Linked Noun Groups

Book excerpt: This book provides a corpus-led analysis of multi-word units (MWUs) in English, specifically fixed pairs of nouns which are linked by a conjunction, such as 'mum and dad', 'bride and groom' and 'law and order'. Crucially, the occurrence pattern of such pairs is dependent on genre, and this book aims to document the structural distribution of some key Linked Noun Groups (LNGs). The author looks at the usage patterns found in a range of poetry and fiction dating from the 17th to 20th century, and also highlights the important role such binomials play in academic English, while acknowledging that they are far less common in casual spoken English. His findings will be highly relevant to students and scholars working in language teaching, stylistics, and language technology (including AI).