Meanings of recurring complex items are more than the sum total of the parts, for such a combinations has its own history and acquires its own set of associations.
- Nida (1949), a pag.155

[...] configurations and patterns acquire meaning as well as do individual units, and the combinations are not fully explicable in terms of the constituent parts. [...] constantly recurring conventional groupings of morphemes, whether in words, sentences, or discourses, have meanings which can only be understood in terms of their own environments.
- Nida (1949), a pag.155