lexical chunk

What are lexical chunks?

Lexical chunks are multi-word units of language. Some never change (like Good morning!) while others allow some substitution to convey different meaning (like Please pass the ___.) In The A- Z of ELT, Scott Thornbury suggests that lexical chunks or formulaic language might provide the ‘raw material’ for language acquisition. That is, “sequences that are first acquired as unanalyzed chunks (such as I don’t know) may be later analyzed into their component parts. They are then capable of generating original phrases, such as I don’t understand, You don’t know, I know …, etc” (pp.85-86).

Lexical chunk

 A lexical chunk is a group of words that are commonly found together. Lexical chunks include collocations but these usually just involve content words, not grammar.

Example

In this dialogue there are five possible chunks:

 - Did you stay long at the party?

 - No, I got out of there as soon as they ran out of food.

Lexical chunks are collections of words which occur together – and the collection operates more or less as a unit of meaning, e.g. ‘If I were you...’, ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ ‘D’you fancy...’, ‘out of the ordinary’) Fixed lexical phrases are those where you can’t change any of the words in them and still hope to use the phrase, (e.g. ‘sick as a parrott’ in British English), whereas in semi-fixed lexical phrases we can change some of the words and still use the phrase (e.g. ‘It’s amazing/extraordinary how...’See you later/this afternoon/tomorrow’)