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Chapter 1 - Formularity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2024

Chiara Bozzone
Affiliation:
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
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Summary

Formularity, or the poet’s reliance on prefabricated linguistic features in the composition of his verses, has been the most debated feature of Oral-Formulaic Theory. This chapter reviews the history of Homeric formularity (Part 1), while introducing new key insights from the fields of linguistics (esp. usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, and language acquisition studies) and the cognitive sciences (Parts 2-5). Parts 2-3 argue that formularity is a general feature of human language and cognition. Homer’s formularity is quantitatively notable, however, in that it involves sequences that are particularly long when compared to repeated sequences in corpora of both contemporary written or spoken English and ancient prose and hexameter authors. This is interpreted as a sign of Homer’s extreme mastery of his medium, which was arguably necessitated by the oral-improvisational nature of the task. Part 4 develops a new theory of Homeric formularity, borrowing insights from connectionism, lexical priming, and construction grammar, and introduces fine-grained distinctions between conceptual associations, collocations, constructions, metrical constructions and structural formulas.

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Homer's Living Language
Formularity, Dialect, and Creativity in Oral-Traditional Poetry
, pp. 5 - 63
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Formularity
  • Chiara Bozzone, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book: Homer's Living Language
  • Online publication: 11 April 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009067157.002
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  • Formularity
  • Chiara Bozzone, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book: Homer's Living Language
  • Online publication: 11 April 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009067157.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Formularity
  • Chiara Bozzone, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
  • Book: Homer's Living Language
  • Online publication: 11 April 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009067157.002
Available formats
×