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Appunti prima lezione inglese del 8/10/ LEXICON OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE English —> the language which has the major number of words Lexeme (comes from greek) —> languages have lexemes. Ex: love is a single orthographic and it can also have other forms: loved, loving, lover. A lexeme is a unit of meaning which lies behind the words. It is a unit of lexical meaning, with exists regardless of any inflectional endings it may have or the number of words it may contain. A lot of lexemes have never been added to dictionaries but they are actually very common in slang languages, like for example different ways pf saying drunk (canned, blotto, squiffy, jagged, paralytic, smashed, etc…). Even if we restrict the issue to standard vocabulary, there are many items which could be included as part of the lexicon, but which are not usually found in a dictionary. There are also some half a million abbreviated forms in english, many of which have a clear lexical status, like for example FBI, NATO, BA, and flora and fauna also provide a vast lexical resource. A lexeme is made by one verb, but it can also be made by a phrasal verb. Head words in dictionaries are lexemes (they are bold written) Abbreviation The reasons for using abbreviated forms are obviously enough. One is the denser for linguistic economy, the same motivation with makes us want to criticise someone who uses two words when one will do. Succinctness and precision are highly evaluated, and abbreviations can contribute greatly to a concise style. Abbreviations also help to convey a sense of social identity: to use an abbreviated form is to be ‘in the know’, a part of the social groups to which abbreviation belongs There are different types of abbreviations:
- Acronym: They are basically initialisms which are pronounced as single words. RADAR (radio detection and ranging) is made by all the first letters of the words that make it. MOTEL (motor hotel)
- Initialisms: FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), BBQ. They are spoken as individual letters. The majority of abbreviations fall into this category. Both acronyms and initialisms have things in common. Most pf abbreviations we use are initialisms, but there are also acronyms that are pronounced as single word, for example ASAP or LOL
- Clipping : A part of the word that serves for the whole so clipping consists of transforming long words into one syllable word, advertisement —> ad
- Blends : A word which is made out of the shortened forms of two other words, so it consists in merging two different words, brunch: breakfast + lunch. Scientific terms frequently make use of blending, as do brand names and fashionable neologisms.
- Latin abbreviations : etcetera —> etc… English history English was originally a germanic language, it shared characteristics with dutch and german. After 1066 english was influenced by Norman french and by latin, for this reason it also shares features with french and latin. English absorbs foreign words, it is a very flexible language and for this reason it has the major number of words than other languages. Germanic invaders settled in Britain and displaced Celtics, with this a new language was born, the so called Anglo-Saxon language. Nowadays english is still using a few Anglo-Saxon words, like for example parts of the body, common words, etc.. Words of modern english come from Celtic, for example brock that means tasso, and also names of places, rivers and so it goes.
Norseman settled in Britain in the XIX century and had a huge influence in modern language. French influence is very strong, a lot of words come from french, especially professional language (government, parliament) Process of exploration of the UK: trades with others countries influenced english, for example samurai or kimono from Japanese or paparazzi from Italian thanks to the huge success of the Italian cinema. Word formation : new words created from already existing words (brunch).The word formation can be explored in two ways: diachronically, so chronologically, or synchronically, so analysing how many words were created in a certain period Semantic change : a word which has a different meaning in the time. Friend: real life friend or online friend this last one didn’t exit 30 years ago Calque or loan translation : word which comes from another language and being translated literally. Ex: it goes without saying —> it’s obvious, it comes from the French “ça va sans dire”. The Italian word “assolutamente” it’s a claque from the english “obviously” Morphological derivation : adding a prefix or a suffix to an already existing word, ex: unhappy is a synonym for sad. Compounding : cupcake: cup + cake, created considering the fact that “cup” is a unit of measure and cupcakes need very few ingredients. Friend was originally known as only a noun, but now it can also be considered a verb: friend, unfriend (on social media) Text: originally known as a noun, now it’s also a verb: to text someone Neologism : forming or using a new word from another language. A neologism stays new until people start to use it without thinking, or alternatively until it falls out of fashion, and they stop using it altogether. The most complex, intriguing, and exciting instances come from the language of literature. Back formation : remove a part of a word, for example a prefix. Ex: to enthuse means to express enthusiasm, and this verb comes from enthusiasm News stories: usato sui social Nonce word : lexeme created for s temporary use, to solve an immediate problem of communication. Ex: Someone attempting to describe the excess water on a road after a storm was heard to call it a fluddle, she meant something bigger than a puddle but smaller than a flood. This newborn lexeme was forgotten almost as soon as it was spoken. In everyday conversation people create words like this all the time. LEZIONE INGLESE 22/10/18 (capitoli 14 - 15 - 16) Phonology, semantics, syntax and morphology are all in the group of pragmatics. PHONOLOGY : study of the speech sounds: how speech sounds are organised in the mind of the speaker. Differences between phonology and phonetics PHONETICS : descriptive linguistics, it studies how the sounds are made in general, so it does not study sounds in a specific language. PHONOLOGY : theoretical linguistics, different patterns of sounds in different languages (abstract)
- Proper nouns do not usually allow a plural form, like for example Londons, Freds, Everests, while most commons nouns do, like for example books, eggs, pens.
- Proper nouns are not usually used with determiners (a, the, some) while common nouns are (a book, the music) Common nouns (without the capitol letters) Proper nouns are written with an initial capital letter. But not all words with initial capitals are proper nouns. Count and Non-Count nouns : countable and uncountable. Pronoun : a pronoun is a word used instead of a noun or a noun-equivalent, so a word which is acting like a noun. (pro in latin mean for) Pronoun types:
- possessive: mine, yours, his
- reflexive: myself, yourself, himself
- reciprocal: each other, one another
- relative: that, which, who
- demonstrative: this, that, these
- interrogative: who, what, why
- indefinite: anything, anybody gendered pronouns: when the gender is not specified we could use the pronoun THEIR as a singular pronoun (only in an informal situation) “somebody forgot their coat” The participants returned THEIR portfolio/ Each participant returned A portfolio Verb : a verb is a word used for saying something about some person or thing. It is the element which makes everything hold together. Stative verbs: describe a situation, statical Actions verbs: verbs which indicate actions, but also mental actions Adverb : an adverb is a word used to qualify any part of speech except a noun or pronoun. Prepositions : A preposition is a word placed before a noun or noun-equivalent to show in what relation the person or thing stands to something else. They show how nouns relate to each other in space and time, they are extremely important, especially in english. Conjunctions : A conjunction is a word used to join words or phrases together, or one close to another clause. The class of nouns When we look at the way nouns behave, we find that the following factors are involved: - Syntactic structure : a noun is the chef item of a noun phrase, as in the new telephones. It is often preceded by one of a small class of determiners, such as the or some. - Syntactic function : a noun functions as the subject, object, or a complement of a clause, as in “Apples are popular” or “I like apples”. - Grammatical morphology : a noun can change its form to express a contrast in singular/popular number or to mark the genitive case as in cat/cats/cat’s/cats’. - Lexical morphology : a noun can be formed by adding one of a small list pf suffixes to a verb, an adjective, or another noun. **The class of pronouns
- Replacing a noun** : I’ve got a red hat and Jane’s got a brown one - Replacing a noun phrase : My uncle Fred’s just arrived. He’s quite tired
- Referring to a very general concept which includes the meaning of many possible noun phrases : I can see someone in the distance. - Referring to some unspecified event of the situation : Look at that! He’s going to crush. Some pronouns have separate cases for subject and object functions, as for example I vs me, who vs whom Some show a contrast between personal and non-personal gender and between male and female, he/she vs it, who/which Some distinguish singular and plural number, but not by adding an - s, as in I vs we, he vs they Some have different persons: I vs you vs he/she/it The class of adjectives To decide if a word is an adjective, several criteria are available:
- An adjective can occur immediately before a noun: “A big house”. This function in an adjective is called attributive function.
- An adjective can occur alone after forms of the verb be. “the house was big”. This function in an adjective is called predicative function. An adjective can be immediately preceded by very and other intensifying words: “very big”, “terribly nice”
- An adjective can be compared: bigger/biggest, more/most beautiful
- Many adjectives permit the addition of - ly to form an adverb: sad>sadly To count as adjective, a word must be able to function in both attributive and predicative positions. The class of adverbs The adverb is the most heterogeneous of all the word classes in English grammar. They have two chief uses. Most of them can act as an element of clause structure usually relating directly to the meaning of the verb, but often to some other elements of the clause as a whole. Some adverbs affect the meaning of an adjacent word or phrase attaching themselves to it, as for example in very anxiously and quite a party or the day before and someone else. The class of verbs A sentence may contain a single verb, or it may use a cluster of verbs which work together as a verb phrase, “I saw an elephant”m “You didn’t see one “They couldn’t have seen one”. These last two examples show a main verb accompanied by a auxiliary verb accompanied by one or more auxiliary verbs. There can be up to four auxiliaries, all going in front of the main verb, though constructions using all four are unusual: They must have been being advised by the government. There are three classes of verb that can occur within the verb phrase: Lexical verbs: Lexical verb are those with a meaning that can be clearly and independently identified, such as run, jump, walk, want. They act as main verbs. Modal verbs: convey a range of judgments about the likelihood of events. They function only as auxiliary verbs, expressing meaning which are much less definable, focused and independent than those of lexical verbs. There are nine verbs in this subclass: can, could, may, might will, would, shall, should, and must with dare, need, ought to, and used to having a similar function. Primary verbs: they can function either as main verb or as auxiliary verbs. There are just three of them: be, have and do. The class of preposition A preposition express a relationship of meaning between two parts of a sentence, most often showing how two parts are related in space or time. Most of the common prepositions consist of only one words, they have no distinctive ending, and do not vary. Several prepositions consist of more than one word.
- Sentences are constructed according to a system of rules, known by all the adult mother-tongue speakers of the language, and summarised in a grammar. a sentence formed in this way is said to be grammatical.
- Sentences are the largest constructions to which the rules of grammar apply. This means that, before we can identify sentences, we need to know something about grammatical analysis.
- Sentences are constructions which can be used on their own, units of meaning which seem to make sense by themselves. This is an ancient and plausible criterion, but it is never straightforward one.
- Sentence : it can stand on its own ——> i can’t pay because i haven’t got any money with me.
- Sentences must follow the grammatical rules.
- A sentence usually makes sense. Major sentences (regular sentences) : formed using the basic grammatical rules of a given language. They are sentences which can be broken down into a specific and predictable patterns of elements (The visitor | brought | a book | for you). We need a term to describe “patterns of elements” of this type and many grammars use clause for the purpose. Sentences which consist of just one clause are said to be simple sentences and they can be immediately analysed into more than one clause are multiple sentences. Minor sentences (irregular sentences) : don’t follow standard grammatical rules. They are not constructed in a regular way. They use abnormal patterns which cannot be clearly analysed into a sequence of pattern elements. A level is a way of recognising the fact that a sentence is not a simple linear string of items. better safe than sorry (minor sentence): meglio prevenire che curare. Traditional grammar recognised four types of sentence function: statement, question, command, and exclamation. MAJOR SENTENCES: simple sentences: consists of only one close (Joe waited for the train) Compound sentence: two or more independent closes (but the train was late) (legata a quella sopra) In this kind of sentence the clauses are linked by coordination, usually by coordinating conjunctions: and, or, but. Each clause in principle stand as a sentence on its own. Complex sentence: has at least one independent clause, plus at least one dependent clause. In this type of sentence the clauses are linked by subordination, using subordinating conjunctions as became, when and since. PUNCTUATION MARKS ARE NOT OPTIONAL: BEFORE A COORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS YOU HAVE TO PUT A COMA Syntax deals also with clauses: they are contained in the sentence Sentece: periodo Clause: proposizione
- Clauses join together in different ways, by a coordinating or a subordinating conjunction.
- A sentence breaks down into smaller chunks: clauses.
- You can have any number of clauses in a sentence. big box: sentence; inside the box: closes, which could be divided into more elements complement: not like in Italian, they complete the meaning of the verb. Clause analysis SV: The sun is shining (subject, verb)
SVO : That lecture bored me (subject, verb, object) SVC : Your dinner seems ready (subject, verb complement) SVA : My office is in the next building (subject, verb, adverbial) Different types of sentences :
- declarative: tells something and ends with a period.
- exclamatory: shows strong feeling and ends with an exclamation mark (!)
- interrogative: asks a question and ends with a question mark (?)
- imperative: Gives a command and ends with a period or an exclamation mark (. or !) Phrases A phrase is a syntactic construction which typically contains more than one word. Pronoun phrases are restricted to a small number f constructions, and tend not to be recognised as a productive type in English. (Silly me! or You there!) Adverb phrases are typically found as short intensifying expressions, such as terribly slow and very happily indeed. Adjective phrases are usually combinations of an adjective and preceding intensifier, such as very happy and not too awkward Verb phrases display very limited syntactic possibility. a main verb preceded by up to four auxiliaries, as in may have gone and won’t have been listening. Noun phrases allow an extremely wide range if syntactic possibilities, from simple contractions to complex ones. Propositional phrases are combinations of a preposition plus a noun phrase: in the back garden beneath the hedge. Morphology/compounding It is a process of combining two words to create a new word Morhpological reduplication: part of a word or even the whole word is repeated exactly with a slight change. Examples: “this sounds like a win-win situation to me”. A win-win situation is one which guarantees a favourable outcome for everyone involved. Alliterative type: “What did you talk about?” “Oh just a chit-chat ” A chit-chat is an informal conversation about matters that are not important. Chapter 17 - The sound system Everyone born with the normal capacity to learn acquires the ability to listen and speak long before the ability to read and write. When English alphabet was first devised its letters were based on a consideration of the nature of the sounds in Old English. The origins of the written language lie in the spoken language, not the other way round. We do not learn about spoken language until well after we have learned the basic proprieties of the written language. Pronunciation can always be studied from two points of view: the phonetic and the phonological. Phonetics Phonetics is the study of the way humans make, transit and receive speech sounds. It is divided into three main branches, corresponding to these three directions:
- Articulatory phonetics: the study of the way vocal organs are used to produce speech sounds
- Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical proprieties of speech sounds
- Auditory phonetics: the study of the way people perceive speech sounds Active/Passive articulators The tongue is called an active , moving articulator. The palate is passing , waiting articulator.
Prosody : The use of pause, pitch, stress, volume and tempo in speech to convey information and meaning of an utterance. The most important prosodic effects are those conveyed by the linguistic use of pitch movement, or melody: the intonation system. Different pitch levels are used in particular sequences to express wide range of meaning. Loudness is used in a variety of ways. Big differences of meaning can be conveyed by using an overall loudness level. English uses variations in loudness to define the difference between strong and weak syllables. Varying the speed (tempo) of speech is an important but less systematic communicative feature. By speeding up or slowing soon the rate at which we say syllables, words, phrases and sentences we can convey several kinds of meaning, such as excitement and impatience, or emphasis and thoughtfulness. Chapter 18 - The writing system The letters of the alphabet are the basic elements of the writing system. like phones they have no meaning in themselves: their primary role is to combine into linguistic units, each of the 26 letters, or graphemes, playing a contrastive role. The need to maintain a distinctive graphic form has motivated many of the changes in letter shapes throughout the history of the alphabet. Graphemes have no intrinsic meaning. The role of graphemes is to coming and contrast, and they are the larger units which have meaning. The writing system is a system of symbols which are used to represent language. English: alphabet-based system Chinese: logograph-based system. Chapters 19 - 20 - Varieties of discourse | Regional variation Discourse: denote both written and spoken conversation, we can also say text, the sub discipline we’re referring to, is text linguistics, written discourse analysis. written analysis: focusing on everything discuss analysis victory speech by Obama in 2008, perfect discourse Obama uses a lot of comas to create a lot of pauses but also to give the rhythm, perfect prosody. use of possessive adjectives, he wants to create a sense of community, perfect political discourse. Media discourse, broadcast platform : radio, television and so on, the person who’s attending(?) does not share the same space with the interlocutor, it can be both written and spoken, the interlocutor is not present Monologue : there’s only one person who’s speaking and it’s the only person who’s allowed to speak without being interrupted, for example, a priest is talking or for example when a politician is talking. When a person is telling a joke, then it’s a monologue, cause the other is supposed keep quiet till the joke ends. Dialogue : exchange of language, it can be a spoken conversation, or a written text, also when two people are chatting on facebook. Both must have the right to talk and interrupt each other. Conversation: communicating situation where everybody has the right to talk. It is a system which follows rules, especially social rules. Social rules are associated with the cooperative principle. Composed of 4 principles: quality, quantity, relation and manner In a conversation participants must be as true as possible, as brief as possible, as relevant as possible, as clear as possible. since conversations are a social interaction we need a discipline which is able to combinate both: sociolinguistics. the way we speak may reveal social factors.
In Disney cartoons (Aladdin for example) American accent is the desirable accent, so negative and minor characters have a strongly influenced accent. The same thing happens for example in the Simpsons and a lot of films and tv series. Style : set of linguistic variants with specific social meanings. it’s not something fixed in the speaker. Linguistic variant : choice made by the speaker of a language, you can say the same thing with different words. You choose some options while excluding others. Language is a matter of choice. social meanings: group, ethnicity, age, sex, all these features convey social meanings. it’s what happens in Aladdin for example. Lawyers in court use legal english, but outside they’re speaking common english, so style it’s not something fixed. Thousands of varieties, depending on the topic of the conversation Sociolinguistic and stylistic features Variety features depend on the presence of certain factors in the social situation. Sociolinguistics features: relate to very broad situational constraints on language use, and chiefly identify the regional and social varieties of the language. They are relatively permanent, background features of the spoken or written language, over with we have relatively little conscious control. We tend not to change our regional or class way of speaking as we go about our daily business, and usually do not even realise that it is there. Stylistic features: relate constraints on language use that are much more narrowly constrained, and identify personal preferences in usage or the varieties associated with occupational groups. We often adopt different group uses of language as we go though our day and frequently change our speaking or writing style to make a particular effect. Regional variation : dialect and regional variation are nearly synonyms, but dialect and accents are different. A dialect has a different vocabulary and different construction while accents has its own way of pronunciation. Dialects are for example the different kinds of english all over the world. If we have two different dialects we have two different construction. American english and British english are both dialects and accents. Within Britain we have a lot of different dialects. Some cities have different dialects. For example Cockney, which is referring to the accent and dialect of English spoken by workers in London. Class dialects: they tell you where the speaker is from. regional dialects: answer the question of where are you from Social dialect : or class dialects, tell you where the speakers are from socially. Occupational dialects : varieties fo language which tell you the sort of job a person does (speaking or writing like a politician, a priest, or a journalist) Accent : accents something which refers to the way you pronunce words, they can be defined the part of your voice which tells people where are you from but also how you were educated, particular British context. Received pronunciation: received from the elite group. It doesn’t give information on where are you from. Accent associated with the royalty, the queen and her family are supposed to speak with that accent, Meghan is learning how to “clean” her American accent. Very few people speak with RP, but a lot of the population is speaking the ModifiedRP. Estuary english : spoken by a large and growing group of people in the South of England. Linguists say that this accent doesn’t exist because it shares many features with the Cockney and it is a modified version of Cockney English. Parte pratica : ancient= meglio tradurlo con antico che con vecchio, perché vecchio ha accezione più negativa world-class= someone or something world-class is one of the best there are of that type in the worlds.
According to prescriptivism or purism : certain varieties of languages are superior to others, emphasis on rules on “good” “proper” “correct” usage of the language, and that variety soul be imposed to the whole speech community. It is an authoritarian view, especially related to grammar and vocabulary, and often with a reference to pronunciation. Descriptivism : it focuses oh the actual usage of a given language, how it’s written or spoken style of language are like clothes, some styles are more appropriate for a given situation. its main aim is to describe and explain the patterns of usage which are found in alla varieties of the language, whether they are socially prestigious or not. This approach also recognises that the language is always changing and it also recognises that because of the changes the language will change in variations of usage. It’s appropriate to speak more politely while speaking to someone we don’t know. It’s very important to be sure your language it’s appropriate for the situation you are in. We must make a distinction between correctness and appropriateness. For example any survey of the use of contract forms would show that they are widely accepted in a formal speech and writing. Their acceptability depends on the content in which they are used. Appropriateness tries to capture a notion of naturalness in language use: an appropriate use of language is one which does not motivate criticism. Informal language on a formal occasion in inappropriate because it stands out, as does formal language in a informal situation. Both regularly attract criticism. The best uses of everyday language are those which do not draw attention to themselves, and where the structures do not get in the way of the meaning they are trying to convey. To say that a usage is “appropriate” in a given occasion is only to say that it is performing this function satisfactorily. Gender Issues In certain cases, such as job description, the use of sexually neutral language has become a legal requirement. Gender-neutral language: language that minimises assumptions about the social gender or Biological sex of people referred to in speech or writing. distinction between “his” or “her” it’s not Gender-neutral language. Gender-neutral job titles: a gender-neutral language is needed in job advertisements bartender instead of barman or barmaid firefighter instead of fireman gender-neutral language honorific: mr. regardless or marital status miss and mrs: woman marital status so it’s not gender-neutral ms: can be used for women , but moth married and unmarried and it is 100% neutral mx: 100% neutral Language and occupation Occupational varieties of a language are only in temporary use, they are part of the job, so they are taken up as we begin work, and put down as we end it. Mostly when we stop working, we stop using the language of work. the more specialised the occupation and the more senior or professional the post, the more technical the language is likely to be, and also, the more an occupation is part of a long- established tradition, the more is likely to have accreted linguistic rituals which its members accept as a criterion of performance. Occupation could not exist without language. It can change with time, for example skype interview: it exists now but not 30 years ago Religious English : a sacred language is cultivated and used primarily in religious service or for other religious reasons, same thing with legal english early morn english; used by some anglican communions.
Religious English is probably the most distinctive of all occupational varieties. There are three main reasons:
- It is consciously retrospective, in the way it constantly harks back to its origins, and thus to earlier periods of the English language.
- It is consciously perspective, concerned with issues of orthodoxy and identity, both textual and ritual.
- It is consciously imaginative and exploratory, as people make their personal response to the claims of religious belief. Scientific english : specific features and characteristics, it uses a lot of adjectives, in order to be very specific. Extensive use of passive structures more than active, in order to be as objective as possible. Very specific terms. It’s also used in tv series like “the big bang theory” but with a different purpose, a popularisation of it, because the audience has to be entertained, so it’s easier. Legal english : linguistic variation, style which is not fixed Main characteristics: used in court, sometimes described as a sublanguage, not in a negative sense, but to intend that is different from standard english. Consistency, validity and completeness. At the same time people should understand this kind of language, so it should be as intuitive as possible and as clear as possible. Legal English has also developed a complex grammatical structure. Plain english : language that is easy to understand, clear, no overly complex vocabulary, no technical terms. Appropriate to the audience’s educational level and familiarity with the topic treated. It has to be adapted on depending to the audience. Political English : the language of politicians is an interesting misture if old and new: it displays much of the ritual phraseology and consciousness of precedent which we associate with religion and law, and it makes use of many rhetorical and dramatic techniques which are typical with the advertising or the media. Political language according to orwell: it’s not clear on purpose and it’s meaningless because it wants to hide the truth, language which doesn’t mean anything New Englishes : used for news reporting in media The way in which stories are presented today is changed in terms of tone and intended audience. Most common tense: past tense Most commonly used structure: invented pyramid structure, the most important elements are placed at the beginning of the article News stories also contain: timelines, new stories are the most interesting stories, news like a baked good that is best served fresh Proximity: people are more interested in what happens in their neighbourhood Impact/consequence: will the information change our lives? Novelty: is it an unusual story? Conflict: “good news is no news” if a fire burns an empty house is not as interesting as a fire that burns a house with a family Prominence: people are interested in famous people Chapter 22 - Personal Variation A particular blend of social and geographical backgrounds, increasingly common in a mobile society, may produce a distinctive scent or dialect. Educational history, occupational experience and personal skills or taste will foster the use of habitual words and turns of phrase or certain kinds of grammatical construction.
collocation with quick: at, i was quick at reading this book, this also applies to the Italian language. When a collocation becomes so predictable that it is a fixed phrase, we talk about:
- IDIOMS : their meaning cannot generally be interfered from the meaning of the single words. Example: “are we on the same page?” “we have an agreement” “I’m all ears”: when you want to hear something, but also if you know that someone is going to tell you a lie. if you separate the words they don’t have the same meaning that they had when they were in the phrase. - Clichés : a phrase taht is overused. - Proverbs LEXICAL PHRASES : they are different from idioms, because their meaning can be inferred from the meaning of the single words. Example: to be beside the point: not important beside: not central, so if you take the meaning of beside you take the sense of the sentence SYNONYMS : words which differs in subtle or subtle ways if you want to avoid the overuse of an adjective, like for example, big, you may use a synonym, like enormous, depending on the context you can use different synonyms i have a big room, i have a spacious room, but not i have an extensive room “Rancid”, with butter or oil (rancido) “Curdled”, with milk (rancido) they have the same meaning but they are more adequate for a given situation “Kingly, royal and regal”: reale; in English we have different words to say basically the same thing, because of the various influences of the english language. The opposite of a synonym is antonyms, it is a word that means the opposite of another word, they also have to refer to the context, because they can be used in different situations. HYPONYM AND HYPERNYM “Horse” is the hyponym of “animal”, the meaning of one word id included within the other “animal” is the hypernym of “horse” a word whose meaning includes a group of other words it’s the same concept but seen from another perspective DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION Denotation: meaning which everyone agrees on: the fact that a rose is a flower Connotation: personal meaning: the rose could mean death, love and so on In translation: if it’s a fixed meaning i cant transform it into another meaning TABOO WORDS : words that people don’t like to hear or say In translating: we can use an euphemism to translate a taboo word “To pass away” is an euphemism for “To die”. Euphemism: word or phrase that talk indirectly about something unpleasant or offensive. TRADUZIONE media traduzione: 10 cartelle che hanno scadenza di 4 giorni, traduttore deve finirla in 1 e mezzo perché poi il revisore deve controllare meno di 24h: box delle urgenze, hanno un costo maggiore, aumento 15 - 30%, va diviso con colleghi più traduttori ci sono meno si guadagna, importante è imparare a tradurre velocemente e meglio possibile se ho più lavori, più progetti, divido il lavoro con altri colleghi, altrimenti non riesco a finire in tempo
project manager solitamente è agenzia, negli ultimi anni, traduttore è manager di se stesso project manager non si improvvisa, è colui che guadagna di più traduttore comunica tariffa all’agenzia e agenzia la deve alzare perché ci deve guadagnare 26/11/ More on chapter 11 and chapter 24 - 25 Structure of the lexicon Technical words are called jargon Every specialised subject has got its own jargon: chemistry, maths, English language, sport, and so on. Jargon helps specialists to be precise, it adds not only precision but also economy to their communication. Plain english : easy to understand, emphasises clarity, no complex vocabulary, no technical jargon. Double speak : distress, changes the meaning of words, may take the form of euphemisms, political language up to Orwell There is also a modern example of double english: for example Trump, example with guns, tries to hide the truth behind making sentences with no-sense Political correctness : minimise offence to gender: racial, culture, disabled, back to gender- neutral language. “Language creates categories for thought, and words can create either opportunities or boundaries” The problem arises when the linguistic constructs we use influence our way of thinking in negative (accents used in Aladdin). Dying a dead lexicon: whence/thee —> odd words called archaism , it’s old english, used a long time ago and now can be used for giving a particular meaning Chapter 24 - 25 - Learning about english Language acquisition : process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, comprehend, and use language. It usually refers to first-language acquisition and it is different from a second-language acquisition. mother language: first language, so called because we probably learned it by our mother English can also be a co-official language, like for example in Hong-Kong. It can be considered a second language when you speak it very fluently, different from bilingual (two different mother languages) Critical period hypothesis : the first few years of life are the most important in learning a language, then it’s harder. Neuroscience of multilingualism : multilingual individuals constantly demonstrate similar activation patterns in the brain when using a language they fluently know. Stress of acquisition : Stage 1 : A child speaks to get something they want, to get someone’s attention, to draw attention to something. Use intention to ask questions, e.g. “you go?”, they don’t structure a sentence with the grammar structure but with intonation Stage 2 : children start asking questions with interrogative pronouns (what, where), e.g.: where gone?
It also makes difficult to understand what another person says, so they struggle in receiving, they could also struggle in both things. Acquired or developmental :
- Acquired: language disorder shows up only after the person has had a neurological illness or injury. Developmental: much more common in children. They often star spelling later than their peers, this delay isn’t related to their intelligence level (typically average or even above-average intelligence). They usually have problems with receptive and expressive language skills before the age of 4. A language disorder is not the same as a hearing or speech issue. The challenge is mastering and applying the rules of language (grammar). A treatment is needed. Chapter 24 - New ways of studying English Relying on real life context. How language works in real life : make a collection of what people say or write, and analyse what they do. It could be a collection of newspaper headlines, advertisements, news broadcast, prayers, everyday conversation, anything. Corpus
- “a collection of naturally-occuring language text, chosen to characterise a state or variety of a language”.
- “a collection of texts assumed to be representative of a given language, dialect, or other subset of a language, to be used for linguistics analysis” British national corpus (BNC) 100 million of words of contemporary spoken and written of British english, representative of British english “as a whole”, VERY IMPORTANT IF I WANT TO BECOME A PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATOR Balanced with regard to genre, subject matter and style. to keep an eye on that issue, you can search it on BNC, the preposition it’s ONLY ON there are a lot of corpus in all the languages. before translating we need to analyse and understand the text as if you had to “narrate” a story to a child Translation and Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) “Just as a theory of translation without a link to practice is simply an abstraction, so the practice of translation without a theoretical background tends toward a purely subjective exercise” SFL is a useful tool in translation: 1 - There is an essential interplay between theory and practice 2 - Translation is an inter-discipline, with a linguistic core 3 - SFL can offer a model for translating language and culture (=text and context) 4 - The importance of meaning Meaning is key :
- Each utterance encodes a different kind of meanings, but, the grammatical resources responsible for these meanings often work differently across languages, thus a translator needs to understand all these meanings, and reproduce them in another language. A brief intro to Systemic Functional Linguistics
- SFL was developed to dress the needs of language teaching/learning
- Language must be seen in (social) context
- Language is not good or bad, it is appropriate or inappropriate to the context of use Language is essentially a system of meaning potential = meaning is key Why “functional”?
- because language function is often more important than language structure
- “functional” because it considers language to have evolved under the pressure of the particular functions that the language system has to serve Functions in language
- offering, suggesting, advising / in the present, fitire, possibility
- to learn a language means to be able to do things with it Functionalism vs Structuralism A “functional” approach to a language is more concerned with what an utterance does, while a “structural” approach is concerned with how an utterance is composed (its internal structure) Why “systemic”? Systemic approach to language focuses on meaningful choices in language (ex. active vs. passive) without needing to think of the particular structure that realises it. Subject + verb “to be” + past participle. Grammar consists of a set of choices, or “systems” (= systemic) Functions : - Ideal metafunction : language helps us “construct human experience” how the individual perceives the world - Interpersonal metafunction : language allows us express the interactions and complex relations with the other person in society - Textual metafunction : language allows us to bring structure to our interaction and organise the language system itself, making communication easier Language and its context In SFL, the appropriateness of linguistic options is condition by the current “context of situation”, the context situation is the situation in which the language event unfolds, at least those parts od the situation which condition that language use. Three stands which influence the way language is used: 1 - Field : what is being talked about 2 - Tenor : the people involved in the communication and the relationships between them 3 - Mode : what part the language is playing in the interaction (what form does it take - spoken or written) Example: A recipe in a cook book Field: cooking (ingredients and process of preparing food) Tenor: expert writer to a learner Mode: written, prepared. text often read a s part of process of coking Field : what the text is about. Typical fields: science, education, war, medicine, sports. It can also be more specific:
- Science: biology, microbiology
- Education: Language education, English Language Tenor : relationships between participants
