Scarica Understanding Morphology: Lexical vs. Grammatical Morphemes and Word Formation e più Appunti in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity!
LINGUA E MORFOSINTASSI INGLESE
Bibliography: The linguistic structure of Modern English “Monolingual Learners’Dictionaries” Interim test: 30 minutes, 30 questions on Morphology and Syntax Individual assignment: power point presentation (maximum 10 slides), it must be uploaded 7 days before the official appello. Morphology is science and it studies the internal structure of words. But before morphology what is grammar? Grammar refers to systematic patterns within words (how words are formed) and within sentences (syntax- how we combine words, clauses and phrases to form phrases). Morphology Morph o log+ y The suffix logy means study of =study of morph So morphology is an area of grammar which studies how words are formed. Let’s take the word UNBELIEVABLE: three blocks one word According to dictionaries a word is a single unit of written or spoken language But Friend vs Friends The term word is not really precise, it is generally true that a word is a single unit, so it is true that friend and friends are two words but one lexeme and the lexeme is friend, so in the dictionaries I will just put the lexeme. There must be some kind of criteria to define wordhood and these must be of various kind: Orthographic: a word is what occurs between spaces in writing Semantic: a word has semantic coherence; it expresses a unified semantic concept Phonological: a) Potential pause: a word occurs between potential pauses in speaking. Though in normal speech, we generally do not pause, we may potentially pause between words, but not in the middle of words. b) Stress: a word spoken in isolation has one and only one primary stress Morphological: a word has an internal cohesion and is indivisible by other units; a word can be modified only externally by the addition of suffixes and prefixes Grammatical: words fall into particular classes Syntactic: a word has external distribution or mobility; it is moved as a unit not in parts The term word itself, however, is quite difficult to be treated; it may be used in a number of different ways:
- It may refer to the word form, the physical or concrete realization, either the orthographical word (the written form) or the phonological word (the uttered or transcribed form)
- It may refer to the lexeme, which is rather like a dictionary entry. A lexeme includes all inflected forms of a word. It is thus a kind of abstraction or class of forms and is indicated in small capitals, as in the following examples: WALK- walk, walks, walked, walking RUN- run, runs, ran, running SING- sing, sings, sang, sung, singing Note that since the lexeme is an abstraction, it is conventional to choose one of the inflected forms to represent it, such as the infinitive of the verb or the singular of the noun. The same word form may in fact represent different lexemes: a. A homonym is a single orthographic and phonological word standing for two lexemes, as bear is either the verb or the noun b. A homograph is a single orthographic word (but separate phonological words) standing for two lexemes, as lead is either the noun /ld/ or the verb /lid/ c. A homophone is a single phonological word (but separate phonological words) standing for two lexemes, as /mit/ is either the noun meat or the verb meet. the same lexeme may also have quite distinct word forms, as in the case of the definite article “the” or the indefinite article a/an (whose pronunciation is different according to the first letter of the word that follows them)
- Finally word may also refer to a morphosyntactic word (or grammatical word). A morphosyntactic word consists of a lexeme and associated grammatical meaning MORPHEMES The smallest unit of meaning in English morphology is the Morpheme; a morpheme is not necessarily equivalent to a word but may be a smaller unit. Some morphemes can stand alone as independent words, while others must always be attached to some other morpheme. The morpheme refers to either a class of forms or an abstraction from the concrete forms of a language( for instance the feminine morpheme is an abstraction which can be realized in a number of different ways, by -ess , as in actress , or by a personal pronoun like she ; for actress the morphemes are {actor} and {f}. A morpheme has the following characteristics: It is internally indivisible: it cannot be further subdivided or analysed into smaller meaningful units It has internal stability since nothing can be interposed in a morpheme It is externally transportable It has positional mobility or free distribution, occurring in various contexts Morphemes are represented within curly braces. Friends: friend- s: two morphemes two meanings> friend+ s> meaning plural. Morphemes are abstract units, whose concrete realization is the morph. Morpheme can have both a meaning and a grammatical function. **Types of morphemes
- Lexical morphemes:** they express lexical, or dictionary, meaning. They can be categorized into the major lexical categories or word classes: noun, verb, adjective, or adverb; these are frequently called “content words”. They constitute open categories to which new members can be added. Lexical morphemes are generally independent words (free roots) or derivational affixes (bound roots)
Examples of roots: unavoidably overgrown altruistic decoration provocative disheartened reclassify Roots are occasionally bound morphs, these are called bound roots. Bound roots are often foreign borrowings that were free in the source language, but not free in English (for instance -vert, -mit, -ceive, or -fer). They cannot however stand alone in English and it would also be very difficult to state their meaning unless you know their History, their etymology (in this case all the previous bound roots come from Latin) Con ver t, re ver t, per vert , intro ver t Trans m it, com mi t, re mit , ad mi t Con ceive , per ceive , re ceive , de ceive Trans fer , pre fer , re fer , de fe r, con fer Unlike a root an affix does not carry the core meaning , it is always bound to a root; it occupies a position where there is limited potential for substitution, a particular affix will attach only to certain roots; there are two kind of affixes: prefixes (they attach to the beginning of roots) and suffixes (they attach to the end of roots) Affixes can be divided into two groups:
- derivational affixes: a derivational affix is either a prefix or a suffix; they can be either class-changing or class-maintaining, which is to say that they have one of two functions: they can convert one part of the speech to another (in this case they are class-changing > believe> believable ) or/and they can change the meaning of the root (in this case they are class-maintaining > safe>unsafe); such affixes function then in word formation and are important in the creation of new lexemes
- inflectional affixes: they are always suffixes; an inflectional affix has mainly a grammatical function indeed its main function is to indicate the grammatical meaning of a word (for instance the tense or number); given that grammatical meaning is relevant outside the word to the grammar of the entire sentence, inflectional affixes always come last after the root and any derivational affixes which are central to the meaning or class of roots. Another difference is the fact that while derivational affixes are really specific and attach only to a limited number of roots, inflectional affixes can attach to all (or at least most) members of a word class, nevertheless another distinction within inflectional affixes can be made between productive and non- productive inflections: productive inflections would attach to every new word entering the language (there are only 8 productive inflections in English [-s for the plural, the possessive and the 3rd^ person of the present tense; -ing for the participle/progressive; -ed past simple and past participle; -er for the comparative and -est for the superlative]), whilst non-productive or remnant inflections are found on select members of a class, but would never be added to a new word (examples of non- productive inflections are the vowel alternation for the plural or the past tense [ tooth> teeth; sing>sang], the superlative with most [ as in foremost ] or the past tense ending in -en [as in write> written ]. Morphemes are realized by one of four morphological rules:
- agglutinative rule: two morphemes are realized by two morphs which remain distinct and are simply “glued” together: {writer} + {pl.}> writers
- fusional rule: two morphemes are realized by two morphs which do not remain distinct but are fused together: {tooth}+ {pl.}> teeth
- null realization rule: a morpheme is never realized as a morph in any word of the relevant class: {sg} on nouns which never has concrete realization in English
- zero rule: a morpheme is realized as a zero morph in particular members of a word class: {sheep}+ {pl.}> sheep note: allomorphs are any of two or more of the actual representations of a morpheme: for example -s/-es for plural. A word that has just one morpheme is called monomorphemic or simple. Grammatical means functional, so a functional morpheme is a grammatical morpheme. The key to identify morphemes is to find the root, so the place where the meaning lies. So when I talk about morphology I talk about an area of grammar that studies how words are created. Morphology is divided in two branches:
- Inflectional morphology: it studies how I have to change my word to adapt to the grammatical context; s is one of the inflectional morphemes (plural and third singular), -ed (past simple),-ing (present continuous), -er, -est.
- Derivational morphology: the area of morphology that studies how we form new words in English Exercise: number of morphs and in brackets the morpheme
- Brighter two morphs (bright + comparative)
- Helpful two morphs (help + adjective)
- More one morph (much + comparative)
- Best one morph (good superlative)
- Smaller two morphs small+ comparative) Exercise a. hospitalization : iz ation 2 suffixes b. invisibly: in (prefix) vis (root) [vis is the root because it comes from Greek] ible, ly suffixes c. uninteresting = interest (root) un prefix, ing suffix d. undercooked= cook root, ed suffix, under prefix e. ungrammatical = grammar (root), tic , al (suffixes) un prefix f. reinforcement= force (root), re in (prefixes), ment (suffixes) g. unlikelihood= like (root), un (prefix), ly, hood (suffixes)> when you split the word li becomes ly
- words change, they have power and we have power to change the words to fit in the context. Words change also according to grammatical context
- sometimes inflections carry meaning
- POSSESSIVE’S: in English nouns also inflect for the possessive case, by adding the suffix ‘s. it expresses the genitive case. We call it possessive s but if we look at English as it is we can use it also to express origins description and measure
- English has a restricted number of inflections Irregular verbs:
- The diminutive suffixes
- The feminine suffixes
- The abstract suffixes ( -hood, -ship, etc.)
- Suffixes denoting people ( -(i)an, -ist, , -er, etc.)
- Ish (after adjectives, expressing “nearly, not exactly”: greenish, fortyish, coldish )
- -ly (after adjectives, expressing resemblance: goodly, sickly, lonely) Most suffixes, however, are class changing (sad sad ly) :
- Suffixes used to make nouns are called nominalizers, this constitutes the largest set of class-changing suffixes; a highly productive nominalizer is the suffix -er
- Suffixes used to make verbs from nouns or adjectives are called verbalizers
- Suffixes used to produce adjectives from verbs or nouns are adjectivalizers
- Suffixes used to make adverbs are called adverbializers New affixes
- Describe addiction: - aholic: alcoholic, shopaholic, workaholic, pizzaholic
- Thon: marathon; telethon: something which is very long Gate: Watergate, cartergate, Camillagate, trumpgate: scandal REDUPLICATION Reduplication is a process in which the initial syllable or the entire word is doubled, exactly or with a slight phonological change. It is not a common process for word formation in English, it is often used in children’s language or for humorous or ironic effect. Three different kinds of reduplication can be identified:
- Exact reduplication: so-so, never-never, papa, mama, fifty-fifty, goody-goody,
- Ablaut reduplication in which the vowel alternates while the consonants are identical: criss-cross, zig-zag, flip-flop, mish-mash, clip-clop, wishy-washy, ping-pong
- Rhyme duplication in which the consonants change while the vowel remains the same: boogie-woogie, nitty-gritty, razzle-dazzle, fuddy-duddy, hocus-pocus It was the word formation strategy behind the name of TikTok, Flipflop, Zipzap, it is used in marketing a lot. Reduplication can be formed with two meaningful parts ( flower-power, brain drain, culture vulture, boy toy, heart smart); reduplication has many different functions, it can express:
- Disparagement: namby-pamby
- Intensification: super-duper
- Diminution: teeny-weeny
- Onomatopoeia: tick-tock
- Alternation: ping pong
COMPOUNDING
A compound is the combination of two or more free roots (plus associated affixes); compounds may be written as a single word or as two words, hyphenated or not; it can be sometimes difficult to distinguish a compound, which is considered a single word, from a syntactic phrase consisting of a number of distinct words; it is sometimes pointed out that the order of elements in a compound tends to be nonliteral, while in a phrase it is literal, a better means of differentiation is internal coherence since compounds are externally modified (at the single word boundary), whereas phrases may be internally modified (at any of the word
boundaries)> for example the plural of the compound manhole is manholes not menhole, whereas the plural of the phrase man-of-war is men-of-war; with the plural marker internal to the phrase. Another good means of distinguishing compounds is their external mobility, they move in a sentence as a whole, not in parts. However stress seems to be the most reliable means of distinguishing a compound from a phrase, as a single word a compound will carry only one primary stress, whereas a phrase, as a group of words, will carry more than one primary stress. Both the semantics and the syntax of compound are complex. Often the semantics of compounds are not simply a sum of the meaning of the parts, that is, if we know the meaning of the two roots we cannot necessarily predict the meaning of the compound. The syntax is even more complex, any combination of parts of speech seems possible, with almost any part of speech resulting; the world class of the compound is determined by the head of the compound (or its rightmost member), whereas the leftmost member carries the primary stress. The only exception to this rule is a converted compound or one containing a class changing suffix. A problem for the differentiation between compounds and phrases is represented by phrasal verbs, which is to say verbs followed by post-verbal particles, that have semantic coherence, evidenced by the fact that they are sometimes replaceable by simple Latinate verbs. Phrasal verbs unlike compounds exhibit internal modification, carry two primary stresses and behave syntactically like phrases since the particle may move after the object or an adverb may intercede between the verb and the particle, for these reasons we must conclude that phrasal verbs are phrases not compounds. A further problem is the analysis of phrase compounds formed from entire phrases such as lady-in-waiting, dog-in-the-manger, forget-me-not, son-in-law, which are generally written as compounds (hyphenated) and have semantic unity. Many of these behave normally as compounds by being externally modified, but some are internally modified like a phrase , when they are inflected for the possessive, however, they show external modification like a compound. When I create a compound it’s because I need to say something that combines two different things ; I combine two lexemes, the two lexemes do not have to be attached, lexemes in a compound can be attached, separated by a space or a dash. The two lexemes have two different meanings but when you combine them to create you create another lexeme with different meaning. Each compound has got a head (the head of the compound); it’s where the meaning lies. In English when you have a compound the accent generally lies on the first lexeme. Intonation is fundamental :”the Whitehouse is in Washington” “That beautiful white house”. It is not always easy to identify the world class, some words may belong to different word classes, every time we think that word is an adjective we should put it before a noun if it works it’s an adjective
- Green light, green tea (adjective+ noun)
- Bitter-sweet (adjective+ adjective)
- User- friendly (noun + adjective)
- Checklist (verb+ noun)
- Stir-fry (verb+ verb) Compounding was in 2002 the most productive words formation strategy (together with blending). Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what the compound means because the head which is to say the meaning of the compound lies outside the compound. (exocentric compounds, the meaning is outside the word itself the reference is external)
stimulated emission of radiation], sonar [sound navigation ranging]); in an initialism on the other hand the initial letters of words in a phrase are pronounced as letters (examples: r.s.v.p, a.m., p.m., B.C, A.D, v.d., b.m.); note that sometimes initialisms may involve only a single word as in i.d. or t.v. and sometimes acronyms may skip a word in a phrase. ROOT CREATIONS The rarest form of word creation is root creation, the invention of an entirely new root morpheme; brand names are often an example of root creations; when looked closely words created out of root creations proved to be based on existing words or names or to follow patterns of word formation such as blending and shortening. BLENDING A blend involves two processes of word formation: compounding and clipping; two free words are combined and blended usually by clipping off the end of the first word and the beginning of the second word, although sometimes one or the other morpheme is left intact. The second most productive words formation strategy is BLENDING. Blending is different form clipping, because you clip two words and you put them together to form another word. Glocal: global and local Infotainment: information and entertainment Magalog: magazine and catalog Rockumentary: rock documentary: the first word hasn’t been cut this happens when the first word has just a syllable Smog= smoke+ fog Permafrost= permanent+ frost Blog= web+ blog> note that here only the final sound of the first word is part of the blended word. BORROWING taking words from other languages Compounding: heartbroken, sandcastle, duckface Blending: brunch, motel, educainment, electrocute Backformation: edit editor, burgler came before burgle Acronym:Nasa Initialism: omg Exercises: 1 mixing two words and their meaning together > blending 2 adding a prefix or a suffix > derivation or affixation 3 changing the way a word is used > conversion or zero derivation 4 using part of a word > shortening 5 forming a word from the letters of a phrase > acronyms and initialism 6 joining two or more lexemes together > compounding 7 words made with rhyming pairs > reduplication 8 taking a word from another language > loanword or borrowing The acronym is not always written in capital letters.
Scuba > acronym Exam > clipping Ping-pong > reduplication See-saw > reduplication Brit > clipping Yuppy/yuppie > acronym/initialism Brainstorm > compounding Televise > backformation Chunnel > blend Bungalow > loanword/borrowing Explaining compounds: Snail-mail > Telebanking > online bank Technophobe > scared of using technology Telecommuting > working from home Voicemail > audio message Spoon-feed > Greenfield
relates to a previously undeveloped site for commercial development Brownfield > example of exocentric compound: the reference is outside; relates to an urban site for potential building development, that has been previously developed Electrocute > electricity
- execute Travelogue > travel + monologue Oxbridge > Oxford + Cambridge Rockumentary
rock + documentary Blog > web + log Pictionary > picture + dictionary Spanglish > Spanish
- English Emoticon > emotion + icon Alcopop > alcohol + pop Ginormous > giant + enormous Smog > smoke + fog Motel > motor + hotel Inflectional morphemes can only be suffixes in English IDIOMS: a sequence of words which functions as a single unit, it has two main features it is syntactically fixed and semantically conventionalized. It is syntactically fixed which means that no, or little variation is allowed. It is semantically conventionalized which means that the meaning isn’t transparent and it doesn’t come from the actual meaning of the words, this is what linguists call “non- compositionality” For instance “hit the road”: you don’t actually hit the road Grammar and Syntax “Sit tight” “easy does it”: they don’t follow the regular grammatical rules (we should say tight sit and in the second the subject is missing) they don’t follow the prescriptive rules of grammar Pull some strings VS pull some important strings : in this case you can put something in the middle, why? Because you can have some exceptions, but you’ll never have exceptions related to the meaning: it is never transparent. Idiomatic expressions are related to the culture and country Piece of cake= super easy Couch potato=very lazy person Putting my cap on= eager to do something Paint the town red= tell everybody the news because you’re proud of something Bark up the wrong tree Go into water= you’re in a difficult situation Break a leg An apple of the eye: when you are the favourite of someone GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES and WORD CLASSES Grammatical morphemes may be either free roots (function words) or bound affixes (inflectional affixes), they express grammatical notions such as tense or number, what are called the grammatical categories
- No article+ plural of count nouns or singular of mass nouns (Tigers may be dangerous/ Gold is valuable) Gender The English language distinguishes masculine, feminine, common gender (m or f) and neuter (sexless gender). In English the gender is expressed by inflection only in personal pronouns and only in the 3 person, singular he, she, it; the 1st^ and 2nd^ person forms I, we, you are common gender, while the 3rd^ person plural they is either common or neuter; gender is normally a covert category of the noun, but it may also be expressed overtly on the English noun in a number of limited ways:
- By derivational suffixes, such as the feminine suffixes -ine (hero/heroine), -ess (god/goddess), -rix (aviator/aviatrix), and -ette (suffragist/suffragette) or the common gender suffixes, -er (baker), -ist (artist), -ian (librarian), -ster (prankster), and -ard (drunkhard)
- By compounds such as lady-, woman-, girl-, female-, -woman (lady friend, woman doctor, girlfriend, female firefighter, chairwoman) or boy-, male-, gentleman-, -man, (boyfriend, male nurse, gentleman caller, chairman)
- By separate forms for masculine, feminine, and common genders, such as boy/girl/child, rooster/hen/chicken
- By separate for masculine and feminine genders, such as uncle/aunt , stallion/mare, bachelor/spinster and proper names such as Joseph/Josephine, Henry/Henrietta Person This category has only three terms (1º, 2º, 3º):
- 1 st^ person: the speaker, person speaking
- 2 nd^ person: the addressee/hearer, the person spoken to
- 3 rd^ person: the person or thing spoken about Degree this category relates to adjectives and adverbs 3 terms: positive (it expresses a quality), comparative (it expresses a greater degree or intensity of the quality) and superlative (it expresses the greatest degree or intensity of the quality). The positive degree is expressed by the root of the adjective while the comparative or the superlative are expressed either by inflections or by periphrasis, depending on the phonological structure of the root. Note that:
- Sometimes the three degrees of a particular word are expressed by different roots (as in bad/worse/worst)> this is called suppletion
- Not all adjectives can be inflected for degree such as perfect, unique, round, full, empty, married and dead, because they express absolute qualities Case it indicates the function of a noun phrase (phrase doesn’t mean frase) or the relationship of a noun phrase to a verb or to other noun phrases in the sentence; we distinguish between:
- nominative (the function of subject)
- Genitive the case of possessor, It performs different functions: Possessive genitive: Felix’s car Subjective genitive: the movie’s star entrance (the performer of the action) Objective genitive: the city’s construction Genitive of origins: the baker’s cakes Genitive of measure: three-month’s leave (without ‘s it’s an adjective)
Descriptive genitive: person of integrity, a woman of courage Partitive genitive: a member of the crowd, a spoke of the wheel Double genitive: in which both periphrastic and inflectional forms cooccur: a friend of Rosa’s, no fault of his ; it is necessarily indefinite and a human inflected genitive; it normally has a partitive sense
- Objective the function of object> note that in most cases given that there is no distinction between objective and nominative case, the two of them are distinguished thanks to their position
- Dative case, it is really a subcategory of the objective case, as a matter of fact it represents the indirect object It is introduced either by a preposition like “to” or “for” or no preposition. Examples: He gave the book to Jane He (nominative case) gave Jane (dative case) the book (objective case) Definiteness The concept of definiteness and indefiniteness are intuitively quite simple: definite denotes a referent (a thing denoted by a noun) which is known, familiar, or identified to the speaker and hearer, while indefinite denotes a referent which is novel, unfamiliar, or not known; definiteness is a covert category obvious only in the cooccurrence of an article with a noun. Exercises: My parent’s car > possessive The hostages’ release > objective (they’re released by somebody else) The prisoners’ escape > subjective Workers’ rights > descriptive (refers to what type of rights) The cover of the book > descriptive Many hours’ delay > measure A week’s vacation > measure Common gender (either masculine or feminine); neuter gender (it is sexless). George/Georgina > I use affixation to form the feminine. a. Count/countess > derivational process to form the feminine b. Dog/bitch > separate words, dog (the masculine form) is used for the common gender, even if it is a feminine dog, you don’t say bitch c. Male nurse > I’m using a compound to indicate the masculine form. Nurse is used for the feminine and common gender. d. King/queen/monarch > we have two separate words for masculine and feminine and both are used very frequent; then we have monarch, that is used for common gender. e. Assistant > it is a common gender with derivational processes; you don’t say female/male assistant
affected or being acted upon ( passive voice ); the active is expressed by the simple forms of the verb, the passive is expressed periphrastically:
- By BE+ the past participle
- By GET+ the past participle Middle voice: the action of the verb reflects back upon the subject Notional passive: the sentence is active in form but passive in meaning We have a word order for each kind of sentence. Word order and word form are two different things; word order is basically syntax Prescriptivism: grammar is a set of rules and you need to follow them Descriptivism: we look at the language and we see how it is adapting, you have to learn the rules, but sometimes to adapt to the context grammar can be flexible it describes how elements in the sentence relate to each other. WORD CLASSES The inventory of word classes does not appear to be universal, but differs from language to language. In English we have 8 word classes:
- Nouns
- Verbs
- Adjectives
- Adverbs
- Pronouns
- Prepositions
- Conjunctions
- Articles/interjections We can divide word classes in -open word classes (you can still create something out of them)> nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs
- close word classes (pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions Open word classes:
- Nouns: common nouns & proper nouns; count & non-count nouns, concrete & abstract nouns
- Lexical (full or main) verbs: dynamic/stative verbs/copular verbs
- Adjectives: attributive e predicative
- Adverbs Closed word classes
- Pronouns
- Auxiliary verbs
- Prepositions
- Conjunctions
- Determiners: articles, possessives, indefinite, demonstrative, numerals> small functional words that come before a noun and specifies it We can then divided word classes in:
- Content words:
- Carry the primary communicative force of an utterance
- Are open or productive classes
- Are variable in form (inflected)
- Fall into the major parts of speech, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and some pronouns
- Their distribution is not definable by the grammar
- Function words
- Carry less of the communicative force of an utterance
- Express grammatical meaning (by relating sentence parts)
- Express the terms of grammatical categories (the meaning often expressed by inflections)
- Are closed or unproductive classes
- Are generally invariable in form (except demonstratives, modals and some pronouns)
- Fall into the minor parts of speech, including prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, particles, auxiliaries, articles, demonstratives, and some adverbs and pronouns. A word class is a group of words that behave in the same way morphologically and syntactically (used in the same way within the sentence). Since it may be difficult to establish an objective (formal) means of determining the word classes to whom the parts of the speech belong, linguists have created inflectional and distributional tests:
- In a distributional test, words that fill the same syntactic slot, that is, fit into the same syntactic position and function, are considered to belong to the same class of words
- In an inflectional test, all words that take a particular inflectional suffix are considered to belong to the same class of words Distributional and inflectional tests must be used in combination, because words belonging to the same class may not meet all of the tests. Nouns Inflectional tests for nouns include the plural -s inflection and the genitive –‘s inflection. We can distinguish:
- Proper vs common nouns: proper nouns denote a unique referent and in most cases they occur in the singular and not pluralizable, however some proper nouns are just plural.
- Count vs noncount nouns: count nouns denote items that are individuated and can be pluralized and counted, while noncount nouns denote substances that exist in bulk or unspecified quantities
- Abstract vs concrete nouns: abstract nouns denote things which are not tangible and cannot be known through the senses
- Collective nouns name groups of individuals which together form a unit We consider three distributional tests for nouns:
- Nouns can follow a subclass of words called determiners , which include articles, demonstratives, possessives, wh-words, and quantifiers
- Plural count nouns and mass nouns may follow an adjective, but single count nouns and proper nouns cannot
- All nouns except proper nouns can follow the sequence of determiner and adjective ADJECTIVES: Inflectional tests for adjective include the inflection -er for the comparative and the inflection - est for the superlative
- Attributive position before the noun
- Predicative position after the verb Some occur in both positions
- Post positive position (after the nouns)
o They can occur before a noun and after “be” > she has four cats / she is forty. o They cannot compare or take “-ly” > *fourer *fourly o Position is key to decide> English is an analytic language, so the position is crucial. If a numeral is a determiner, it has to come before a noun, otherwise it is simply a numeral. Exercise: 1 five twos are TEN > numeral 2 SEVEN is my lucky number > numeral 3 each team consists of ELEVEN players > determiner 4 they’ve invited me to a SECOND interview > determiner 5 he was the LAST to arrive, as usual > numeral VERBS o Lexical (verbs that carry the meaning, normally they are the main verb of the sentence) vs auxiliaries a) Primary auxiliaries vs modal auxil o Dynamic vs stative (distinguish the meaning of the word) o Present vs past o Finite vs non-finite LEXICAL VERBS Difference between a verb and a verb phrase: o I saw an elephant: see is the verb, but everything is included in the verb phrase. For example we have the same verb also in other two clauses: o You didn’t see one: you (noun phrase) didn’t see (verb phrase) one (noun phrase) o They couldn’t have seen one; they (noun phrase) couldn’t have seen (verb phrase) one (noun phrase) These are three clauses. Within each clause we got phrases. In the first one, within this I’ve got three phrases: I (noun phrase) saw (verb phrase) an elephant (noun phrase). PRIMARY VERBS They can function either as main verbs or as auxiliary verbs. There are just three of them: be, have and do. Main verb use: o They are happy … Every time we talk about the infinitive form of a verb without to: base form or bare infinitive. o -s form or 3rd person o -ing participle or present participle o -ed form or past tense o -ed form or -en form or past participle Another distinction: nonfinite and finite. Normally in English clauses must have a finite verb form, because a finite verb expresses the tense… The 3 nonfinite forms (forms that do not express the tense and the person) are: o base form - bare infinitive - infinitive without to o -ing form o - en form A finite verb phrase contains a finite verb. o He may have eaten too much. o He eats a lot. A nonfinite verb phrase does not contain a finite verb. o Having eaten too much, he felt sick. o Not eating is bad for you. Exercise: 1. Rinsing 2. Made 3. Having put
- To have been seen 5. / 6. Drinking Full verbs and auxiliaries: Finite verb forms: o Tense: present or past o Concord: only in the 3rd person singular (exception: be > suppletive) o Mood: indicative, imperative, subjunctive (marked in the verb phrase, … Subjunctive: Present Formally identical to the base form for all verbs. With the verb BE it is the form BE for all persons. Does not require an auxiliary. Functions: o Mandative: I demand that he leave. o Formulaic: God save the queen Subjunctive: Past Formally identical to the past form of all verbs. With the verb BE, it is the form WERE for all persons (not obligatory in if clauses). Used in CONDITIONAL clauses and in SUBORDINATE clauses after “wish” and “suppose”. WERE is obligatory in conditionals with inversions: “Were to come…” Uses: official pronouncements, committee meeting. Obligatory in fixed phrases as: … Vedo slides ASPECT We only have two aspects in English: o Progressive aka continuous o Perfect aka perfective Stative (think, love, verbs related to emotions, agree, want, dislike) vs dynamic verbs (they are all the verbs that express the meaning of an action, also from an abstract point of view, whereas stative verbs are verbs that express emotions…). PERFECT Functions: o Current relevance of event o State leading from a point in the past up to the present o Event as news with focus on present result o Habit (or repetition) within a time frame leading up to the present o Indefinite past, not specified Even though: preposition
SYNTAX
The smallest unite of syntax is the phrase, then we have clauses and then sentences. Syntax is the study of the combination of words, how words combine to form clauses and sentences. The black Labrador/ was chewing /a juicy bone/ very noisily The four parts in which the sentence was divided are phrases. There are different types of phrases in English Each phrase has a head, which is the part of phrase that you cannot remove The black Labrador= noun phrase (NP) Was chewing= verb phrase (VP) A juicy bone= noun phrase the head is bone (ADJP) Very noisily= adverb phrase=> the head is noisily (ADVP) This sentence is a sequence of phrases, when I group phrases I form a clause, when I combine clauses I have a sentence, a complex sentence. How do you identify phrases? Exactly by noticing which is the head of the phrase, so the head carries the meaning. If your head is an adjective you have an adjectival phrases (adjP) If your head is a preposition you have a prepositional phrases (PP), these are the only phrases that need a minimum of two elements, the other phrases can be composed also by one single element (and they often are) Features of phrases
- All phrases (except PP) may be composed of one world only
- All phrases can be expanded : All cats are known to like fresh cream : all cats (complex noun phrase: all is a modifier and then cats which is the head), are known to like (complex verb phrase), fresh cream (complex noun phrase, in this phrase fresh is a modifier) the words in bold can be removed This large sugary doughnuts filled with jam and cream are really fattening This large sugary doughnuts= complex NP large sugary= complex AdjP Filled= VP With jam and cream= PP The Irish /defeated the Italians at rugby The Irish= simple noun phrase [Defeated…at rugby]= complex verb phrase The Italians at rugby= noun phrase At rugby= prepositional phrase
A luxury apartment in the heart of Oxford is it a complex noun phrase or a sentence?
It is a complex noun phrase A luxury apartment: noun phrase (luxury here works as a premodifier)
