[Corpora-List] how many formulaic sequences can you find?

[John Mckenny]

Dear corpora members
I would be grateful for your opinion about the number of formulaic sequences
or MWUs contained in this short argumentative essay written by a Portuguese
trainee teacher. It would be useful if you could use the definition of
formulaic sequence (FS) from Alison Wray's book, Formulaic Language and the
Lexicon, Cambridge University Press:
a sequence, continuous or discontinuous, of words or other elements, which
is, or appears to be, prefabricated: that is, stored and retrieved whole
from memory at the time of use, rather than being subject to generation or
analysis by the language grammar. 
(Wray, 2002:9).
 If you work with a different definition, could you please specify it.
Please copy the essay into a Word document and mark the FSs using either
underlining, brackets, italics, or bold. For embedding an FS within another
FS, you could use a combination of markers.  If you have insufficient time
to devote to this exercise your estimate of the number of FSs would still be
useful.  Finally could you state whether you are a native- (NS) or
non-native 
(NNS) speaker. Send your answer to me and I'll collate the results for a
summary. 
All respondents' names will be placed in a hat and the first one drawn will
be sent the corpus linguistics (or other) book of their choice up to £30 (or
42 EUR)  value.
Best wishes
John McKenny

Senior Lecturer
English Language Centre
Lipman Building 116
Northumbria University
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST
E-mail     john.mckenny at unn.ac.uk <mailto:john.mckenny at unn.ac.uk>






ESSAY TITLE:  Money is the root of all evil

My initial reaction to this question is that I agree that nowadays money is
obviously the root of all evil, and I believe that almost daily people give
priority to make money instead of moral values. It is important to state
that money become an obsession to many people. A person should earn money
for his family , children, society, among others. However many people earn
money through fake means, and in many cases this leads them towards
greediness. Is should be noted that the greed for money can ended up by many
anti-social activities like stealing, murder, black-marketing, bribing,
among many others.
It is important to state that money is made (before is can be looted or
mooched) by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his
ability. We have to note that an honest man is one who knows that he cannot
consume more than he has produced. Furthermore, it is necessary to point out
the money will not by intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the
coward, or respect the incompetent.  Nowadays we see that people are not
loving and having respect for each other, they prefer to have love and
affection towards money and do not care if there are people starving and
dying in many poor countries only because they do not have money to eat and
survive. It also should be noted that it is true that the world is empty of
rich men and women, however they are poor spiritually, and there is one fact
in catholic religion that seems to me very important, because due to this
religion, we should be happy in whatever station of life we find ourselves.
For instance Mother Theresa until she die , she did not have any kind of
possessions , she live among the poor, helping them, she did the possible
and impossible  to help the others, all her life was in a total dedication
to the others. It is not admirable? She did not have money, however I am
sure that she was happier than many rich people in the world. Conversely,
money can be used for good. As we all know, money is necessary to invest in
technology, which can be helpful especially 
in the development in medicine which can help to prevent and cure so many
diseases and health problems. We have to note that money can help many
things, the question is how far we can go to get money. People have to win
money by their honest work and effort, on the other hand, the extreme
ambition of  money can led to many social problems like robbery, kidnaps,
drug trafficking, among others. Even in situations with lack of money no one
of these illegal activities are acceptable. To conclude, people should not
live too attach with money, because the obsessive desire of money can led to
many social problems. We should be more concern to the moral values, with
love and respect to the others.

 


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