Schemi inglese grammatica e comunicazione, Sintesi del corso di Lingua Inglese

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Laboratorio Inglese A

(Grammatica)

What is Morphology? A subdiscipline of Linguistics which studies the internal structure of words, the rules that govern it, as well as the ways of creating new words. It is normally subdivided into two branches: DERIVATIONAL (or Lexical) MORPHOLOGY → studies the means by which existing words have been constructed and by which new words might be created. INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY → studies the way words are adapted in different grammatical contexts (e.g. making a noun plural). MORPHEME → is the smallest meaningful unit. Simplex words : consist of only one morpheme. Complex words : consist of more than one morpheme. Types of morphemes E.g., unhappy government Bound morphemes, such as ‘un- ’ and ‘-ment’ , which appear only attached to other, usually free, morphemes are termed AFFIXES. PREFIXES→ affixes attached before the base SUFFIXES→ affixes attached after the base Affixes can differ in their position with respect to their bases: cases in which the affix is inserted into the base → INFIXES In English, infixation generally only happens with swear words such as ‘abso-bloody- lutely’. Present Simple The Present Simple is used:

• to talk about things in general and when something is generally or always true. E.g.: Nurses look after patients in hospitals.
• when we say how often (e.g., every day , twice a week , etc.) we do things. E.g.: I get up at 8 o’clock every morning.
• for a situation that we think is more or less permanent. E.g.: They live in London.
• for short actions that are happening now. The actions are so short that they are finished almost as soon as you’ve said the sentence. This is often used with sports commentary. E.g.: He takes the ball, he runs down the wing, and he scores!

The noun modifier is invariable. It is usually in the singular form: a race horse is a horse that runs in races a war story is a story about war tennis shoes are shoes for playing tennis If there is a plural it is on the real noun only boat race → boat races NOT boats race, boats races A few nouns look plural but we usually treat them as singular. When used as adjectives they are unchanged; es. a news reporter, three news reporters Adverbs Adverbs represent a very different class of words. There are basically two kinds:

• those which refer to circumstantial information about the action, event or process, such as the time, the place, or the manner of it, such as: yesterday, now , there, inside , carefully, nicely
• those which serve to intensify other adverbs and adjectives: very hard , extremely uncomfortable , terribly quietly Adjectives ending in - ing and - ed There are many adjectives ending in - ing and - ed : Jane is bored because her job is boring. The - ing adjectives → tell you about the job. The - ed adjectives → tell you how somebody feels about the job. Cf. interesting vs. interested , surprising vs. surprised , disappointing vs. disappointed , shocking vs. shocked Magazines vs. Newspapers NEWSPAPERS → published daily or weekly; concentrate on news; printed on cheaper paper (called newsprint ) MAGAZINES → often published monthly or bi-monthly; have a much wider range of focuses; printed on more expensive and high-quality paper → glossy magazine

Coverlines → the magazine equivalent of front-page headlines. Short lines of text on the front cover of magazines which try to get the reader’s interest by describing some of the articles in the magazine. Characterised by language devices used throughout the worlds of media and marketing to grab people’s attention and make messages more memorable. Similar to slogans and newspaper headlines. Newspapers in the UK In the UK, newspapers have traditionally been divided into two types: Tabloids → also known as the popular press (e.g., the Sun , the Daily Mirror ) tend to be more sensationalist and light-hearted. Broadsheets → (e.g., the Telegraph , the Sunday Times ) are considered more serious and intellectual, and are also known as the quality press. The distinction used to correspond to the actual sizes of the newspapers: broadsheets use much large paper, while tabloids are around half the size of broadsheets. Several quality newspapers in the UK have recently changed their paper size, e.g., The Times and the Guardian , which has caused some confusion over whether to call them broadsheets or tabloids. This has led to the creation of a new term, compact, which refers to their small size, and not the quality of their journalism. Countable vs. Uncountable nouns Nouns are either countable or uncountable. Countable nouns → have a singular and plural form: e.g. room-rooms , bus-buses , city- cities When in the singular form, they regularly take a / an , when in the plural, they take some : e.g. a reservation , an appointment , some facilities They may have a singular or plural verb form: e.g. My flight is delayed. vs. The tickets aren’t very expensive. Use many with plural countable nouns: e.g. How many gates are there in Terminal 1? Not many. Uncountable nouns → cannot have a plural form: e.g. money , information , luggage They regularly take some : es. some information (or a piece of information ) They use a singular verb form: es. Our luggage is already on the plane. Use much with uncountable nouns: e.g. How much money did you spend? Not much.

OTHER VERBS:

Affermative → I / you / She / We / You / They worked > REGULAR (V)S* Negative → I / you / She / We / You / They did not work > didn’t work Interrogative → Did I / you / She / We / You / They work? For questions and negative forms, use the auxiliary did Es. Did you go out last night? No, I didn’t. Very often the Past Simple ends in - ed (regular (v)s): I work in a travel agency now. Before that I worked in a shop.

• If the (v) ends in - e , add - d : live-d , smoke-d
• If the (v) ends in consonant + - y, also change the - y to - i : try → tr-i-ed (cf. play → play- ed )
• If the (v) is short and ends in vowel + consonant , double the final consonant: stop → stop-p-ed Many (v)s are irregular: was / were , spoke , took , said , went , put , let , etc. Present Perfect The Present Perfect → places an event in a period of time which extends up and includes speech time: They left New York last week. vs. They have left New York. It is not used with adjuncts which express definite time: yesterday , last x , x ago. Ad(v)s of frequency (e.g. ever , never , often ) are instead used with it. The Present Perfect is not used after interrogative conjunctions that refer to definite points in time: when / at what time. When the speaker and hearer both know that an event took place in the past, the Present Perfect cannot be used: A: Has John brought the books back? B: No, he hasn't. His car broke down on the way home and he had to walk most of the way. After that, he was too tired to go out again. The event referred to by the Present Perfect is currently relevant: The children have come back. vs. The children came back. With (v)s expressing states, the Present Perfect is accompanied by adjuncts: BE + to → Have you been to Paris? Momentary acts and events and transitions are presented as ‘hot news’. They are often reinforced by just : Someone has just knocked on the door.

- ED

DID

The Past Continuous We use the past continuous to set the scene in a story, e.g., Last night, I was walking home and listening to my iPod when… We use the past continuous for actions in progress in the past or longer actions interrupted by shorter actions in the past simple, e.g., When she opened the door, we were talking about her. The Past Perfect We use the past perfect simple to talk about earlier events and experiences or single actions completed earlier in the past, e.g., When she opened the door, he had already left. We use the past perfect simple with stative verbs to talk about states or situations that had started earlier in the past. We often use how long , for or since , always , etc., e.g., The day I left I had been in England for exactly four years. Past Perfect vs. Present Perfect Compare the following examples: Who’s that woman? I’ ve never seen her before. vs. I didn’t know who she was. I had never seen her before. The house is dirty. They haven’t cleaned it for weeks. vs. The house was dirty. They hadn’t cleaned it for weeks. Past Perfect vs. Past Simple ‘Was Tom at the party when you arrived?’ ‘No, he had already gone home. vs. ‘Was Tom at the party when you arrived?’ ‘Yes, but he went home soon afterwards.

Background information: The radio Radio around the world

• Regulated by governments or their agencies, and by international treaties
• Limited set of frequency bands on which radio stations can transmit their signals → CONTROL Es. , International treaties are required to prevent a radio station from one country monopolizing frequency bands in a neighbouring country, and to promote the optimal usage of the radio spectrum.
• Importance of the media in controlling information to the public → many governments have sought as much control as possible over radio and other media
• Establishment and enormous influence of state-sponsored broadcasters, e.g., the BBC in Britain BBC Radio
• Founded in 1922, the BBC has never been controlled by the government
• Independent of the government in terms of the content of its broadcasting, BUT the government still has the power to end its licence.
• Radio in the UK was further deregulated after 1973 → other stations received licences to broadcast nationwide.
• Nowadays, the market for broadcast radio in the UK is much more open than previously, BUT still regulated by OFCOM (Office of Communications) o manages frequency band allocation o ensures quality and service standards o promotes competition
• Rise of internet based digital radio → regulators (e.g., OFCOM) are losing some control → radio is becoming truly deregulated.

Word classes or Parts of speech One of the traditional ways of analysing sentences is known as ‘ parsing’ , i.e., identifying each word in a sentence and assigning it to the appropriate part of speech – i.e., (v), noun, adjective, ad(v), preposition. E.g., Tara ran to the nearest station quickly. (V) > auxiliary ( be, have, must ) or lexical ( act, produce, like ) NOUN > thing or person ADJECTIVE > describes a noun DETERMINER > determines a noun ( a/an, the, some, any ) AD(V) > describes a (v), Adj or Adv PREPOSITION > links a N to another word ( to, at, on, in ) PRONOUN > replaces a N ( She, I, some ) CONJUNCTION > joins clauses or sentences or words ( and, but ) INTERJECTION > exclamation ( oh, well ) NB: PHRASE vs. CLAUSE vs. SENTENCE True-life stories in magazines They involve normal people coping with unusual situations, typically tragedies (illnesses, death of loved ones, accidents, crimes, addictions, severe poverty, etc.). Common themes:

• love and relationships, e.g., cheating partners, finding true love in an unexpected place, etc.
• lifechanging events, e.g., moving abroad, winning a lottery, coincidences etc. True stories appear in many different types of magazines but tend to be more common in women’s magazines or magazines aimed at the mass market (TV magazines, celebrity magazines, etc.) Most true stories in magazines can be divided into four sections :
• Moral (the lesson of the story)
• Problem
• Setting (characters, place, time)
• Solution

deny + THAT-clause OR - ing form: He denied having / that he had eaten the cake. promise + infinitive: He promised to come back earlier. beg + obj + infinitive: She begged her parents to buy her the toy Compounding Compounding or composition → is the use of two or more roots to form a word: workforce. One particular type of compounding is the phrasal verb : deal with , look for. In compounding, two independent words are put together to form a new meaning that is not always obvious from their individual meanings: greenhouse. Compounds can belong to any major word category. Compound Nouns : N + N → job market , job centre V + N → pickpocket , playground Adj + N → blackbird N and N → gin and tonic Phrase → mother-in-law Compound Adjectives : N + Adj → sugar-free Adv/Prep. + V → ready-built Adj + N → full-time Phrase → ready-to-wear Adj + Adj → bitter-sweet Adj + derived Adj → blue-eyed Compound Verbs : N + V → to proof-read Adj + V → to shortcut V + V → to stir-fry Compounds may be semantically transparent or opaque : Transparent compounds → are endocentric ( sunflower ). Opaque compounds → are exocentric ( red tape ).

A third category is represented by copulative or appositional compounds ( queen mother ). Active vs. Passive Voice We use an active verb to say what the subject does: Es. It’s a big company. It employs two hundred people. We use a passive verb to say what happens to the subject: Es. Two hundred people are employed by the company. When we use the passive, who or what causes the action is often unknown: Es. A lot of money was stolen in the robbery. If we want to say who does or what causes the action, we use by : Two hundred people are employed by the company. The Passive Voice President Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. Two men were arrested. My wallet was stolen. The main verb is always in past participle form and the auxiliary verb is always be. To form the required tense, we conjugate the auxiliary verb. ► Interviews The interview is one of the most widely used and extensively developed formats for public communication in the world (Corner 1999: 37). There are various types of interviews: political news interviews or survey research interviews , whose main function is to gain information, and celebrity talk shows interviews , which focus on entertaining the audience apart from gaining information.

location of the interview, as well as the interviewee’s behaviour and body language, as both of these provide good background information. Finally, the reconstruction stage involves writing up hand-written notes from the interview, and should take place immediately after the interview while it is fresh in the interviewer’s mind. This includes writing abbreviations out in full, making sure the interviewer has a record of which answers go with which questions, and underlining key quotes. This stage makes the writing of the actual article much easier. A good interview

• It should be well researched and interesting to read.
• It should give a sense of the personality of the interviewee, not just the facts behind a story.
• The interviewer should not allow the interviewee to avoid difficult subjects, but at the same time should remain polite and friendly. Vocabulary: Newspapers sub-editor (or sub ) > [ copy editor in American English] makes editorial changes, corrections and improvements to the format of copy (i.e., the materials written by journalists) to get it ready for printing. press office > the department in an organisation which deals directly with the media, including preparing press releases and representing the organization in interviews, and which is responsible for maintaining a good image for the organisation in the media. circulation > the number of copies of a newspaper sold. footage > filmed sequences of an event or news story. editorial :
• an editorial (countable) is an article written by a newspaper’s editor, typically expressing the newspaper’s opinions about a story
• editorial (uncountable) can refer to the journalistic content of a newspaper. Questions and interrogative form Within the interview, there are several types of question:
• Closed questions (or Yes/No questions) start with auxiliary verbs (es. Do you / Will you) and are useful for pinning down an interviewee who is failing to get to the point.

Are you an actress? Do you speak English?

• Open questions start with question words (es. Where / Why ) and are useful for getting lots of information. Where are you from? What do you do? Eight question words: What, Who, Which, When, Where, How, Why, Whose
• Negative questions (es. Can’t you / Haven’t you ) may seem rather aggressive but are useful for provoking an interviewee to justify controversial opinions and facts. Aren’t you the new copy-editor? Don’t you like working for a newspaper? Why don’t you like cinema?
• Echo questions repeat part of a previous answer with questioning intonation, (es. “I never said we would cut taxes” “ Never? ”) and are useful for getting more information out of an interviewee. Relative clauses Defining relative clauses → carry (porta) essential information because they identify which thing or person we are talking about, and they are used without commas. (es: Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian engineer who had worked for Thomas Edison, was convinced that the wireless telegraph could carry the human voice) In defining relative clauses → we can use that instead of which or who

YES/NO QUESTIONS

Aux + Subj (+ Main V ) WH- QUESTIONS Question word (WH-) + Aux + Subj (+ Main V) NEGATIVE QUESTIONS Aux-neg + Subj (+ Main V ) Question word (WH-) + Aux-neg + Subj (+ Main V)

WILL is the auxiliary verb: Be going to The structure Be going to → is used when we have the intention to do something before we speak. We have already made a decision before speaking. (es: Jo has won the lottery. He says he’s going to buy a Porsche. // We’re not going to paint our bedroom tomorrow. // When are you going to go on holiday?) We often use Be going to to make a prediction about the future. Our prediction is based on present evidence. (es:The sky is very black. It’s going to snow. // It’s 8.30! You're going to miss your train! // I crashed the company car. My boss isn’t going to be very happy!) Be going to - Form Structure: SUBJECT + BE + GOING + TO-INFINITIVE

BE (auxiliary) is conjugated: Present Continuous (Future) The Present Continuous → is used to talk about future events that have already been planned or decided. When we use the present continuous for arrangements, we must always include when (es: at 7, this evening, next month, etc.) in the sentence. I’m seeing the dentist at 6. We are getting married next week. I’m flying to New York tomorrow morning Arrangements → involve other people, and cannot be easily changed Plans [Be going to] → can exist only in the speaker’s head and can be easily changed Present Simple (Future) The Present Simple → is used as future for something scheduled. We have lesson next Friday. The train arrives at 6.30 in the morning. The holidays start next week We use the present simple → to talk about the future in sentences with when , as soon as , until , before and after : I’ll retire when I’m 70. I won’t call you until I arrive.