Linear Unit Grammar: Integrating Speech and Writing

Linear Unit Grammar (LUG), as described in this book of the same title, is an attempt to overcome the limitations of hierarchical structures when describing utterances, especially spoken ones. Instead of the all so familiar tree diagrams, utterances are viewed as a linear sequence of chunks, phraseological units that perform certain functions. LUG follows the work by Brazil (1995), which introduced a linear finite state model for the analysis of spoken English, and also by Hunston and Francis (2000) on pattern grammar, which postulates that words are typically embedded in contexts (described as grammatical patterns).