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Notes
1. For example, we pronounce every, a very high-frequency word, as two syllables, /evri/ (deleting the schwa in the middle), and low-frequency words like cursory, mammary, and summery as three syllables (with both the schwa and a syllabic /r/), while the pronunciation of words of intermediate frequency, such as memory, nursery, salary, and summary, varies between two or three syllables, all of which suggests that we store words (and other patterns) according to their frequencies (Bybee, Citation2007: 201–2).
2. There is also a countervailing tendency, particularly in writing, which involves not repeating constructions one has just used. Gunter Rohdenburg (Citation2003: 236) describes this as a ‘widespread (and presumably universal) tendency’, and calls it the ‘horror aequi principle’. ‘Universal’ is probably overstated, but attested examples in English include the (semantically unmotivated) avoidance of adjacent infinitival and gerundial complements (Vosberg, Citation2003) and consecutive s-genitives and of-genitives (Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi, Citation2007). In formal writing in Romance languages, avoidance of repetition even extends to proper names, which are replaced by elegant variations.
3. Contrary to variationist sociolinguistic accounts, some cognitive linguists deny that minute differences in linguistic form necessarily reflect different experiences, correspond to different meanings or carry different communicative intentions. For example William Croft (Citation2009: 418) argues that ‘there is a fundamental indeterminacy of construal in conversation’ because ‘each language user has her own unique, if partly shared, history of language use’. Consequently, language users ‘have been exposed to multiple variant verbalizations for a particular meaning’. These variants might – but only might – ‘come to be construed as variants of a sociolinguistic variable’, indexed for different groups of speakers, but they could equally remain arbitrarily chosen ‘alternative ways of saying the same thing’ (417).
4. The same question arises in relation to the coining of new words by way of conventionalised word-formation schemas – is this individual creativity or merely morphological productivity (MacKenzie, Citation2014)?
5. Although the expression ‘literary fiction’ may exist in other languages, its common use in English is relatively recent and, arguably, has been accompanied by the growth in the role of literary prizes as marketing tools. See, for example, Edmondson (Citation2014).
6. The inclusion here of an essay on the topic of the Oulipians was unfortunately frustrated by ill health. For further discussion of digital writing, see Markuu Eskelinen (Citation2012), N. Katherine Hayles (Citation2008), and the special issue of EJES 11.2 (2007), dedicated to ‘New Textualities’. Approaches to video games vary. Marie-Laure Ryan (Citation2006) has essayed a fairly traditionally narratological approach, whereas others have focused more on the interactive qualities of digital media, following Espen J. Aarseth’s (Citation1997) pioneering case for a ludological approach. Jasper Juul Citation(2005) offers an interesting discussion of the interaction of rules and fictional creativity. While this remains a fast-moving field, a fairly up-to-date overview can be gathered from the Reader edited by Bernard Perron and Mark J. P. Wolf (Citation2009). Indications of future directions may be gleaned from the annual International Conference Series in Games and Literary Theory inaugurated in 2013.