multiply sub-
divided. Both of these surveys demonstrate the diculty of distilling data into a
streamlined model along the functional dimension at this level of abstraction. The
complexity is all the greater because of cross-functioning (Moon, 1992), ``the phe-
nomenon of an expression being used with a function other than and additional to
its primary one'' (pp. 21±22). Indeed, an expression carries extremely subtle mes-
sages to the hearer about the text and subtext, so that there may be `à retreat or
sheltering behind shared values which coerces agreement and pre-empts disagree-
ment'' (Moon, 1992, p. 24). However, Nattinger and DeCarrico's (1992) approach
does support both Lattey's (1986) proposal that idioms can usefully be presented
to learners via a pragmatic classi®cation, and Martins-Baltar's (1998) attempt to
create a dictionary of formulaic sequences that is organised not by keyword but by
illocutionary force.
1.9. Towards an inclusive picture
While parts of the ground have been laid for an inclusive and integrated explana-
tory model of formulaic language, no single account to date has oered more than
part of the story. Although there are many useful descriptive accounts, the variation
between them in both content and approach underlines the complexity of the phe-
nomenon. This complexity is clearly demonstrated by Wray's (1999) survey, to which
we now turn.
2. Where formulaic language ®ts in
2.1. The distribution of forms and functions
Wray (1999) reports an extensive survey of the literature on formulaic language in

the output of adult native speakers, L1 learners, child and adult L2 learners and
aphasics. She establishes the characteristics of each subtype of data, and then com-
pares the distributions. Her ®ndings can be represented as a set of observational
statements (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2 indicates that formulaic sequences are more than simply a linguistic unit. It
suggests that they are a tool that can be put to many uses. The distribution of the
uses appears to depend upon several independent factors, including maturational
level, language knowledge and personal interactional need. It follows that a useful
model of how formulaicity operates within our general linguistic and interactional
competence must accommodate both moment-by-moment and developmental
changes in the individual's processing and communicational agendas (Section 3).
2.2. The relationship between formulaic and creative language
Even though formulaicity was recognised as an important feature of normal lan-

guage by Saussure (1916/1966), Sapir (1921), Bloom®eld (1933), and Firth (1937/
1964, 1952±9/1968), (see Wray, 1998, in preparation b), the Chomskian tradition has
subsequently tenaciously challenged the idea that it plays anything more than a
peripheral role in language production and comprehension. The focus of the debate
is the nature of the lexicon. Chomsky's Standard Theory viewed the role of the lex-
icon as to ``specify just those properties that are idiosyncratic, that are not deter-
mined by linguistic rule'' (Chomsky, 1972, p. 39). One entailment of this is that the
lexicon contains only items which cannot be further divided in any semantically or
morphologically useful way (Mackay, 1979). Despite dissent regarding this de®ni-
tion of the lexicon (see Harlow and Vincent, 1988; Pinker, 1998) and evidence from
empirical psycholinguistics that at least frequent words are stored in polymorphemic
form (Harley, 1995, p. 287f ), it is central to X-bar theory and hence to Government
and Binding and Minimalism, where the lexicon ``lists the syntactically atomic ele-
ments'' (Webelhuth, 1995, p. 32). Early criticism of generative syntactic theory for
failing satisfactorily to accommodate idioms (e.g. Chafe, 1968; Weinreich, 1969;
Fig. 2. Summary of forms and functions of formulaic sequences (Wray, 1999, pp. 227±8).
Fraser, 1970; Makkai, 1972; Bolinger, 1976; Coulmas, 1979; Gazdar et al., 1985) has
led to the admission of irreducible formulas to the lexicon. Thus, the formulaic
sequences which are syntactically irregular or semantically opaque achieve the status
of ``big words'' (Ellis, 1996, p. 111). However, formulaic sequences which are of a
regular construction are excluded, for the lexicon cannot contain any items with a
regular internal structure. Rather, all sequences of words, and indeed of morphemes,
which can be assembled by rule, must be assembled by rule. A problematic corollary
is that all grammatical sequences are equally valid and equally likely to occur. This
is untenable in the face of our evident preference for some grammatical expressions
of an idea over others (Coulmas, 1979, p. 239). For example, I'm really glad you
could come could be rephrased as I'm in a very glad state as a result of your coming or
Your coming has brought me real gladness, but native speakers would tend to ®nd the
latter two versions less `natural' despite their grammaticality (Pawley and Syder,
1983). The solution to this problem is to allow for any string of words to be stored in
the lexicon. As its composition is eectively overlooked once it is treated like a single
unit, it is easy to see how archaisms can survive language change and how a metaphor
can become detached from its original literal meaning.
In recognising a central role for formulaic sequences, and allowing for their pres-
ence in the lexicon, it is not necessary to deny our capability for creativity, only to
relegate it from the position of sole strategy (Wray, 1992, pp. 17f ). Such a model of
dual processing is one way of accommodating the holistic and analytic features of
language. Meanwhile, other models of grammatical processing have found alter-
native ways of making formulaicity intrinsic. In recent years a range of cognitive±
functional approaches have emerged (for an overview see Tomasello, 1998) which
see grammar not as an autonomous system or module, but rather as largely deriving
from more general cognitive processing mechanisms (e.g. Langacker, 1987, 1991;
Bates and MacWhinney, 1989) and/or the communicative functions which it sub-
serves (e.g. Hopper, 1988, 1992; Halliday, 1994; Chafe, 1994; GivoÂn, 1995). A fur-
ther recent trend in linguistics is to incorporate into the lexicon much of what was
once thought to be grammatical (e.g. Bresnan, 1982; Pollard and Sag, 1994;
Chomsky, 1995) and this progressive lexicalisation of grammar ®nds its ultimate
expression in the approach known as Construction Grammar (Fillmore et al., 1988;
Goldberg, 1995) in which formulaicity is a central principle.
In the model presented below, neither creativity nor formulaicity is seen as exclu-
sive. The balance between these two capabilities has been discussed by Wray (1992),
Locke (1993) and Perkins (in press), concurring with Sinclair's (1991) proposal that
``[analyticity] could be imagined as a ... process which goes on in principle all the
time, but whose results are only intermittently called for'' (p. 114). Speci®cally, our
view is that the best deal in communicative language processing is achieved by the
establishment of a suitable balance between creative and holistic processes. The
advantage of the creative system is the freedom to produce or decode the unex-
pected. The advantage of the holistic system is economy of eort when dealing with
the expected (Wray, 1992, p. 19). Either system alone would be restrictive:
Without the rule-based system, language would be limited in repertoire, clicheÂd,

and, whilst suitable for certain types of interaction, lacking imagination and
novelty. In contrast, with only a rule-based system, language would sound
pedantic, unidiomatic and pedestrian. It would require full access to all of the
language faculties at all times, and there would be no `short cuts'. It would be a
much more accurate re¯ection of what Chomsky terms competence, but not a
re¯ection of communicative competence (Campbell and Wales, 1970; Hymes,
1972). (Wray, 1998, pp. 64f ).
3. Formulaicity and the individual
The model proposed here is an attempt to account for the uses to which the indi-
vidual puts formulaic language, and, speci®cally, what determines the choice, for
that person, of a holistic or an analytic processing strategy at any given moment.
Our starting place is the identi®cation of two fundamental determiners, namely, the
priorities of social interaction and the constraints of memory on our processing

capabilities. Both of these have been discussed in the literature over many years.
Here, however, we shall take this idea much further, both by oering an explanation
of the provenance of these strategies and also by demonstrating that they are two
sides of the same coin.
In order fully to appreciate the usefulness to the speaker and hearer of formulaic
sequences, we need ®rst to acknowledge the usefulness of the alternative, that is,
analytic language, because the model is built upon a fundamental relationship
between the two. There is no question but that we are capable of using our knowl-
edge of grammar creatively, and this has been the thrust of the Chomskian tradition
for the last 40 years (see Section 2). However, it is important to recognise the nature
of this `creativity', because, despite what has often been claimed, not all of it is
anathema to the restricted scope of formulaic language. An utterance like Mr Brown
will be sorry to have kept you waiting is novel in the sense that it is tailor-made to a
particular situation, but it is not novel in the sense that it conforms to a paradigm of
sequences that can be characterised by the formulaic sequence4 NP be-TENSE sorry
to keep-TENSE you waiting (Pawley and Syder, 1983, p. 210). In contrast, there is a
dierent order of novelty in a sequence like: bring on your ®reworks, which are a
mixed splendor of piston and of pistil; very well provided an instant may be ®xed so
that it will not rub, like any other pastel (e.e. cummings). Such poetic constructions
express complex and novel ideas through exploiting our knowledge of what the
grammar and lexicon can (and cannot) do. This distinction between types of crea-
tivity is equally important whether you view it as representative of two places on a
continuum (see Section 1.6) or as applications of two quite dierent types of lan-
guage knowledge (Wray, 1992). It is important because we know that we react dif-
ferently to the two types. The formerÐthe tailoring of utterances to our everyday
communicational needsÐwe cannot exist without, and in order to help us cope with
the unexpected we employ a range of pragmatic interpretational strategies to access
the most likely meaning of the incomprehensible (Grice, 1975; Sperber and Wilson,
1995). But `true' novelty, which plays with the boundaries of the grammar and lex-
icon, is poetic precisely because it pays little heed to conventionÐit is the exercise of
pure analysis, and consequently is dicult, challenging, and optional. The breaking
of convention even extends to the analysis and reworking of formulaic sequences
themselves, as in Fred was hit, the dust was bit in a song by C. O'Beirne. Formulaic
language cannot create this sort of poetic novelty (though it can sustain it, for lines of
poetry are often memorised and reproduced formulaically), but in the majority of our
linguistic interaction we do not need it. The use of a `purely' analytic strategy is a
4
Lawrence Bouton (1998) points out that some expressions which have no words in common at all still
have to be seen as formulaic at some level. In response to the question Did you enjoy the party? a person
might answer: Is the Pope a catholic? Does a one-legged duck swim round in circles? Does the sun rise in the
morning? etc. The formula is a semantic±pragmatic one, which allows the use of any question to which the
answer is both obvious and is the same as the answer to the original question. The link between this sort
of formula and the paradigms like NP be-TENSE sorry to keep-TENSE you waiting is clearly illustrated
by expressions like: He's one brick short of a load, She's one sandwich short of a picnic, He's one shelf short
of a bookcase, etc. to which one's full creativity can be applied, within the con®nes of the frame.
peripheral activity, and while we do indeed need an on-line grammar to deal with
novelty, it does not need to constitute a major element of normal language processing
(compare Widdowson, 1989, p. 135).
In our model, the use of formulaic language is viewed as central to processing, but
not to the exclusion of the full break-down and build-up of utterances from scratch
as and when required. It is all a question of emphasis. Accounts that place analyti-
city in the central role still have to accord formulaicity some place, in order to
account, at the very least, for idioms and interactional routines. In this model, the
focus is shifted, so that formulaicity characterises the normal approach to proces-
sing, with analyticity on hand to pick up any diculties, such as can be caused by a
speaker's thick accent or non-native grammar, background noise, dys¯uency,
poetry, word games, and so on.5 In short, this model holds that our baseline strategy
in everyday language processing, both production and comprehension, ``relies not
on the potential for the unexpected in a given utterance but upon the statistical like-
lihood of the expected'' (Wray, 1992, p. 19, original emphasis). Our grammatical
capabilities are on hand for emergencies, rather in the way that an engineer is on
standby at a factory, while the less knowledgeable but competent operators routi-
nely work the machines (Wray, 1992, p. 10). The way this works is described in
Section 3.2. First, however, we consider the socio-interactional triggers to the use of
formulaic sequences.
3.1. Formulaicity as a tool for social±interaction
Table 2 demonstrates that three central functions of social interaction can be

achieved using formulaic language. In saying this, it is not necessary to hold that
these functions cannot also be achieved using novel structures created from scratch
at the time of uttering, but it is clear from the examples that it is formulaic sequences
that we associate with these functions, and that they appear to achieve them very
well. We shall return later to the question of why this is the case. The three functions
relate to the speaker's manipulation of his/her world and the expression of his/her
individual and group identity. The ®rst re¯ects the fact that we are unable fully to
meet our own physical, emotional and cognitive needs, and therefore, at times have
to engage others to achieve outcomes that are beyond our own power. We use
commands, requests, bargain structures, etc., as the carriers of these directives, and a
range of markers (such as politeness markers) to frame them in a way that will
maximise the likelihood of the required event coming about. Just as meeting our
physical needs is essential for our survival, asserting our individual identity and our
membership of the group (our dierentness and our samenessÐcategories 2 and 3 in
Table 2) is central to ensuring that we neither become subsumed within, nor are
excluded from, the social networks which we feed o emotionally, and which directly
5
Wray (1992, pp. 80±95) points out that the majority of psycholinguistic experiments take the form of
word games or other tasks that expressly encourage an analytic approach to processing, so that we should
be wary of using the ®ndings from such experiments to make sweeping statements about the way proces-
sing takes place during interaction. See also Paradis (1997).
Table 2
Formulaic sequences as devices of social interaction
Function Eects Type Examples
Manipulation Satisfying physical, . Commands . Keep o the grass;

of others emotional and cognitive hand it over
needs . Requests . Could you repeat that please?
. Politeness markers . I wonder if you'd mind...
. Bargains, etc. . I'll give you __ for it
Asserting separate (a) Being taken seriously . Story-telling . You're never going to believe
identity this, but. . .
. Turn claimers and . Yes, but the thing is. . .;
holders, etc. Thank you very much
(in response to invitation
to speak); The ®rst thing that
you have to realize, of course,
in addressing this issue is. . .
(b) Separating from . Personal turns of . I wanna tell you a story
the crowd phrase. (Max Bygraves); You know
what I mean, Harry
(Frank Bruno)
Asserting group (a) Overall membership . Ìn' phrases . Praise the Lord!; as the
identity actress said to the bishop
. Group chants . We are the champions
. Institutionalized . Happy birthday; dearly
forms of words, etc. beloved, we are gathered
here today. . .
. Ritual . Our Father, which art
in Heaven. . .
(b) Place in hierarchy . Threats . I wouldn't do that if I
(arming and adjusting) were you
. Quotation . `Ì wouldn't want to
belong to any club that
would have me as a member''
(Groucho Marx)
. Forms of address . Your Highness
. Hedges, etc. . Well I'm not sure
(as a polite denial or refusal)
contribute to our success in ®nding a reproductive partner and rearing ospring. Thus
it is not surprising to ®nd that these three functions (though particularly the ®rst and
the third) characterise the messages contained in the holistic noise±gesture commu-
nication of primates (Reiss, 1989). Dunbar (1996) also highlights the centrality of
social interaction in both primate and human society. Wray (1998, in preparation b)
proposes that this parallel is indicative of human language having developed out of
a holistic protolanguage which was a phonetically-mediated larger and more subtle
version of an ancient primate system. If so, human protolanguage had no words and
no rules, just utterances associated with speci®c meanings, that achieved goals very
similar to those described in Table 2.
In Section 2 we saw that dierent types of speakers (children, non-natives, aph-

asics, adult natives) favour dierent types of formulaic language and use it for dif-
ferent things. Table 2 indicates why this should be. The child has a dierent agenda
from the adult, regarding its need to get people to do things and to express belong-
ing. A priority for the young child is getting its carers to provide food and comfort,
at a level unnecessary for an adult. The adult has more subtle needs and also has to
frame them dierently because of the hierarchical relationships that exist between
communicating adults. A two-year old child can use that's mine to claim her own
and other people's possessions, to request food, and demand space on a chair, but
an adult needs individual hedged formulas like Oh, is that yours?, I don't suppose
there's any more is there? and Room for a little one? to achieve the equivalent eects.
The words are dierent because the worlds of the child and adult are dierent, and
dierent things work. The adult L2 learner is in a dierent position again. Often
under-informed about the culturally appropriate way to express social relationships
and request actions from others, the drive to achieve the three socio-interactional
goals identi®ed in Table 2 will nevertheless direct the learner towards assembling a
particular set of formulaic sequences (Wray, in press b). Just as the literature attests
(Wray, 1999), in the absence of sucient knowledge of the language, these may turn
out to be a mix of target language sequences used appropriately and inappropri-
ately, and interlanguage ones coined to ®ll the gaps. Meanwhile, other phrases,
considered useful by a teacher and dutifully studied by the learner, may well not
become fully internalised unless and until they actually have a function for the
speaker in interaction (Wray, in press b, in preparation a). Finally, the aphasic has
yet another agenda of priorities. If physically disabled, one major change will be the
need to harness a range of formulaic sequences that request others to perform actions
previously achieved independently. Also important may be the re-establishment of a
strong sense of personal status and individual identity, at a time when many inter-
locutors may fail to see the person behind the symptoms. Thus, we should expect that
aphasics will employ formulaic language to achieve these functions. This is indeed the
case. Where an aphasic has a restricted range of available sequences, a greater
functional load is placed upon the ones which can be accessed, so that they convey a
number of meanings not normally associated with them (Van Lancker, 1987). All of
this oers an explanation for why an aphasic can produce some ¯uent strings whilst
experiencing diculties in producing novel utterances. Wray (1992, pp. 78 ) has
suggested that formal tests of aphasic language may miss the formulaic language,
because the nature of testing tends to cause a focus on analytic production and
comprehension (compare footnote 5 on page 13).
3.2. Formulaicity as a short-cut in processing
The second major function for formulaic language is that represented in Table 3.
It seems that we use prefabricated sequences as a way of minimising the eects of a
mismatch between our potential linguistic capabilities and our actual short term
memory capacity. As Becker (1975) points out, it makes little sense to produce from
scratch those word strings which we use many times, and we appear to use formulaic
sequences to reduce the amount of new processing to only that which has to be new.
Recent research (Raichle, 1998; McCrone, 1999) shows that once the brain is
familiar with a linguistic task, it is able to by-pass the processing route that was used
to learn it. As the top row of Table 3 illustrates, strings of words stored and
retrieved together will become associated with agreed meanings, which may be
entirely transparent (e.g. I have known_ for_ years in my capacity as_ ) or rather
more indirect (e.g. put the kettle on, will you? meaning please make me a hot drink).
Words may collocate to form phrases which could, in principle, mean several dif-
ferent things, but which are only normally interpreted in one agreed way (e.g. bullet
point); in some cases these may even become clicheÂs (e.g. the current economic cli-
mate). Thus, the bene®ts of prefabricated language in reducing processing eort can
account for why an individual or indeed a whole speech community comes to prefer
certain collocations and expressions of an idea over other equally permissible ones
(Pawley and Syder, 1983).
Table 3
Formulaic sequences as compensatory devices for memory limitations
Function Eects Type Examples
Processing Increased . Standard phrases . Put the kettle on, will you?;
short-cuts production (with or without I have known __ for __ years in
speed and/or gaps) my capacity as __
¯uency . Standard ideational . Personal computer; bullet
labels with agreed point; the current economic
meanings climate
Time-buyers . Vehicles for . Standard phrases . Make a decision; draw a
¯uency, with simple conclusion; a sea change; at
rhythm and meanings the end of the day (in the sense of `really');
emphasis one way and another
. Planning time . Fillers . If the truth be told; if you
without want my opinion; if you like
losing the turn . Turn-holders . And another thing; and let
me just say....
. Discourse shape . There are three points I want
markers to make. Firstly. . . Secondly. . .
Thirdly/Lastly. . .
. Repetitions of . (A: What's the capital of Peru?)
preceding input B: What's the capital of Peru?
(Lima isn't it?)
Manipulation Gaining and . Mnemonics . Thirty days hath September. . .;
of retaining access to Richard of York gave battle
information information in vain
otherwise unlikely . Lengthy texts . Shall I compare thee to a
to be remembered one is summer's day?
required to learn
. Rehearsal . Rehearsing a telephone number
while looking for a pen
Prefabricated time-buying sequences (the second row of Table 3) promote ¯uency

and protect the speaker's turn during planning. The pace and rhythm of an utter-
ance can be ®ne-tuned by using word-strings which are semantically equivalent to
single words (e.g. make a decision: decide; draw a conclusion: conclude/realise). Other
time-buyers are ®llers, turn-holders, discourse shape markers and repetitions, includ-
ing the ephemeral verbatim repetitions of a previous turn that Tannen (1989, p. 45)
observes in conversation and Bygate (1988) reports for L2 learners. The promotion of
¯uency is important for being heard out, and thus for being taken seriously as an
individual (see Section 3.1). The bottom row in Table 3 represents a somewhat dif-
ferent set, which relates to the use of language to extend memory. Mnemonics and
lengthy texts deliberately memorised or repeated oer us a means of retrieving
information that we might otherwise ®nd it dicult to recall.
Wray (1998, in preparation a) views the processing-related functions of formulaic
sequences as secondary, and of much later origin in evolutionary terms. They relate
to the nature of the grammar, which was late-appearing, and represent an attempt to
square an over-powerful analytic system that developed for reasons other than
communication, with the inadequate working memory which is its forum.
Again, it is easy to see how dierences in the processing constraints of dierent
types of speaker can contribute to an explanation of the variation outlined in Sec-
tion 2. Children appear to be constrained in language processing by a limited short
term memory capacity (Bates et al., 1988, pp. 122f; Elman, 1993; see also Cromer,
1991). Adult L2 learners, especially in the early stages, may have a somewhat cum-
bersome arrangement of language knowledge (e.g. R. Ellis, 1994, pp. 388; N. Ellis,
1996). Both types of learner can alleviate their problems by relying on formulaic
sequences where possible, as a way of bypassing the diculties of processing. This
permits the analytic processing to be focussed where it is most needed. Adult native
speakers, too, have processing limits, evident if they attempt to share their speech
production with other concomitant tasks, such as listening to the radio or TV (Jae,
1978, p. 55), performing a dicult manoeuvre on the road, or when distracted by an
extraneous event. There are even studies which show that aphasic-like language can
be induced in normal adults when put under stress (e.g. Kilborn 1991; Miyake et al.,
1994; Blackwell and Bates, 1995). That dys¯uency can also occur when we are sim-
ply trying to formulate and express a complex idea, or, as a hearer, trying to follow
one, suggests that the short-cuts aorded by formulaicity are no luxury, but are
crucial to managing an over-demanding on-line processing system. The need for
input to contain some measure of formulaicity is central to the integration of our
model, and it is to this that we now turn.
3.3. The common purpose of formulaicity
Sections 3.1 and 3.2 outline two apparently unrelated purposes for formulaic lan-
guage. On the one hand it is a means of ensuring the physical and social survival of
the individual through communication, and on the other it is a way of avoiding
processing overload. However, these two are in actual fact two sides of the same
coin. On the one hand, the driving force behind the processing short-cuts is ensuring
that the speaker's production is ¯uent and that information is available when
required: formulaic language by-passes, partially or entirely, depending on the form,
the generative system. The driving force behind the socio-interactional formulas is
ensuring that the speaker gets what he/she wants and is perceived as an individual
within the group. Signi®cantly, formulaic language is better suited to this than novel
language is, because a hearer is more likely to understand a message if it is in a form
he/she has heard before, and which he/she can process without recourse to full
analytic decoding.6 For example, army commands, which have to be obeyed
quickly, maximise their chance of being understood by being formulaic. Thus, we
see that, just as the processing short-cuts are a means of ensuring that the speaker
achieves successful production, so the socio-interactional formulae are a means of
ensuring that the hearer achieves successful comprehension (Fig. 3). This, however,
is not some kind of altruism on the speaker's part. The hearer's success is entirely in
the interests of the speaker because it is the speaker's way of achieving the socio-
interactional functions identi®ed in Table 2. In both cases, it is the speaker who
bene®ts from using formulaic sequences.
In Fig. 3, then, we see represented the production and comprehension bene®ts (to
the speaker) of using formulaic language. The point of intersection is the set of for-
mulaic sequences which are used to structure discourse, for these aid both produc-
tion and comprehension simultaneously.
The model thus far, then, accounts for the moment-by-moment strategy choices of
the individual, by characterising a consistent tension between a number of priorities:
. the need to decode successfully input that is in a novel (i.e. non-formulaic or

otherwise unexpected) format, including not only dys¯uent, heavily accented,
Fig. 3. The roles of formulaic language in bene®ting the speaker.
6
This means that the speaker's success depends on his/her ability to correctly anticipate the hearer's
knowledge of the language. Thus, rather than speakers all going their own way, constructing their own set
of preferred collocations and sequences, the uniformity of the language within a given speech community
is kept in check by the speakers' self-interest in matching their output to what the hearers will understand.
ungrammatical and poetic language but also straightforward novel proposi-

tions, especially out of context.
. the need to process quickly and accurately, without overloading the system.
. the need to ensure the message (whether primarily manipulative, social or
informational) has maximum chance of being successfully understood.
In normal interaction, the default setting is formulaicity, both for production and
for comprehension. This enables the individual to focus his/her analytic faculties
away from the linguistic `packaging' and onto the production and evaluation of
propositions, the updating of contextual information and the making of predictions
about what is going to happen next (Wray, 1992). Focus can switch to an utterance
itself if there is any irregularity or breakdown in comprehension or production. This
is often marked by dys¯uency in the speaker and/or by a hearer failing at ®rst to
decode it, until suitable attention is brought to bear upon it.
What the model has not oered up to this point is any speci®c account of the
developmental dimension, beyond the observation that the child's interactional
agenda changes over time. What is needed is an explanation for how, if formulaic
language is so generally successful in meeting the interactional needs of the indivi-
dual, the analytic grammar gets a chance to develop at all. In the next section, we
oer such an explanation.
3.4. Formulaicity as a feature of development
The developmental aspect of the model presented here enables us to account for
the rather curious appearance, disappearance, and reappearance of formulaic
sequences during language acquisition (Perkins, in press). The acquisitional process
begins with a heavy reliance on formulaic language. Yet, despite the fact that the
target adult language is also highly formulaic, the child's use and recognition of
formulas actually wanes over several years (Perkins, 1983; Tomasello, 1992), with an
adult-like appreciation of idiom, for example, not fully established until adolescence
(e.g. Nippold and Martin, 1989; Gibbs, 1991).
We build here upon Locke's (1993, 1995) account of early language acquisition.
Locke reconciles the gestalt and analytic strategies in the child's language proces-
sing, described at length by Peters (1977, 1983), Nelson (1981), Lieven et al. (1992)
and others, and summarised by Wray (1999) by viewing them as evidence for the
existence of separate but complementary neural mechanisms which he calls `specia-
lization in social cognition' (SSC) and `grammatical analysis module' (GAM). The
SSC, which operates initially in response to social stimulation, identi®es features of
the environment which are seen as socially important and thus motivates the iden-
ti®cation, selection and storage of units meaningful within the linguistic environ-
ment (phase 1, Fig. 4). Any internal structure that such units may possess is
irrelevant to the SSC which in any case is presumably unable to process it. The
GAM, which begins to operate between 20 and 30 months (phase 2), depending on the
prior success of the SSC in acquiring a requisite number and variety of linguistic
items, is analogous to Chomsky's innate Universal Grammar and is responsible for
Fig. 4. Relative proportions of holistic and analytic involvement in language processing from birth to
adulthood (schematic representation).
identifying the constituent structure of the items acquired via the SSC. The SSC is
located by Locke in the right cerebral hemisphere and the GAM in the left.7
Locke (1997) brie¯y considers the development of communication after the tran-
sition from what we term phase 1±2, that is, after the SSC has acquired a suciently
large store of formulas to trigger the activation of the GAM. He proposes a further
phase of ìntegration and elaboration' in which the SSC and GAM interact and
which is concomitant with the expansion of the lexicon and the automatization of
syntactic and phonological processing. Since he provides no details of this phase,
however, we will sketch out a possible scenario (phase 3) consistent with the litera-
ture on the subject. Its seems likely that at some point the wholesale generation of
utterances from scratch using the grammar will become no longer ecient or eco-
nomical. If the same, or similar, groups of elements are being continually encoun-
tered and/or produced it will make good economical sense to store them as separate
items (compare `fusion', Peters, 1983). This places an obvious burden on memory,
though not an excessive one (Bolinger, 1976). Thus, in phase 3, the SSC will fre-
quently override the GAM in the case of frequently occurring items with a resultant
gain in automaticity. The storage site for such items is presumably the right hemi-
sphere, where Locke locates the SSC.8
The GAM does not simply subserve the SSC, however, but still plays an active
role in identifying commonalities among formulas and setting up numerous (though
less numerous than the total number of individual formulaic sequences) semi-
productive `frames'. The durability of a given formula or frame will depend on its
frequency of use and its pragmatic and sociocultural salience. Thus the equilibrium
of the SSC±GAM amalgam will be constantly changing. A fully equilibrated system
7
The separation may well not be as discrete as this suggests. In a report of research on children with
early hemisphere damage, Eisele and Aram (1995) note ``the results of these studies suggest that neural
systems mediating the production of ®rst words may, during early language development, depend to a
greater extent on the normal functioning of both the left and right hemisphere'' (p. 674). However, see
also the general contextualisation provided by Bates et al. (1988, p. 63).
8
This is almost certainly an oversimpli®cation. The consensus in recent research on neurolinguistics is
that ``normal language processing seems to require the integration of the functions of both the right and
left hemispheres'' (Blumstein 1988, p. 231). See also Wray (1992) and footnote 7.
may not appear until late childhood or adolescence (phase 4). Evidence for this comes
from studies of idiom comprehension (for a review see Perkins, 1999) and a number of
production phenomena in developmental language disorders (Locke, 1994).
We assume, then, the early stages of the process (phases 1 and 2) to be accounted
for by Locke's (1993, 1997) theory, whereby a specialization in social cognition,
in¯uenced by a theory of mind, identi®es, selects and stores a sucient and requisite
number of salient formulaic linguistic items to activate a speci®cally language-
oriented analytical mechanism which, through identifying commonalities among the
stored formulas, begins the process of creating a generative grammar for the lan-
guage of the child's environment somewhere between 20 and 30 months of age. The
process continues until roughly the age of 8, and this stage of development is
marked by a preference for analytic over formulaic language processing. During the
subsequent period (phase 3), which lasts until adulthood, the organization of the
language system becomes progressively more formulaic and the primary role of the
analytical mechanism becomes that of constantly readjusting the formulaic con-
tinuum by deciding whether a given item is unique, or else shares sucient proper-
ties in common with other items to justify subsequent collapsing and re-storage as a
single, partly productive formulaic frame. During this phase, language production
increasingly becomes a top-down process of formula blending as opposed to a bot-
tom-up process of combining single lexical items in accordance with the speci®cation
of the grammar. At the same time, language comprehension becomes increasingly a
top-down pragmatically driven process of formulaic `macro-processing', with the
bottom-up grammatical `microprocessing' mechanism only being used as a default in
cases where macroprocessing fails to yield a suciently relevant9 interpretation
(compare Wray, 1992) (this notwithstanding the fact that both processing modes are
automatically and simultaneously available). In both production and comprehension,
however, there is considerable scope for variation in the balance between holistic
and analytic processing as a result of individual sociocognitive and sociocultural
dierences.
This developmental account is further strengthened by a signi®cant observation
regarding the nature of the child's micro-environment, as determined by its more
general pattern of mental and physical development. As phase 1 in Fig. 4 suggests,
re¯ecting Locke's model, the child's earliest goal is one of social integration and the
meeting of its physical needs. This requires the accumulation of a set of formulaic
sequences that successfully achieve that end (compare Halliday, 1974). What is less
obvious, however, is the extent to which the child's communicative needs then
remain essentially static, at precisely the time when the GAM is dominant. This is
what the model predicts must happen, but, in consideration of the wealth of worldly
experiences which the child gains during this period, it is easy to overlook the fact
that for a substantial period of time, the child is largely cushioned from the need to
develop an additional interactional repertoire, because it has an extremely limited
set of social roles (Gross, 1996, p. 525). During the time when it is most involved in
learning to label, and is becoming adept at slotting open class items into formulaic
9
In the sense of Sperber and Wilson (1995).
frames, it exists within a socio-interactional bubble. It is a well-recognised feature of

parenthood that, in the early years, the child±adult and adult±child routines are the
same, wherever you are. The child's focus is on its physical needs and its relationship
with its carers, so the verbal interactions are largely constant whether at home, in a
restaurant, at the zoo or a royal garden party. Certainly, referential utterances will
dier, but a young child is both protected from, and largely impervious to, any need
to interact with anyone other than its carers, let alone being party to any knowledge
of how to do so appropriately.10 Indeed, a child so rarely encounters a genuinely
new interactional environment (usually one in which the carers are not able to act as
an intermediary), that it often has to be speci®cally taught the formulaic sequences
that go with it, such as Thank you for having me when leaving a friend's house
(compare Ely and Gleason, 1995). Where new environments are encountered, and a
new social role has to be adopted, such as the ®rst days at nursery or school or the
®rst time the child buys something in a shop, the eect can be traumatic, with the
child literally lost for words. However, it is not only children who tend to accumu-
late interactional formulaic sequences on a needs only basis, and it is not uncommon
for an adult to be similarly ¯oored for what to say when ®rst encountering a
bereaved friend, a job interview panel or a visiting dignitary. What all of this sug-
gests is that the child is aorded the luxury of developing the analytic grammar by
being protected, during these vital years, from the need to accumulate the wide
range of formulaic sequences that it will ultimately need in order to function as a
normal social adult. Meanwhile, the development of the child's analytic knowledge
of language is itself fuelled by its general cognitive development (Elman, 1993;
Locke, 1993), and in particular the prioritisation of learning about the world.
4. Making sense of the dierences
The model presented in this paper aims to explain the basis of observed variation
between the forms and functions of formulaic sequences in dierent types of lin-
guistic data. It does so by identifying a complex dynamic according to which the
individual's choice of a formulaic sequence at any one time is determined by several
factors, including:
. his/her overall knowledge of the language and/or stage of cognitive development

. his/her purpose in speaking, including the intended eect on the hearer
. the complexity and novelty of the idea
. the interactional and discourse context
. competition from concomitant activities
10
Children's make-believe games indicate that they do pick up a certain amount of àppropriate' talk
from observation, but their failure automatically to know what to say, when ®rst called upon to interact in
a situation they may have been a passive observer in many times, indicates that this does not always
happen.
The model oers itself to critical evaluation on many fronts and will no doubt
evolve in the face of challenges from many kinds of data, both of the type discussed
here and others. In particular, the occurrence of formulaic language in the speech of
Alzheimer's patients and people with autism raises some interesting issues. As
regards the latter, a standard characterisation of autism is the absence of social-
interactional skills (e.g. Prizant, 1983, p. 296), which we might expect to lead to
highly unformulaic language. However, Prizant suggests that ``the [formulaic] lan-
guage patterns of autistic persons ... may re¯ect an inability to segment others'
utterances and realise their internal structure'' (p. 303), in which case, the for-
mulaicity is not socio-interactionally motivated but rather is a `Hobson's choice'
solution to processing constraints.
A further challenge comes from second language acquisition studies, where there
are some indications (e.g. Hanania and Gradman, 1977; Schmidt, 1983; Rehbein,
1987; Bolander, 1989), that adults, both classroom taught and learning natur-
alistically, use formulaic sequences in the early stages, but ®nd them a major sticking
point in the advanced stages (Pawley and Syder, 1983). This is reminiscent of the
pattern described for children in Section 3.4, yet if the similarity is more than coin-
cidental, it is clearly problematic for our proposal that, in children, the pattern is
motivated by social and cognitive development. At this stage it is not easy to be sure
if this is a genuine problem for the model, but there are some indications that it is
not. First, adult learners, both naturalistic and classroom-based, also need to accu-
mulate a small set of survival phrases that achieve basic socio-interactional func-
tions. Like children, once they have these, they move into a period of relative
interactional stability. This is most true of classroom learners, but evidence from
studies of naturalistic learners indicates that, although they are certainly not socially
bueredÐthat is, they can potentially ®nd themselves in any situation that a native
speaker wouldÐthey may actually buer themselves in at least two ways. One is by
using their non-nativeness as an excuse to withdraw from, or under-communicate in,
certain situations (Ellis, 1994, pp. 82 ) something which they can signal by using a
fused non-native formula (cf. Rampton, 1987). The other is by speci®cally reducing
their physical and social needs to match their existing repertoire, either permanently
(e.g. Rehbein, 1987) or until they are ready to cope (e.g. Schmidt, 1983). As to their
later achievements, Pawley and Syder (1983) point out that few non-native speakers
ever fully accumulate the native repertoire of formulaic sequences. Rather, they tend
to over-generate, producing grammatical utterances that are simply not idiomatic.
Thus, it seems that adult second language learners can get caught in phase 2 or 3.
We can explain this, perhaps, in terms of the fact that, without the child's liberty to
break the social norms of adult interaction, adult second language speakers tend to
®nd themselves plunged rather sooner, in terms of the acquisition of the language,
into new interactional situations that are beyond their grammatical competence and
linguistic experience. The result is the need to ®nd suitable utterances and, in lieu of
sucient exposure to the native-like ones, the tendency to make a best guess. In this
case it may not be so much a question that a certain unidiomatic sequence becomes
fused and is used for ever more by that speaker, as that a wider range of options
seems familiar and plausible, than would to a native speaker. After all, one of the
eects of having a preferred way of saying something is that it not only promotes the
frequency of that sequence but also reduces to virtually zero the frequency of other
equally grammatical alternatives (Langacker, 1991). In short, the pattern of for-
mulaic utterances in second language learners may be more supportive to the model
than it ®rst seems.
The ®nal judgment of the resilience of this model must, as always, lie with the
weight of evidence over time. What we have presented here is, we believe, the best
integrated account to date of the pattern of formulaic sequences across data types,
combining clear, testable premises and predictions with a framework that is ¯exible
enough to accommodate individual and group variation across the whole range of
communciational environments.
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Language & Communication 20 (2000) 1±28

The functions of formulaic language:

1.1. The nature of formulaic language

`Formulaicity' and `formulaic sequence' will be used in this paper to describe, in a

a sequence, continuous or discontinous, of words or other meaning elements,

1.2. Clearing the ground

A considerable number of accounts of formulaic language exist, focussing on

Amalgams Gambits Preassembled speech

1.3. Form-based taxonomies

Many have oered descriptions and/or categorizations of formulaic sequences in

1.4. Semantic irregularity

1.5. Syntactic irregularity

Syntactic irregularity comes in various forms. One is a restriction on the normal

1.6. Continua of formulaicity

Several have followed Bolinger (1976) in favouring a categorisation of formulaic

. functional expressions (sequences with a discourse role such as openers, prov-

Fig. 1. Van Lancker's continuum (from Van Lancker, 1987, p. 56).

All of these baseline categories span a continuum from non-idiomatic to idio-

1.7. Focus on word frequency

There is undoubtedly some sort of relationship between frequency and for-

1.8. Function-based accounts of formulaic sequences

 conversational purpose, including:

1.9. Towards an inclusive picture

2. Where formulaic language ®ts in

2.1. The distribution of forms and functions

Wray (1999) reports an extensive survey of the literature on formulaic language in

2.2. The relationship between formulaic and creative language

Even though formulaicity was recognised as an important feature of normal lan-

Without the rule-based system, language would be limited in repertoire, clicheÂd,

3. Formulaicity and the individual

priorities of social interaction and the constraints of memory on our processing

3.1. Formulaicity as a tool for social±interaction

Table 2 demonstrates that three central functions of social interaction can be

Function Eects Type Examples

Manipulation Satisfying physical, . Commands . Keep o the grass;

In Section 2 we saw that dierent types of speakers (children, non-natives, aph-

3.2. Formulaicity as a short-cut in processing

Function Eects Type Examples

Prefabricated time-buying sequences (the second row of Table 3) promote ¯uency

3.3. The common purpose of formulaicity

. the need to decode successfully input that is in a novel (i.e. non-formulaic or

Fig. 3. The roles of formulaic language in bene®ting the speaker.

ungrammatical and poetic language but also straightforward novel proposi-

3.4. Formulaicity as a feature of development

frames, it exists within a socio-interactional bubble. It is a well-recognised feature of

4. Making sense of the dierences

. his/her overall knowledge of the language and/or stage of cognitive development

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Many have oered descriptions and/or categorizations of formulaic sequences in

conversational purpose, including:

Function Eects Type Examples

Manipulation Satisfying physical, . Commands . Keep o the grass;

In Section 2 we saw that dierent types of speakers (children, non-natives, aph-

Function Eects Type Examples

4. Making sense of the dierences