93. Where Does Structure Come into Play?

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Here’s another challenging myth which, unfortunately for most students, hovered over [English] language teaching since the 1980s.

The importance of vocabulary cannot be denied. Still, the very notion of vocabulary sends us to the dictionary – such a useful tool when it comes to looking up meanings (and translations). But wait: take any ‘word’ – let’s call it a lexical unit – and see if it functions in isolation, if it helps you create an utterance. Any good dictionary will give you examples of that lexical unit’s environment and so it will make you see that lexis without structure as a support for phonological realization will take you nowhere.

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If language is used and useful for communication, wouldn’t it be natural to ask ‘how much lexis and how much structure’ is necessary for someone to boast of good language skills? Yes and no. Honestly, it would be almost indecent to think about a person’s head (in this case the person is a student of English) as if it were a bowl in which to mix ingredients. But wait, there’s more: such ingredients as lexis and grammar must not be mixed, or blended, they must be combined. It is the combinatorial possibilities of the language that leaves us a faint hope of creating our discourse, for – in fact – languages have already been created and, like all living languages, they are constantly renewed, enriched, and transformed through use by their speakers, who have inherited it and are passing it on to their children.Well then, where does vocabulary stop its influence and where does the fearful <grammar> start manifesting?

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I’m looking at one of those areas where finding the fine line between ‘lexis’ and ‘grammar’ is almost impossible. They have been generally known as collocations, and they range from a combination of two words which generally go together to fully formed sentences (why? – because the speakers of the language found the combination useful and, by usage, it has become conventionalized, that is, a lexical unit).

The example is taken from Ronald Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar (2008) and, do believe me, it gives food for thought indeed.

When someone had the inspiration to combine moon with night so as to express the idea that that night there was no (visible) moon in the sky, the combination a moonless night was created. A good template it was, for other, similar combinations appeared:

A childless couple

A hopeless situation

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A treeless plain

A fruitless search

A cordless phone

What I mean by conventionalized lexical units in this case is that one cannot manifest his or her free will in order to come up with a combination like *a giraffeless zoo. It would be worthy of poetry, though. The conclusion is obvious: you have to accept them as they are and build fluency. It is practically impossible to build fluency without using conventionalized lexical units.