“Ten Fat Sausages”: Poetic Sense Units, Vocabulary Chunks, and Language Acquisition in Young Learners

Abstract

Exploring affinities between poetic sense units and multiword units, or chunks, this paper argues that poetic use of language exploits linguistic motivation in order to impose ‘poetic motivation’ on language, thus facilitating vocabulary learning in young language learners. Taking a lexical approach to vocabulary learning and using insight from cognitive linguistics, the paper argues first that vocabulary learning depends on co-text, and secondly that processing the way co-text affects meaning will increase learning. Such processing usually involves exploring the various forms of ‘glue’ that hold co-text together, i.e. linguistic motivation, and resembles what commonly passes for poetic analysis, relying as it does on semantic relations, such as metaphor and etymology, and formal relations, such as rhyme and alliteration. This exploration is tested against a reading of Moira Andrew’s poem “November Night Countdown” (1999).