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MORFOSINTASSI INGLESE (Piotti) LEZIONE 1 – 07/10/ What does it mean to know a word? Pronunciation and spelling: pronunciation is a matter of where we come from. Functions of words (Types of) Meaning(s)
GREASY
GREASY car engine
GREASY chips
GREASY hair/fingers(dirty hair or fingers)
GREASY person (friendly but not natural way)
Denotative vs connotative meaning Fox Denotative meaning: an animal Connotative meaning: smart/clever as a fox, the material of a cloth Meaning(s) changes Polysemy (a word has multiple meanings which are related to each other)
- Fox as an animal. - Cleveras a fox. Othertypes of change: o To friend – it has become a verb thanks to social media – from a noun to a verb o To google o Brexit – totally new word derived from Britain exit Change is a function of time in the sense that it takes time to spread around. Recentchanges: o (de)friend; google; twitter; white helmets; Brexit; etc. Oldchanges: o Fox: “animal” (early IX cent.) o Fox: allusions to “its cunning” (1200 ca) The parts a word can be composed of The network of meaning relations with other words The network of syntactic relations with other words
TAKE:
- Notes - A photograph - A break - An airplane - A taxi - Someoneprisoner - A pill - Power - A seat - A sip - A bus - A look at - Someone to court - A deepbreath Where a word is used (variety) –words more popular in one variety than another. o Put/set the cat among the pigeons (British & Australian) – make somebody feel angry - Tell them all they’ve got to work on Saturday. That should set the cat among the pigeons. When a word is used (context; formality; new vs old-fashioned) o Be somebody’s pigeons (Bitish& Australian old-fashioned) - Finance isn’t my pigeon. Ask Brian about that. How often a word is used (frequency – core – vocabulary) By whom a word is used (slang; jargon; euphemisms; PC (politically correct) language) - Last night was flop. I was supposed to go to a party with my friends, but they flopped on me. They are allsuchfloppers. [slang] - In August 2008, 19 individuals brought a putative class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Facebook and the companies that had participated in Beacon, alleging violations of various federal and state privacy laws. [jargon
- linguaggio tecnico-specializzato] - To sack, fire (licenziare) / Downsize(to reduce down the size of something – ridurre la forzalavoro)– the second one is formal (to give something unpleasant something more pleasant – sicreaun’immaginemenobrutta di ciòche in realtà è) – [Euphemistics expression] - Chairman / Chairperson (the second one can refer to both a woman or a man while the first one is related only to men and can be offensive for women) – [PC language] - White helmets La lingua che noi parliamo cambia il nostro modo di vedere le cose. WORD KNOWLEDGE WHY study these features? Grammar is an unconscious rule we follow when we talk our language. Rules of nature. This is a type of grammar which is natural. It is something that native speakers don’t need to learn.
of this colonization. English has an official role and it is the most spoken language, even if it is not the only one (biglossia e talvoltaanche triglossia). Eventually, the expanding circle includes countries such as China, Brazil and Italy, where English is just the language used to speak with people who have different first language and it has not an official role. The number of speakers of English around the world has massively increased. We have now the so called mushroom model. Which words first for learners of English? The mostfrequent 3,000 words; Terms in one’s field of specialisation; Words one wants to learn; Words which trigger strategies for learning new words; RECEPTIVE AND PRODUCTIVE LEXICAL COMPETENCE Receptive / passive lexicalcompetence (più di quelle attive) Broaderthan Productive / active Different types of word knowledge develop at different times Different types of word knowledge overlap (e.g. Frequency and formality) – there is a close relation between frequency and formality. Tra le parole più frequenti troviamo le parole meno formali o comunque quelle che per certi versi sono neutre. Vocabularyaquisition: incremental WORDHOOD (essere parola): ENGLISH WORDS How english words differ from words in other languages!? What counts as a word in english? Divide the following passage into words: I like looking for bits and pieces like old second-hand record players and doing them up to look like new.
- I - Like - Looking for - Bits - And - Pieces - Like - Old - Second-hand - Record players - And - Doing up - Them - To - Look like - New
LEZIONE 3 – 14/10/
Which criteria do you use to distinguish those words? 5criteria:
- Semantic (expresses an unified semantic concept)
- Phological( potential pause; stress)
- Morhological(has an internal cohesion,indivisibile by other units..modified only externally by suffixes and prefixes)
- Grammatical(falls into particolar classes)
- Sytactactic(has external distribution or mobility, it is moved as a unit not in parts) [Supermarket / travel agency / forget-me-not / Runner-up / Jack-of-all-trades / try out / pins and needles] From the syntactic point of view they are a unit, you cannot split them into a sentence. Ortographically: Single word units MWUs (a.k.a. Phrases) – multiple word units…they are lexical units consist of a large number of word Semantically: equallyunified MWUs can be replaced by single units - Try out = test - Pins and needles = pain - Bits and pieces= collection Syntactically: each can be moved as a single unit Morphologically: idiosyncrasies Forget-me-nots / Forget-me-not’s (SU) Runners up (MWU) vs runner-up’s (SU) Jack-of-all-trades (MWU) / Jack-of-all-trades’ (SU) Try out the car / try the car out / tried out the car / tried the car out (MWU) Semantic is the only reliable criteria. It is always consistent. THE TERM WORD What does word means exactly? Sister, sisters, sister’s, sisters’, house, houses, etc. --> only 2 words!! 4 different orthographic and phonetic realization of the same word: sister Every phonetic and orthographic realization --> WORD FORM --> the physical unit or concrete realization, either the orthographical word or the phonological word. LEXEME: like a dictionary entry. Includes all word forms of a word. A kind of abstraction or class of forms Indicated by small capitols.(Unità che veicola un concetto. La realizzazione di quel concetto è la forma di parola, vedi sopra.)
LEZIONE 4 – 19/10/
BREXIT
PHABLET
Bozo/mutt/con/etc. Dog/pig Take a new direction Direction not as a path, but with a figurative meaning. When you talk about phablet and brexit, you use words that already exist and put them toghether and it creates a totally new word. You are basically changing the language. Language CHANGE How and why does language change?
- Language changes because it has to addapt to new needs.
- Due to influence of another language – language contacts. Socio-historicalcontext Cultural context: contacts with another culture and there is an exchange Language contact (borrowing) Social differentiation (slang; jargon): emotional reaction to something. Italwaysconveys the speaker’sattitudes. Emotionalreaction (euphemismus; slang) Cognitive processes (metaphor; metonymy) Natural processes in usage (speech) Language learning Even some common words in English are not really English like: city (from French), skirt (from Scandinavia). Very ordinary words are not English and come from other languages. Language changes for different needs. LANGUAGE CHANGE (vocabulary) Two major types of changes: Lexical whenever new words are introduced in a language and which also convey new meanings.
- New forms for new meanings.
- Or we can also have new forms but no new meanings. (To climb --> to mount --> to accend – the second one comes from french while the last one comes from latin and the first one is typical english). Alcune parole dal latino passano direttamente all’inglese, altre invece passano prima per il francese, ad esempio.) – (Kingly (anglosaxon) -->royal (french) -->regal (latin)). Semantic when we use words present in the vocabulary but the meaning changes. No new forms, but new meanings. It occurs whenever a word already in language vocabulary gets new meaning. Some linguistics distinguish between internal and external language change.
A) LEXICAL CHANGE
- Derivation che include prefissazione e affissazione - Zero-derivation (derivazione a morfo zero) - Compounding (composizione) - Blending (es. brexit, phablet, vlogger, etc.) – (amalgamare) - Shortening (inizialism (sigle), acronim, etc.) - Back formation - Multi Word Units (MWUs) All these processes represent WORD FORMATION! - Borrowing - Slang - Euphemisms (taboos; socially sensitive issues like ethnicity;) BORROWING Ex. City/court Take Skirt/sky/skin (ogni volta che si pronuncia sk allora la parola non è inglese altrimenti sarebbe sc) They/them/their (from scandinavian language – th; anche Themes (Tamigi) è unaparolascandinava) Budget (from latin and then to French) -chester/-cester/-sester/-ceter/-caster (from latin) Maquiladora Vuvuzela BORROWING + WF Rules that all native words undergo even if they are borrowed. - Budgetary - Budgetless - Budget-maker - Budget-man WORD FORMATION PROCESSES (Major WF): compounding, affixation, zero-derivation (Minor WF: acronysm, abbreviations, blends, back-formation, combining forms - Footsie(FTSE) - Quango (quasi non-governmentalorganization) - Humvee - BOGOF (buy one, get one free) - GMO (geneticallymodified) - Frenemy (friend + enemy) - Offshoring > to offshore (back-formation) - Hyper-, mega-, cyber-, euro-, e-/E- (extremelyproductive)
THE INTERNAL STABILITY OF WORDS: SIMPLE AND COMPLEX WORDS
Is a word the smallest unit of morphological structure? DOG CHILDISH UNDERSERVEDLY SIMPLE WORDS VS COMLEX WORDS When we talk about simple words we talk about words like “dog” for example. You cannot break them down any further. Complex words: you can break them down into their constituent elements (rewriting, childish, eyewitness, etc,) Each constituent element into which complex words can be segmented is a Morph. Complex words has at least 2 morphs. A morph is the smallest unit in morphological structure. We can have different types of morphs according to: Distributional possibilities (where they occur in the word and whether or not they can stand alone). We talk about free and bound (English). Liberi e legati è legato alla lingua inglese. Type of meaning and function (each morph has a function and a meaning). Normally morph can be divided into lexical morphs and grammatical ones. Questa distinzione invece riguarda un po’ tutte le lingue. FREE MORPHS They can stand alone as independent words/lexemes. All nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions and articles are free morphs. Ex. Dog, write, deserve, child. BOUND MORPHS They cannot stand alone. They occur in combination only with 3 morphs. Ex. Dogs --> dog + s --> S is the bound morph because it cannot stand alone like dog. Ex. –ish; un-; -ly; re-; etc; -ing; -ed; -s; ‘s; ‘m; ‘re; ve; -er; -est; LEXICAL MORPHS(dictionary meaning) They convey the major, lexical content: things, qualities, events, etc. They form a large, open set. They may serve as bases for bound morphs. They can be free (ex. Dog; child; deserve; ear; love; boy; etc.) They can also be bound (ex. –ish; re-; -ly; etc.) --> derivation ffixes (ex. –able; -ness; dis-;) GRAMMATICAL MORPHS (grammatical meaning): number, gender like “he”, “she”, etc. They can only provide grammatical information. (Ex. Number; case; tense; aspect; person; etc.). They are motivated by the grammar/syntax. They represent a closed set. They can be free (ex. And, but, by, in, the, it, me, etc.). They can also be bound (ex. –s; -‘s (possession); -‘ve; etc.) --> inflectional affixes or endings (ex. – s; -ed; -ing; etc.) – clitics (ex. They’ve; ‘s; the king’s crown; etc.) Dog --> [dog] Childish --> [child + ish] Rewriting --> [re + writ + ing]
Child (a young human who is not yet an adult) Childish (typical of a child/(disapproving) immature Person > quality Noun(s) >adj (c) Element [-ish] Love (I love): like; be fond of; > Love (for/of): feeling of deep affection Meaning is affected Grammar is affected Morphology is not affected Action > state/feeling Verb(s) >noun (s) Element [Zero morph] Witness and ear: (person who sees something happen + organ of hearing)>earwitness (person who hears something happen) Grammar is not affected Morphology is affected Element[ear]+[witness] Breakfast and lunch (early morning meal + midday meal)>bruch (meal in late morning) Meaning is affected Morphology is affected Grammar is not affected Entity 1 + entity 2 > entity 3 Noun (c) + noun (s) > noun (s) Element [breakfast] + [lunch] LEZIONE 6 – 26/10/ Prefixation: prefix (Bound lexical morph) + free morph Before a free morph (root/base) Generallyclass-mantaining Ex.
- Complete (adj) > in – complete (adj) - To friend (vb) > de – friend (vb) - Smoker (n) > non – smoker (n), etc. Una radice non può essere scomposta, ma una base si!
Examples: bio-chemistry, tele-conference, ethno-linguist, e-postcard, eco-activist, Euro-group, etc. Isolated from the original words and then used to create new words. Can be added to free morphs // e- (for eletronic) e-mail Can be added to another combining form // Euro-phile Can be added to another affix (bound morph) // cephal-ic What’s the difference between combining forms and affixes? Morphosyntactic perspective Semantic perspective [aggiungi slide sumorphosyntactic perspective] Le combining forms sonopiùflessibili... [aggiungi slide su semantic perspective] WHAT ABOUT INFLECTION? What does it mean? It is responsible of new forms but only for the same lexeme. Doesnot produce new lexemes Is only responsible for the production of word-forms of a single lexeme LEZIONE 7 – 28/10/ ZERO-DERIVATION It’s a process in which a word has a new grammatical function. A new grammatical structure without changing anything in the word. Verb --> Noun TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES Moving –noun- > -verb- movie > ex. “Let’s movie!” Beauty –noun- > -verb- beauty > ex. “Let’s beauty!” Los Angeles > L.A. > ex. “A new way to L.A.” Family –noun- > verb > ex. “How we family” In morphology Verbing/verbification is just one subcategory of:
- Zero-derivation
- Conversion
- Functional shift SOME FURTHER SUBCATEGORIES Wet / to wet>verbing Leg / to leg>verbing Hoover / to hoover>verbing
To doubt / doubt > the oppost of verbing Friend / to friend (facebook since 2005) >verbing ZERO-DERIVATION (definition) A process to form new words by assigning and existing word to a new class/syntactic category/part of speech without changing its form in any way. DERIVATION ZERO-DERIVATION Legal (adj) > to legal-ize (v) – “to make legal” Clean (adj) > to clean (v) – “to make clean” Atom (noun) > to atom-ize (v) – “to do sthusing atoms” Skype (n) >to skype (v) – “to do sth using skype” To bake (v) > bake-r (persona chesvolgel’azione)
- “Somebody who bakes sth” To cook (v) > cook (persona checucina) – “Somebody who cooks sth” In each group of examples: Adj>verb Noun>verb Verb>noun Zero-derivation: derivation by means of a zero-morph (ø). Thanks to its association with other lexemes having the same derivative relationship expressed by an overtmorph. Typical of english (very few examples in Italian) A result of loss of inflectional endings in Middle English (1100-1500) Recently has become very productive (in the social media and marketing, advertising) It is NOT a new phenomenon!
*-looking X-smelling ‘That smell(s) (like) X’(always intr.) Foul-smelling Sweet-smelling There are different shades of transparency. There are intermediate steps. E.g. Sweet-smelling Flowers/herbs/perfume/smoke/fragrance, etc. --> does it make sense? It is a bit less transparent than foul-smelling. ‘That smell(s) sweet’? ‘That smell(s) like sugar’? ‘thatsmell(s) pleasant’ X-looking (adjective + looking) ‘That looks X’ (always intr. But forward-looking?) Good-looking E.g. Good-looking (people) ‘Thatlooksgood?’ ‘thatlooksattractive’ Natural-looking Basically we use it for things. ‘That looks natural’? E.g. (Achieve/produce/get) (the most) natural-looking results E.g. Natural-looking porcelain/lashes/tan/hairline ‘Nobody will ever know you paid a lot of/so little money for this’. Fakes of various kinds (cose non originali). BLENDING To blend = mixing things toghether The name of the process. Some examples of blends:
- Chunnel<channel + tunnel - Brunch<breakfast + lunch - Smog <smoke + fog - Edutainment<education + entertainment - Chillax<chill out + relax - Frenemy< friend + enemy Blending: blends, also known as portmanteau words - the fusion of both the forms and meanings of two lexemes.
- First lexeme usually loses something at the end, and the second something at the beginning. The vast majority of blends are noun. Blends are very popular in: - Journalism - Advertising - Technical fields Blends tend to belong to a more informal stylistic level. Il linguaggio della stampa è infatti fonte inesauribile di neologismi. Si devono avvicinare al linguaggio della massa. SHORTENING To reduce something/to make it short. It includes several processes like: - Back formation : a new lexeme is formed by leaving out what is mistakenly thought to be an affix or ending. Problem: which came first? 1. Semantic inclusion (see also zero- derivation). Non possiamo pensare all’azione senza pensare alla persona che la fa quindi l’azione prende il nome da chi compie l’azione. 2. The history of English. - Initialism : twogroups: o Acronyms: NATO, AIDS, PIN, etc. (Series of letters pronounced as words). Also laser and scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) are examples of acronysm. An acronym can in turn be a base/root for a new lexeme: scuba-diving. o Abbreviations: CIA, DIY, UN, BBC, etc. (Series of first letters pronounced as a series of letters) **- Clipping
- Ellipsis** Examples: To edit< editor (non è un suffisso perché la parola nasce come editor, ma poi la back formation ci porta a “to edit”) Greed < greedy To televize< television NATO CIA DIY UN AIDS BBC PIN Those in red are pronounced as words. The others are pronounced as series of letters. Lexeme that consist of a number of first letters --> INITIALISM LEZIONE 9 – 04/11/
Ellipsis : a new lexeme is formed by leaving out one of the words in a Multi Word Unit. The missing/omitted part is required by grammar. The missing part can be easily recovered from the context. We all know that we we say mobile we mean mobile phone, for example. The remaining part taking on both the meaning and word class of the whole (e.g. Mobiles; squares, etc.). Square when it is used alone stands for “square number”. EXAMPLES OF SHORTENING IN BUSINESS ENGLISH Acronyms or abbreviations? EOM (End Of Month – used on invoices to show taht they should be paid within 30 days) EPS (Earnings Per Share) EMS (European Monetary System) EIB (European Investment Bank) ECB (Eurpean Central Bank) EEA (European Economic Area), etc. EMU (European Monetary Union) ESOP (European Employee Stock Ownership Plan) EURIBOR (half acronym, half clipping – European InterBank Offered Rate) LEXICAL CHANGE: BORROWING General remarks
- Over 120 languages all over the world are recorded as sources of the vocabulary of Present Day English (PDE: target language) They involve the whole history of the language. - Foreigninfluence shows in Loanwords (prestiti) Loantranslations (calchi strutturali) Loan word: introduction of new forms and meanings from foreign languages (source languages) Ex. City Take Garage Pizza Datum/data Data/datas Maquiladora Vuvuzela La lingua replica si può adattare al proprio sistema fonologico e i parlanti non la riconoscono come lingua straniera. Integrazionevuol dire adattamentoalla lingua. Loan translation: translation of foreign expressions, word-for-word; reproduction of foreign expressions using... Whatif...? ...English hadn’t been exposed to the influence of all those foreign languages? ...the more recently established WF processes had never been introduced? ALTERNATIVE WORDS: THE OLD ENGLISH WAY The past > the forgonehood
The future > the tocome Return >backgive Astronomy >starnaming Astrology >starlore Geograohy>knowcraft Linguistics >speechlore THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN LAYERS IN PDE The interplay between Anglo-Saxon, French and Latin/Greek is particularly evident in kinship terms:
- (Anglo Saxon origin) the basic kinship terms, ex. Father, mother, husband, wife
- Hybrid formations, i.e. Old English + foreign language
- (French/Latin origin) other kinship terms: ex. Aunt, uncle, nice, and nephew The interplay between Anglo-Saxon, French and Latin/Greek is particularly evident also in lexical doublets and triplets, i.e. Groups of 2/3 words: - havingdifferentphonologicalform - Havingdifferentetymologicalroots - Have entered the language through different routes - Samemeaning Il core vocabulary è per lo più di origine anglossasone. LEZIONE 10 – 09/11/ GREEN SALT REFLECT Which words can be associated to those words? Our answers: Salt and pepper Sea salt Green economy Greengrocery Green energy The same association task administered to: - Native speakers - Lesscompetentusers of English - Users with a low competence / children Some results: Salt water Salt and pepper Salt – pepper Green economy
