Lexical chunks chunks are 'ready to go', and require little or no
Although vocabulary has conventionally been additional processing.
conceptualized as individual words, it has now Some lexical chunks have 'slots' which can take become clear that much of lexis consists of different words according to the situation, provid- sequences of words which operate as single ing a scaffold for quick, but flexible, language use. units. Traditional approaches have long dealt For example, ' (person) thinks nothing of
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article/54/4/400/835304 by guest on 16 June 2022