Abstract
A radically new lexical, corpus-driven approach to linguistic theory and the practical analysis of language. The book argues that a natural langauge consists, basically, of a number of regular clause patterns ("norms"), in which paradigm sets of lexical items map into clause roles or "arguments", given normal valency structure.
The picture is complicated because every pattern allows certain alternations, and every aspect of normal usage can be "exploited" creatively by language users. The book offers a typology of linguistic exploitations.