Chunking in ELF: Expressions for managing interaction

This paper adopts a linear perspective on analyzing language, based on Sinclair and Mauranen's Linear Unit Grammar (John Benjamins, 2006), and complemented with insights on recurrent patterning discernible in corpus data. The focus is on elements of managing interaction and the way ELF speakers utilize them in co-constructing successful discourse. Interactive phraseological patterns range from very short and fixed expressions up to variable units of around five words; the longer and more variable patterns are more susceptible to unconventional forms. ELF speech manifests approximations of conventional forms. These tend to be close enough to the target to ensure comprehensibility, but at the same time they deviate from conventions with a measure of regularity which suggests emergent patterning rather than random errors.