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LINKING WOR(L)DS
Chapter 1: The structure of words
The vocabulary or lexis of a language is made up of all the words in that language. A word is an item of language that can be stand alone as a complete unit of meaning. Words can be built up out of smaller units of meanings called morphemes. The branch of linguistics that studies the structure of words in terms of morphemes is called morphology; more specifically the analysis of words into morphemes is called morphemic analysis. But what is a morpheme? A morpheme is the smallest unit of analysis of word structure and sentences. They can be of two types: Free: it can occur on its own as word without any additional item, for example {love} Bound: it can only be found as a part of a word; as a matter of facts most bound morphemes are affixes. Affixes divide into prefixes, if added at the beginning of a word as {un} in “unhappy”, and suffixes if added at the end of a word as {er} in “lover”. Affixes can be of two types: inflectional affixes or derivational affixes. Inflections are always suffixes and they signal a grammatical relationship (person, number, tense…). Derivational affixes can be either prefixes and suffixes, they indicate a different meaning of a word or a different part of speech or world class ({ity} in “rapidity” changes the adjective rapid into a noun). Most of the English vocabulary if formed by creating words from existing ones: affixation and compounding are the two major types of word formation in English. Affixation involves forming new words by adding prefixes or suffixes to existing words, and gives rise to derivatives. Examples of derivatives are those conveying negation (usual-> unusual), grammatical conversion (essential->essentially, economy->economist, clear-> clarify), prefixes and suffixes together (unbelievable, impossibility). Compounding involves combining two or more existing words and gives rise to compounds, which can be written as single words, separate or with hyphens. Translation problems Certain derivational suffixes in English haven’t direct equivalents in Italian. The most common translation procedure is paraphrase: for example we know that “ward/wards” in English means in a particular direction (eastward, westward…), but in Italian there isn’t a specific suffix to mean the same, so it is paraphrased as “verso, a, in direzione di…”. This also happens with the suffixes “eyed” and “haired” that both, used with adjectives, refer to the eyes and hair of a person. These two do not have an equal suffix in Italian, so we would translate them with the paraphrase “con gli occhi color, dai capelli color…”. Another example is the suffix “aholic” that refers to something that creates a sort of addiction to the thing it is combines with (shopaholic, alcoholic…); in italian it would be translated as “colui che è dipendente da…” Lack of equivalence can also occur with compound words that are translated using the paraphrase technique: buzzword-> slogan del momento.
Chapter 2: lexical and sense relations
Lexical relations: the connections established between one word and another Sense relations: how words relate to each other in terms of meaning Collocation , a lexical relation, is the tendency of certain words to occur together regularly in a given language. Words that are bound together by collocations are called collocates. Collocational range is the set of collocates that usually accompany a given word, called the node. The collocational range of a words is determined: a) by the number of senses that a word conveys: the more are the meanings a word has (polysemic), the broader is the collocational range. For example the word business has 6 different meanings, each of them is associated with a specific range of collocates. b) by the language varieties in which it occurs: a monosemic word may be accompanied by different collocates. For example child and dog as monosemic words, have different collocates; but they would share some for example in a farmhouse holiday advertising which could say “children and dogs are welcomed”. When it comes to translation, languages may have collocations that convey the same or similar meaning but are different in form: pass an exam-> superare un esame, liver biopsy-> biopsia epatica… In these mismatches the translator should avoid producing collocations that do not sound natural and fluent in the target language; he has to pay the same attention while working on the ST and TT. Some collocations are culture-specific that may be unfamiliar to the speaker of another language. In order to render the original meaning of the source language collocation the translator may use a paraphrase or create an ad hoc collocation: for example in Britain advertising holiday accommodation is really common to find the expression “children welcome” that wouldn’t be found in Italian, because it’s not part of our culture to specify if a type of accommodation welcomes children or not as it does in british culture. Many cases of non-equivalence at word level between the source and the target languages concern a mismatch in propositional meaning. The target language may not have a word which expresses a culture- specific concept in the ST. The procedures that are usually adopted by the translator are: use of a hypernym (a word whose meaning includes a group of other words) or use of a loan word that can be accompanied by an explanation-> for example “masseria” could be translated with the hypernym of farm, or be left as it is, maybe with the explanation of what it refers to. Synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy Synonymy is the relationship that links words that have the same or almost the same meaning in a particular context. Synonyms cannot always be substitute for one another given that the lexical meaning is not a unitary notion, but is made up of different components: o -propositional meaning: what a word refers to in a concrete or imaginary world o -expressive meaning: relates to the speaker’s feelings and attitudes o -evoked meaning: it arises from variation in dialect and register. Dialect is a variety of a language used in a particular geographical area, in different periods historical periods or social classes. Register is a variety of language that a speaker or writer considers appropriate in a particular situational context, composed by field of discourse (what is going on), tenor of discourse (relationships between who is taking part of the context), mode of discourse (the language’s role). Synonyms cannot always be substituted one another, because it’s not said that all the components of a word would fit for its synonym.
Chapter 3: other sense relations
We use sense as a technical linguistic term to refer to the relationships which words have with other words in the language system. Polisemy: is the term used to refer to different meanings conveyed by the same word. Words that have more than one propositional meaning are called polysemous or polisemic. The meanings of a single word can all be traced back to a single source, so that they are linked one to another. Example-> mouse: the animal/ the computer tool Homonymy: is the relationship that links words that have the same sound and spelling but different meanings. These words are called homonymys, whose meanings do not share the same roots. Example-> bank: a financial institution/ a land along the side of a river/ a large number of pieces in a row Figurative Uses of Language Metaphors tend to provoke thought and feeling to a greater extent than more literal descriptions do. Understanding how figurative uses of language work requires us to supplement semantics (words and sentence meaning in the abstract) with pragmatics (the use of utterances in context). Interpretation of Utterances follows three stages:
- Literal (semantics): Literal meaning (Semantic) its meaning is based on the semantic information that you know from your knowledge of English. The meaning can be recognized without wondering who might say or write the words, where or when. No consideration of context is involved.
- Explicature (pragmatics): Goes beyond the literal meaning. It's a basic interpretation of an utterance, using contextual information (non-linguistic context) and world knowledge to work out what is being referred to and which way to understand ambiguous expressions. Context facilitates disambiguation. As with other pragmatic interpretations, there are uncertainties over explicature.
- Implicature (pragmatics): it goes further and looks for what is hinted at by an utterance in its particular context. What the speaker/writer means. When figurative uses are recycled to the point of clich[, they frequently settle into the semantic system of the language as new sense for words. Metaphors such as “warm relationship” and “rising inflation” are often identified as lexicalized, because the metaphorical meaning has come to be regarded as one of the world’s basic definitions, and thus part of the lexicon or dictionary. These are lexicalized metaphors. Metaphor The metaphor is a figurative expression that enables us to talk of one thing (TOPIC) in term of another (VEHICLE). They are part of our everyday speech; we often talk about love (topic) in terms of madness (vehicle) “I’m crazy about you”, time in terms of money “to waste time” and so on. When it comes to translation, there are things that the translator has to do and follow:
- Recognize the metaphor
- Distinguishing conventional and creative metaphors
- Identifying relevant or prominent features of the entities compared (topic and vehicle)
- Find a suitable equivalent metaphor in the target language. Toury describes 6 translations options: i. Metaphor into same metaphor
ii. Metaphor into different metaphor iii. Metaphor into non-metaphor iv. Metaphor into 0 (complete omission leaving no trace in the TL) v. Non-metaphor into metaphor vi. 0 into metaphor (addition with no linguistic motivation in the ST) Translation of Metaphor The process of translating metaphors highlights culture-specific aspects of language and thought. In fact, the study of metaphor in translation helps us to understand the characteristics of metaphor and its function in different cultural discourses. When translating a metaphor from the source language into another metaphor in the target language, translators should not just translate 'words', but first must concern themselves with the culture that informs, illustrates and explains those words. Not only do they have to gauge all the cultural nuances of the metaphor in the source language, but they also have to make the original metaphor intelligible to a target language audience with a different cultural background. Translators are called to fulfil more than one role, namely decoder/receiver in the source language comunicative event, and encoder/sender in the target language communicative event. In both these communicative events translators have to be aware not only of the interpretation they would normally give, but also of the possible interpretations the different source language readers may give, and the possible interpretations the target language readers may give. Awareness of cultural nuances is a prerequisite for a effective transfer of meaning. Three Procedures A number of scholars, and particularly Newmark, Snell-Hornby and Larson, have discussed different approaches to the translation of metaphor suggesting several translation strategies. All of them, however, seem to agree that a translator may choose from three main procedures:
- M > M procedure (SL metaphor > TL metaphor)
- The metaphor in the SL is translated literally into the TL
- N. > M2 procedure
- (SL metaphor' > TL metaphorz)
- The SL metaphor is translated with a TL metaphor with the same meaning, but coming from a different semantic field
- M > P procedure
- (SL metaphor > TL paraphrase)
- Substitution of the SL metaphor with a paraphrase in the TL
M > M
The first procedure M -> M consists of translating the metaphor in the source language literally into the target language leaving target text reader to interpret it. This is the best option for translating original or creative metaphors in literature, e.g. "Love's not Time's Fool" L'amore non è lo zimbello del Tempo (Shakespeare 'Sonnet 116')
- In the case of lexicalised metaphors, if the same metaphor exists in the target language, the translator can translate literally, e.g. "I prefer dry wine" Preferisco il vino secco.
A pun is an attention seeking device often used in advertising. Jakobson called this function of language, the poetic function (focus on the form of the message, reflected in: imagery such as metaphor, simile, puns, allegory, assonance, etc.). Because puns are attention seeking devices, they are often used in advertising. Homonyms, Homophones, Homographs
- Homonyms are words that sound alike but have different meanings: flower/flour
- Homophones are a type of homonym that also sound alike and have different meanings, but have different spellings: pray/prey
- Homographs are words that have the same spelling but different sounds and different meanings: lead (to go in front of)/lead (a metal) Puns: Homonyms Puns involve either the multiple meanings of an expression or two expressions that sound similar. Puns are common in many languages and literatures and give rise to a fairly universal form of humour. Puns are very often intended humorously, but not always. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) frequently used puns in his plays. One of Shakespeare's most famous puns occur in the opening lines of Richard III: ' "Now is the winter of our discontent,made glorious summer by this sun of York.. Here 'sun of York' is a punned with the son of the Duke of York, Edward IV, and incidentally, additionally there is figurative punning of the imagery to Edward IV's 'blazing sun' emblem. How to Translate Puns There are different approaches to the translation of puns, as we shall see shortly. In dealing with puns in literary texts, translators may try to compensate by inserting different puns in the target language, thus keeping equivalence of intention. This can be extremely difficult or relatively easy, depending on the case. Do not forget that the translator's approach depends on the TEXT TYPE (article, literature, advertisement, etc.), its FUNCTION (skopos), its AUTHOR, its AUDIENCE (and the TIME of the translation)! There is no CORRECT approach! There is no WRONG translation unless the text has been MISUNDERSTOOD. Comunicative Translation vs Semantic Translation A communicative translation aims at finding a 'functional equivalent' in the target language - so that, for instance in the case of punning, a parallel wordplay can be rendered in the target text - and at producing a readable target language text. Conversely, a semantic or foreignising translation, makes more demands on the reader who wishes to experience something of the 'original feel' or 'foreignness' of the original. Different languages may have different degrees of polysemy for equivalent words and there may be differences with regard to homonyms too. It follows that wordplay cannot always be rendered in the target language with an equivalent pun. Here are some translation procedures commonly adopted by translators to overcome semantic mismatches when translating wordplay:
- PUN - PUN: the source text pun is translated with a target language pun, which may be more or less different from the original wordplay in form or meaning;
- PUN - NON-PUN: the pun is rendered by a non-punning phrase which may relay the full meaning of the pun or part of it;
- PUN -› RELATED RHETORICAL DEVICE: the pun is replaced by a related rhetorical device, such as repetition, alliteration, rhyme, irony, paradox, which aims to recapture the effect of the source text pun;
- PUN - ZERO: the portion of text containing the pun is simply omitted;
- PUN ST = PUN TT: the translator reproduces the source text pun in its original formulation, .e. without
translating it;
- NON-PUN -› PUN: the translator introduces a pun in textual positions where the original text has no wordplay, by way of compensation to make up for source text puns elsewhere, or for any other reason;
- ZERO -› PUN: totally new textual material is added, which contains wordplay and which has no apparent precedent or justification in the source text except as a compensatory device;
Chapter 4: multi-words units
The vocabulary of a language consists also of fixed expressions known as multi-words units. The most common types are idioms and lexical phrases. Idiom: is a multi-word unit whose meaning cannot be generally inferred from the meaning of the individual words. Idioms “undertsandibility” vary from opaque, semi-opaque to transparent. In an idiom we cannot: -change the word order -omit words -replace words -change the grammatical structure There are 5 types of idioms, which the first 3 are easily recognizable:
- Those referred to events or conditions: it’s raining cats and dogs
- Those that don’t follow the grammatical rules: trip the light fantastic
- Those that have a simile-like structure
- Those that have a literal meaning and one more idiomatic one: to have cold feet
- Those that have apparently a direct equivalent in the TL but have a different meaning: to be out on the streets means to have no place to live; while the Italian equivalent “trovarsi in mezzo alla strada” means to live in poverty. Lexical phrase: is a multi-word unit whose meaning can be generally inferred from the meaning of the individual words. There are 4 main types:
- Polywords : short, no variable and continuous; e.g. by the way
- Institutionalized expressions : sentence-length, invariable and continuous; e.g. have a nice day
- Phrasal costraints : medium length, variable and continuous; e.g. a…ago
- Sentence builders : framework for whole sentences, variable, continuous and dis.; e.g. I think that X Idioms and lexical phrases may have no equivalents in the target language, particularly when they are culture-specific. The common expression buon appetito, which is linked to Italian cultural habits at meal times, does not have an equivalent in the British culture. There are, however, a series of formulas that may be used in a similar situation but they have a different meaning. Examples of such formulas are the very informal expressions dig in or tuck in and the formal expressions do start, I hope you like it, I hope it's alright, enjoy your meal, used by the host when you are at home with guests, or enjoy your meal or simply enjoy, used by the waiter before starting a meal in a restaurant. Here are six common translation procedures used by professional translators when translating idioms:
- using an idiom of similar meaning and form;
- using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form;
- borrowing the source language idiom;
o Lexical verbs refer to actions, processes, states, or events. Their inflectional morphology encodes the third person singular in the present tense, the past tense, the present participle, and the past participle. There are different forms of the past tense and the past participle of irregular verbs. o Auxiliary verbs accompany the lexical verb and are of two types: modal verbs and primary verbs. Modal verbs express the speaker’s judgement about the likelihood of a given event, state or process. They are further subdivided into
- core modals: can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, must. - marginal modals: dare, need, ought to, used to. Adjectives ( abbreviated as A ) denote qualities or states relating to things like shape, taste, size, colour, or judgments. Typical adjectives are gradable and have an absolute (the base form), a comparative (-er), and superlative form (-est). For regular one-syllable adjectives both the comparative and the superlative forms are formed by adding the respective suffixes to the absolute; although there are some one-syllable adjectives that are irregular in both of the forms (good, bad, far, old, little, much/many). Two-syllable adjectives ending in consonant+ -y change it into an –I and add the suffixes. Adjectives of more syllables use more…than for the comparative, and the most… for the superlative. Adjectives can be derived from nouns or verbs and there are several suffixes such as –ful, -less, -y, -al, -ish, -able, -ible. Adverbs ( abbreviated as Adv ) describe a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. There are several types of adverbs: o Manner : how? o Degree (or intensifier ): to what extent? o time, frequency, duration: when? How often? For how long? o Place : where? o Probability: how sure? o Linking : they show the kind of connection between sentences (addition, parallel, contrast, cause, sequence in time…) o Sentence : they indicate the speaker’s opinion regarding what is talked about (luckily) o broad negative : used to make a negative statement (hardly) o focusing : they indicate the most relevant thing (especially) o Interrogative : when, where, why. o Relative o Gradable
Gender: English and Italian Gender is a grammatical category based on the natural category of sex distinguished between male and female. It varies across cultures with regard to the distinctions made and its assignment to words. In Italian, gender centres on the masculine/feminine opposition and applies to nouns referring to animate beings (ragazzo/ ragazza,gatto/gatta) as well as inanimate objects (tavolo, rivista). It affects the forms of various word-classes: nouns -and some proper names (Roberto/Roberta) - pronouns, adjectives, articles and past participles in passive constructions have morphological markers which signal such distinction. English does not have a grammatical category of gender as such. However, centred on the masculine/feminine/neuter opposition, gender is realised in the person system: pronouns in the third person singular (he, she, it), possessives (his, her, its) and reflexive pronouns (himself, herself, itself). In Italian, nouns are regularly marked by gender through inflection, or derivation plus inflection. In English, nouns are not marked by gender, except for a very small number of items denoting females, human or animal (actress, lioness). In these cases, English signals gender distinctions by means of derivational suffixes and compounding: cameriere/cameriera-> water/waitress eroe/eroina-> hero/heroine Paolo/Paola-> Paul/Pauline Lupo/lupa-> wolf she-wolf Dottore/dottoressa-> doctor/woman doctor Avvocato/avvocatessa-> lawyer/lady lawyer In Italian and English, respectively, the masculine form and the unmarked noun are usually referred to both men and women. In Anglo-American culture, there is now a conscious attempt to replace overtly masculine forms with other forms, because reflecting a gender bias. Thus, overtly masculine nouns like chairman, spokesman, businessman are systematically being replaced by neutral ones, like chairperson and spokesperson, or by specifically feminine nouns like businesswoman and policewoman, when the referent is a woman. In Italian too there are some uses by which the marked masculine form is replaced by a marked feminine form when the referent is a woman: see cancelliere vs. cancelliera referred to Angela Merkel the Chancellor of Germany. Differences between Italian and English can also be observed in gender assignment, where gender interacts with animacy and the distinction 'human/non-human'. In Italian, the assignment of gender to animate beings (human and non-human), as in ragazzo/ragazza and gatto/gatta, is usually motivated by their sex, but not always. There are cases where the gender is the opposite (la guardia, il soprano), or one word refers to both men and women (la persona). Differences between Italian and English can also be observed in gender assignment, where gender interacts with animacy and the distinction 'human/non-human'. In Italian, the assignment of gender to animate beings (human and non-human), as in ragazzo/ragazza and gatto/gatta, is usually motivated by their sex, but not always. There are cases where the gender is the opposite (la guardia, il soprano), or one word refers to both men and women (la persona). Sexism in the English language
- The feminine as a marked category
- lion - lioness /tiger – tigress (masc. = neutral term)
- actor – actress (fem. nowadays often avoided) -manager – manageress (fem. suggests lower status, e.g. of laundrette but not of bank)
- Generally, masculine terms often unmarked in the sense that
- it is the feminine term that takes a suffix
- only the masculine term can be used both for males and females.
- Nowadays, numerous studies confirm that language has an impact on cognition (Lucy, 1992), and one of the factors influencing it is grammatical gender. Gender in Language We can distinguish three groups of languages: genderless languages (e.g, Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian), which do not use grammatical gender, natural gender languages (e.g. English, Swedish, Norwegian) in which nouns are gendered according to the biological sex of their referents, and grammatical gender languages (e.., Spanish, Italian, German, Polish). In case of the last language group, nouns always have a particular grammatical gender assigned to them, which influences - due to grammatical agreement - the declension and conjugation of other parts of speech. Grammatical gender languages are of great interest in the field of psycholinguistics, addressing the impact of grammatical gender on various cognitive processes, including memory, categorization, personalization, assigning properties linked to the biological sex of objects, etc. For example grammatical gender can lead to a transfer male and female attributes onto inanimate objects which do not have a biological sex (e.g. assigning male or female voices to artifacts depending on their grammatical gender). In general, research on grammatical gender effects focuses mainly on whether it influences various cognitive processes, especially the semantic processing. Can the perception of a word be influenced by grammatical gender? A variety of tasks have been employed to understand whether grammatical gender does influence concepts. The most common has been the voice choice task in which participants are asked to assign a male or female voice to objects, with many finding that the sex of the voice and the grammatical gender of the target are indeed broadly consistent. Similar results have been found when asking participants to assign a human name or a sex to an object and when asking participants to rate on a scale the similarity ("similarity task") between pictures of male and female humans and objects. In object-name memory association tasks, participants are instructed to remember male and female names that substitute object names, such that "sedia" might now be "Patrizia," and the results have sometimes shown that the ability to recall the human name is enhanced if it is congruent with the grammatical gender of the object in question. Some scholars employed a property judgement paradigm, finding that German speakers rated masculine- gendered objects such as "potent" (a trait associated with masculinity) than concepts with feminine gender; Spanish speakers, for whom the same targets took the feminine gender, rated the same items as less potent. This type of task makes participants think about concepts without having to relate them to gender or sex directly; John A. Lucy: Habitual Cognition (1992)
- It might help to think of linguistic relativism as relating to how language influences the way we normally think, rather than language determining thought. The linguist John Lucy uses the phrase habitual cognition to demonstrate that languages do not completely or permanently blind speakers to other aspects of reality. Rather, they provide speakers with a systematic default bias in their habitual response tendencies.
- John Lucy, an American linguist and psychologist, in Language Diversity and Thought and in Grammatical Categories and Cognition (1992), argues that the signs and structure of language influence thought. This is a much more modest argument than that of linguistic determinism. It is also incredibly useful, not just
in considering languages such as English and French, but also in paying attention to more localised and specialised language use, such as the language of botanists for example. Habitual modes of thinking can be very important. Obviously, habits can be changed, but to do so takes effort and will. Translation Problems: The Gender Is Not Mentioned In Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca, Maxim and his wife have invited some relatives to their house in the countryside and, after dinner, Maxim's brother-in-law expresses his admiration for the meal by saying: -Same cook I suppose, Maxim? There is no later reference in the book to the cook and the sex of this chef de cuisine is never revealed. How does a translator, whose task it is to translate the sentence into a language that shows grammatical gender, cope with this problem? How do we know whether the cook is female or male? There seems to be no one agreed solution as five different translations into grammatical gender languages show: French: la même cuisinière; Italian : lo stesso cuoco; Spanish: el mismo cocinero; Portuguese: a mesma cozinheira; German: die selbe Köchin. The example demonstrates that three translators decided the cook was female and two assigned "generally male" as the social gender of cook. Apparently, the Italian and the Spanish translators thought a male cook to be more likely in a noble English manor than a female. This shows that translators have chosen a gender according to their knowledge of the source culture or according to their knowledge of their target culture. Connotations and Gender Connotations related to gender are not exclusively confined to literary texts. On the contrary, this relationship frequently plays a decisive role in advertising. The German slogan used by the petrol company Esso Pack den Tiger in den Tank (literal translation: 'Put the tiger into the petrol tank.') was to be translated into Italian. However, the masculine gender of the German word for 'tiger', der Tiger did not correspond with the gender of the Italian counterpart, as 'tiger’ in Italian if feminine, la tigre, so they chose to change the gender of tigre by using the article un instead of una.
English and Italian often use different prepositions to express the same relationship of meaning, or simply omit it in one language: for example to go to Italy-> andare in Italia, on television-> in televisione, to approach-> approcciarsi a.
Chapter 7: Phrases I
In language, words forms units that work as wholes in relation to other units and are organized hierarchically in different levels. So far we have analysed the word level of language structure and in chapter 7 and 8 we will examine the phrase level , which occupies a middle position between word and clause levels. A phrase is a string of words forming a syntactic unit which typically contains more than one word. Phrases are named after the most important word they contain, called the head. So there are 5 types of phrase:
- Noun phrase (which includes the sub-category of rhe pronoun phrase)
- Verb phrase
- Adjective phrase
- Adverbial phrase
- Prepositional phrase. Noun phrases A noun phrase (abbreviated as NP ) is a phrase with a noun as head called the head noun. The minimal form of a noun phrase consists of a single noun but its typical structure comprises three parts: head noun, premodification, and postmodification. In an NP premodification minimally consists of the determiner (my house). Besides the determiner, it typically comprises one or more adjectives (my beautiful house) or an adjective and a noun with an adjectival function (my beautiful holiday house). The main types of postmodification are prepositional phrases (the house on the hill), certain kinds of finite clause (the house I love), and certain kinds of non-finite clause (the lady waiting outside). Adverbs and adjectives are sometimes used as postmodifiers too. One way of identifying the string of words belonging to a noun phrase is to replace a given string with a pronoun. A pronoun phrase (abbreviated as pro-NP ) is a phrase with a pronoun as head. Pronoun phrases are usually analysed as a sub-class of the NP and in most cases they consist of a single pronoun. Whereas English has a great facility for creating lexically dense noun phrases, the Italian syntax does not allow premodification to the same extent. The Italian equivalents of complex English noun groups are usually noun phrases where the head is postmodified by non-finite or finite clauses, and/or prepositional phrases, adjectives, and adverbs: -the exploding divorce rate-> l’impennata del tasso di divorzio -the 19th century sex role system-> la divisione dei ruoli in base al sesso nel XIX secolo When translating Italian noun phrases into English, opinion and fact adjectives are placed in the following order: opinion + size + other qualities + age + shape + temperature + colour + pattern + origin/nationality + material + purpose/type + head noun: -a simple 4 star hotel (opinion+type) -a small private garden (size+type)
Chapter 8: Phrases II
In this chapter we will deal with the second type of phrases: the verb ones. A verb phrase (abbreviated as VP ) is a phrase with a lexical verb as head. A verb phrase may contain a single lexical verb or a string of verbs comprising one or more auxiliary verbs and a lexical verb. Finite verb forms give rise to finite VPs, non-finite verbs give rise to non-finite VPs: the form of the first verb of the verb string determines whether a verb phrase is finite or non-finite. The various meanings expressed by the English verb phrase are conveyed by the patterns created by the four grammatical categories of a verb: tense, aspect, mood, and voice. The tense of a verb indicates the time when an action, state or event takes place. In English, verbs change their finite form to express only two tenses, present and past, while the future is conveyed by various other means (i.e. will, shall, be going to, be about to, would…). The aspect of a verb refers to whether an event is complete or in progress. English distinguishes between two aspects: the perfective and the progressive (or continuous.). The perfective aspect is of three types:
- Present perfective: the present perfect simple connects the past and the present.
- Past perfective: the past perfect simple is used to talk about something which had happened before a given event that took place in the past.
- Future perfective: the future perfect simple is used to talk about an action that will have been completed by a certain time in the future. The progressive aspect of a verb indicates that an action is, was, has been, will be or will have been in progress over a period of time. Its form is: be+ -ing form of the lexical verb. Non-progressive forms are known as simple forms and some verbs are only used in the non- progressive ones: verbs of thinking, feeling, perception. The mood of a verb indicates the attitude of the speaker towards what he/she is saying. There are four moods: 1) Indicative: used to indicate facts and it is divided into tenses. 2) Imperative: used to give commands or instructions; it has no tenses and corresponds to the base form. 3) Subjunctive: used to express a wish, a hope or uncertainty. It has two tenses, present and past. 4) Conditional : the present conditional is used to express polite wishes, requests and preferences; the past conditional for unreal hypothetical statement in the past. The voice of a verb refers to the relationship between the verb and its subject in the clause. Voice can be of two types:
- Active: the subject performs the action. 2) Passive: the subject is the affected entity and the agent may or may not be specified.
In the past, English uses the past perfect simple or progressive, while Italian uses the 'imperfetto' or the 'imperfetto progressivo’. D) In the future, English uses the future perfect simple or progressive, while Italian uses the 'futuro anteriore’. Finally, Italian allows the future simple and the future perfect in subordinate clauses introduced by time conjunctions such as quando (when), appena (as soon as) or finché (until) in sentences where the verb of the main cause is in the future simple, the future perfect simple, or in the imperative mood, whereas English requires the resent simple and present perfect simple respectively.
Chapter 9: Phrases III
Adjective Phrase An adjective phrase (abbreviated as AP ) is a Phrase with an adjective as head. In its simplest form an AP consists of a single adjective that can be found in attributive, predicative, or postpositive position within a sentence. In an AP the head can also be premodified by an adverb or postmodified by: a prepositional phrase: I’m getting bored with my current job. a to-infinitive clause: I am very keen to taking this job offer. a that-clause: It’s not certain that I will get that job. an ing-clause introduced by a preposition: Are you interested in taking a difficult job? Many adjectives are postmodified by particular prepositions followed by an NP or a VP. A number of adjectives are postmodified by a to-infinitive clause. Some adjectives are followed by different prepositions. Adverbial Phrase An adverb(ial) phrase (abbreviated as AdvP ) is a phrase with an adverb as head. The structure of an AdvP often consists of a single adverb. Sometimes the head is premodifed by an intensifying adverb ( very kindly, quite early …). A small number of adverbs used to indicate the speaker's opinion of what is being talked about (curiously, funnily, interestingly, oddly, strangely) are often postmodified by the adverb enough. Adverb phrases of manner, place, time, and duration normally go at the end of a clause. If there is more than one AdvP in a clause the usual order is: manner + place + time/duration. Adverb phrases of frequency normally go before a lexical verb but after the primary verb be or the first auxiliary of a VP ( we always listen to the radio on Sundays ). The following adverb phrases of frequency can also go at the beginning or the end of a clause: sometimes, usually, normally, frequently, often, occasionally. Adverb phrases of definite frequency such as daily, weekly, monthly, yearly normally go at the end of a clause. Adverb phrases of probability normally go before a lexical verb but after the primary verb be and after the first auxiliary. In negative clauses they normally go before the negative. Maybe and perhaps normally go at the beginning of a clause. Prepositional Phrase A preposition(al) phrase (abbreviated as PP) consists of a preposition and a noun phrase. PPs give information on: o Place o Direction o distance time
o Duration o Manner o Cause o Purpose o Concession PPs function as postmodifiers of NPs and APs. Many head nouns in NPs are postmodified by particular prepositions. Many NPs in preposition phrases are preceded by particular prepositions. Many lexical verbs are followed by PPs with particular prepositions. Prepositional phrases are found in idiomatic expressions. As regards specialized discourse, translations from English to Italian tend to be characterized by different kinds of transpositions at phrase level in keeping with the stylistic preferences of Italian scientific and technical writing, which is normally more formal, more abstract, and more verbose than English.
Chapter 10: Grammatical functions I
