Over the last twenty years, phraseology has become a major field of pure and applied research in Western European and North American linguistics. This book is made up of authoritative contributions from leading specialists who examine the increasingly crucial role played by ready-madeword-combinations in language acquisition and adult language use. After a wide-ranging introduction by the editor, the book introduces the main theoretical approaches, analyses the corpus data and phrase typology, and finally considers the application of phraseology to associated disciplinesincluding lexicography, language learning, stylistics, and computational analysis. This book is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the subject to be published in English.Series Editors: Richard W. Bailey, Noel Osselton, and Gabriele Stein;Oxford Studies in Lexicography and Lexicology provides a forum for the publication of substantial scholarly works on all issues of interest to lexicographers, lexicologists, and dictionary users. It is concerned with the theory and history of lexicography, lexicological theory, and related topicssuch as terminology, and computer applications in lexicography. It focuses attention too on the purposes for which dictionaries are compiled, on their uses, and on their reception and role in society today and in the past.