Over the last twenty years phraseology has become an important field of pure and applied research in Western European and North American linguistics. In this book the world's leading specialists examine the crucial role played by ready-made word-combinations in language acquisition and adult language use.

After a wide-ranging introduction, the book presents full, critical accounts of the main theoretical approaches, analyses the corpus data and phrase typology, and finally considers the application of phraseology to associated disciplines including lexicography, language learning, stylistics, and computational analysis. This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the subject to be published in English.