The Spread and History of the English Language: Phonetics, Morphology, and Semantics, Appunti di Linguistica Inglese

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Linguistica inglese – Prof.ssa Costa THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE spoken by 1.5 billion people ENL (English as a native language): UK, USA, Australia… ESL (English as second language): India, Nigeria… EFL (English as a foreign language): every other country its peculiarity is the geographical spread (spoken in every continent), like Latin during the medieval times reasons why English is so widespread: British Empire, WW2 (after the war English began to spread all over the world), cultural reasons (movies, books…) and technology many varieties (BE, AE, etc.…) formal diglossia= when two languages coexist, e.g., two varieties of German in Switzerland PHONOLOGY: the ownership of English is no more of English native speakers; the notion of native speaker is kind of obsolete INTELLEGIBILITY/COMPREHENSIBILITY word and utterance recognition -ed morpheme verb ending: released, formed, used, transferred (all pronounced with /id/ instead of /t/ or /d/ ending but they do not affect intelligibility) HISTORICAL VARIATIONS OF ENGLISH:  OLD ENGLISH of Germanic origins  MIDDLE ENGLISH: many French words  EARLY MODERN ENGLISH: standard language emerging  MODERN ENGLISH to PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH English is an Indo-European Germanic language CORPUS LINGUISTICS Databank of language. It is concerned with the patterns and regularities of language use which can be revealed by systematic analysis of such corpora. One of the most important insight of CL is collocations (frequent combination of words). The most common type of software that is used is a concordancer, which displays all the occurrences of a word with a context. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND CULTURE: Sapir-Wolf hypothesis: human thought is shaped by language. This theory is nowadays rejected because of racism implications. SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: “the child has an innate theory of potential structural descriptions” grammar translation language teaching the direct method natural language learning imitating the L1 communicative approach EDUCATIONAL LINGUISTICS: area of study that integrates the research tools of linguistics and other related disciplines to investigate issues related to language and education; it was born in the 1970s with the work of Bernard Spolsky. NEUROLINGUISTICS: language is represented in the left hemisphere of the brain and two main regions are specialized for language functions: Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, but probably there are other areas involved because the brain is a very complex organ. MARKEDNESS: marked (something not common in language) / unmarked (something very common in language) PRONUNCIATION English pronunciation is tricky!! (Phonetics, phonology and orthography) Why study English phonetics and phonology? English has a far larger repertory of phonemes than languages like Standard Italian English is not a phonographic language, spelling generally does give a clear indication of pronunciation. ENGLISH IS NOT A PHONOGRAPHIC LANGUAGE learners cannot rely on the spelling of a word the problem is the opposite for native speakers- English schoolchildren spend incredible amounts of time learning to read and to write. Many adults have very poor spelling. To learn to pronounce English correctly it can be helpful to learn to read phonemic transcription and have a dictionary with sound IS ENGLISH SPELLING REALLY SO ERRATIC? • 83% of English words have predictable spelling • However, the remaining 17% is comprised of the most commonly used, everyday words • Therefore, the greatest difficulties are faced by the learner at the start • Not enough vowel letters for vowel sounds • English does not use accents, umlauts etc. • English has always resisted spelling reforms and academies to set standards • English has borrowed extensively from other languages and has tended to maintain original spelling Consonants: a consonant is a speech sound which is articulated with stricture or closure of the air stream. Consonants can be described in terms of:  Place of articulation= where the air stream is modified and which organs are involved in this articulation  Manner of articulation= which describes how the articulatory organs operate to produce sounds Vowels are described according to:  The place of the highest point of the tongue in the mouth during the articulation of the vowel  The degree of lip rounding  Length (long and short vowels) Syllables are units above the individual sound segments Suprasegmental elements:  stress (the syllable with more prominence)  pitch (rising, falling) and intonation (variations in pitch within an utterance)  rythm (stress-timed, syllable-timed) PHONOLOGY  Function of phones  meaning  Minimal pairs (teach – reach): different words with the same sound except for one.  Phoneme is an abstract linguistic unit at the level of sound that serves to distinguish between linguistic forms with different meanings THE ORTOGRAPHIC SYSTEM OF ENGLISH Grapheme: the smallest unit of an alphabetical system which carries meaning Grapheme and sound can be very complicated in English also because of the presence of homographs (ex: bow inchino, bow fiocco; close vicino, close chiudere) Homophones: words with the same pronunciation but written differently INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET It was invented towards the end of the 19th century, scholars felt the need for some kind of system in which one symbol equaled one sound. It was published in 1888 by a group of French language teachers. Basic principle: a different symbol for every distinguishable sound. WHY LEARN THE INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET? Because the Roman alphabet with five vowels does not represent all the vowel sounds in English. The English spelling system does not correspond to the sounds of the English language. The same combination of letters has many different pronunciations. instance, a person may be lucky, very lucky, rather lucky, extremely lucky. These words (adverbs) are called intensifiers. 5.prepositions: to establish a relationship between two elements in a clause simple prepositions and complex prepositions purpose, cause, association, attitude, time, place 6.conjunctions: grammatical connectors; they can be COORDINATING or SUBORDINATING Some words may be both prepositions and subordinating conjunctions. In order to make a distinction we must remember that prepositions introduce a noun phrase, whereas subordinating conjunctions introduce a clause (a clause is a grammatical structure, i.e., a group of connected words which includes a verbal element). Ex: “I’m going to the cinema after work” (preposition) and “I went to the cinema after I had finished my work” (subordinating conjunction). 7.adverbs: manner, place, time, degree; they are usually invariable 8.pronouns: it may be substituted in place of a noun. Pronouns can be divided in several subclasses: 1. personal pronouns: I, you, we 2. possessive pronouns: mine, ours 3. reflexive pronouns: myself, ourselves 4. demonstrative pronouns: this, these, that, those 5. reciprocal pronouns: each other, one another 6. interrogative pronouns: who? which? 7. relative pronouns: who, that 8. indefinite pronouns: some, none 9.Interjections: words that are used to express exclamation ex: oh, wow, ouch, hey! Some lexemes co-occur rather freely with other lexemes (Open-choice principle) and other lexemes appear to be more limited or totally restricted in their combinability. Some patterns occur systematically together. Phraseological phenomena: multi-word lexical items (idiom principle). Much of language occurs systematically A large number of semi-preconstructed phrases that constitute single choices to fill in slots Semi pre-constructed phrases represent units of meaning, even though they might appear to be analyzable into segments Phraseological phenomena: words keep company with other words and attract one another in ways that cannot be explained only through grammar rules. Phraseology: 1.Pragmatic idioms Fixed or semi-fixed social formulae: How do you do? Pleased to meet you 2.Discourse organisers multi-word lexical units that are used to structure discourse: to sum up, in conclusion; to begin with, etc. 3.Collocations E.g. Heavy/torrential rain 4.Idioms, which are culturally bound E.g., to kill two birds with one stone 5.Binomials E.g., Bed and breakfast 6.Similes E.g., to be as happy as a lark 7.Proverbs, commonplaces E.g. the early bird catches the worm Words are building blocks of language. They are central to reading, listening, speaking and writing. Lexical knowledge is at the basis of pragmatics, syntax, morphology and phonology. Content words help us make sense of the world. CATEGORISATION  High frequency words (horse, house)  Low frequency words How can I improve my vocabulary? Incidentally: Extensive reading; extensive spoken input (ex. series); noticing Consciously: Dictionaries; flashcards; association Why learn collocations?  Your language will be more natural and more easily understood.  You will have alternative and richer ways of expressing yourself.  It is easier for our brains to remember and use language in chunks or blocks rather than as single words How to learn collocations  Be aware of collocations and try to recognize them when you see or hear them.  Treat collocations as single blocks of language. Think of them as individual blocks or chunks, and learn strongly support, not strongly + support.  When you learn a new word, write down other words that collocate with it (remember rightly, remember distinctly, remember vaguely, remember vividly).  Read as much as possible. Reading is an excellent way to learn vocabulary and collocations in context and naturally.  Revise what you learn regularly. Practise using new collocations in context as soon as possible after learning them.  Learn collocations in groups that work for you. You could learn them by topic (time, number, weather, money, family) or by a particular word (take action, take a chance, take an exam).  You can find information on collocations in any good learner's dictionary. And you can also find specialized dictionaries of collocations. Semantic= meaning Lexical semantics is the study of meaning of individual words Sentence semantics is the study of the meaning properties of a sentence Discourse semantics is the study of meaning of extended discourse MEANING as:  a purely linguistic phenomenon determined on the place of a sign in the system of a language and its relationship with other signs  a psychological phenomenon (the ideas or concepts that speakers associate with a particular linguistic form)  a phenomenon of use (how a word is used by the speakers of a specific community) We will focus on lexical semantics (studies the meaning of lexemes) LEXICAL SEMANTICS: DENOTATION AND CONNOTATIONS Denotation= the relationship between a linguistic sign and its denotatum. Denotatum is the set of objects, people etc.… of the world to which a word can be applied. The denotatum of the word “island” is identical to the set of all islands which exist in the reality of the world or imagination of the speaker Connotation= is an association speakers have with a word beyond its denotative meaning. Connotations are not necessarily shared by the whole speech community, and they vary according to culture and historical moment. Ex. Soldier- warrior Insect- bug Skinny- slender For example, the word “pig” refers to a specific animal from a denotative point of view, while from a connotative perspective, it can be considered as a term of abuse for a greedy person or a male who behaves badly. These are negative connotations. POLYSEMY AND HOMONYMY  Polysemy = when a lexeme has got more than one meaning (hot). Belonging to the same etymology  Homonymy = lexemes with identical forms (post). Belonging to different etymologies. In dictionaries there are two entries. Hyponymy = the relationship between a hypernym (superordinate) and a hyponym (subordinate): animal-seal Meronymy (part of) = hand- finger Synonymy = two words that entail each other (buy-purchase) “There are no real synonyms, that no two words have exactly the same meaning” (Palmer) Antonymy= semantic oppositions (good/bad). They are gradable. One is marked and the other one is unmarked. (How far is unmarked; how near is marked) Complementaries (male/female) = not gradable. No distinction can be made between marked and unmarked. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE 1. oxymoron: expressions which contain an explicit contradiction: delicious torment, cold comfort 2. tautology: expressions which are true by definition. Ex. An orphan is a parentless child. What will be will be. 3. synaesthesia: expressions which combine a word from a sensory domain to another sensory domain. Ex. Sweet sound, quiet colour, red with anger 4. metonymy: expressions to denote a thing by naming something associated with it (the church=religion, the crown=the king, a suit=a businessman) 5. personification: expressions which attribute human qualities to non-human objects. Ex. The vending machine ate my money. 6. metaphor: expressions which transfer a word from one conceptual domain to another. Ex. The bad news shattered her. Heart of a problem. Metaphor A figure of speech in which a name or quality is attributed to something to which it is not literally applicable: nerves of steel, icy glance • When talking about ideas... Is that the foundation for your theory? His argument collapsed, we need to support the theory with solid arguments (Lakoff Johnson, 1980) • A basis of resemblance (quality) of a source or entity is applied to another entity (target). Metaphors express evaluation • Metaphors are subjective, so they provoke different feelings Syntax: the analysis of the structure of a sentence the way words are combined to form large units such as sentences Phrase (The American people, the European Union, Obama’s victory, happy to see you, perfectly well) Clause (e.g., When Obama is president,) Sentence (Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States.) PHRASES (group of words that function as constituents in the syntax of a sentence)  noun phrase: a spectacular view (spectacular= premodifier; view=head); a long journey  verb phrase (verb+ auxiliary verb used to express such grammatical categories as aspect simple/progressive, modality, voice active/passive etc.) CLAUSES: a typical clause consists of a subject and a predicate