storage vs computation

I have been rather to quick with the d key - I've read and deleted a
message by John Cowan the split second before I thought of something
apposite...

Anyway, on the subject of storing versus computing language utterances,
it has long before been clear to me that a lot of people speak entirely
in stored, ready-made sentences, sometimes being able to construct a
whole conversation with phrases out of a kind of stock.

That is, in a lot of contexts, a lot of people use phrases they have
hear before, as a sort of - larger - minimal unit. I know I do myself in
English to a large extent - but I've seen the same thing with people's
native language. And Classical Chinese, of course, consists largely of
pre-built phrases, like famous quotations. Those are used in modern-day
Chinese, too, but I've forgotten the Chinese name.

To bring this on-topic again - I've once tried to compile a dictionary of
standard phrases for the Charyan languages, but I never came further than
a paraphrase of similar dictionaries that exist for classical Chinese.

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt