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

[John F. Sowa]

That definition, as stated, seems to allow only
verbatim repetitions of fixed phrases:

 > 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).

The literature on formulaic elements in oral poetry
normally allows substitution of words with the same
prosodic patterns and the same syntactic category.

Allowing substitutions gives you a template-style of
grammar, which is much richer than fixed phrases, yet
more restricted than even a finite-state grammar.

John Sowa