Thesis (M.A.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Arts - Department of English

Do native speakers say men and women, and women and men interchangeably? Is the answer the same in the spoken and academic genres? The main topic of this study is binomials. A binomial is a category of formulaic sequences that coordinates two words of the same word class. Lexicographers and linguists paid little attention to binomials, and researchers focused almost only on binomial constraints neglecting the influence of genre, coordinator, and word class on binomial (ir)reversibility, the main topic of this study. Based on the analysis of 200 binomials, extracted from COCA, and attempting a linguistic analysis approach, the study shows that genre, and coordinator influence binomial (ir)reversibility to a considerable degree, and word class impacts it, yet to a smaller degree. This leads to two broader conclusions: First, information about binomial (ir)reversibility in both the spoken and academic genres is of importance for the non-native speaker to be aware of the natural order of binomial constituents in both genres. There is, thus, a need for a specialized dictionary for binomials. Second, binomials behave differently according to coordinators, and, to a slight degree, according to word classes. Finally, the study shows that the academic genre, unexpectedly, demonstrates more binomial order flexibility than the spoken

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