A Comprehensive Analysis of Noun Phrases, Pronouns, Determiners, Prepositions, and Verbs, Appunti di Lingua Inglese

Scarica A Comprehensive Analysis of Noun Phrases, Pronouns, Determiners, Prepositions, and Verbs e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! Noun phrase: is a group of words that can be substituted by a noun or a pronoun; a noun is the head of a noun phrase. The functions of a noun phrase in a sentence are subject, direct object, indirect object. (e.g. “The boy/boy went to the market” “Bob/He went to the market” “The tall boy of my school went to the market”) Noun: is a word that refers to a thing ( book ), a person ( Betty Crocker ), an animal ( cat ), a place ( Omaha ), a quality ( softness ), an idea ( justice ), or an action ( yodeling ) . OPEN CLASS  They can be preceded directly by one of the articles;  They can take -s/-es to indicate the plural;  They can be preceded by an adjective;  They represent people, things and places;  They can be inflected for possessive cases (the professor’s office);  In some sentences the article would not be admitted (when a plural countable noun is generic or nonspecific; before the names of countries, people, continents, cities, rivers and lakes);  Some nouns have irregular plural forms (goose-geese, man-men, woman-women); Pronoun: it’s a word that can replace nouns and noun phrase without changing neither syntax or meaning; their purpose is to avoid the unnecessary repetition of the noun phrases. (“Who are you talking to?” “To him”) CLOSED CLASS  Personal pronouns : I, we, you (singular and plural), he, she, it, they;  Object pronouns : me, us, you (singular and plural), her, him, it, them;  Possessive pronouns : mine, ours, yours (singular and plural), hers, his, theirs;  Possessive adjectives : my, our, your, her, his, their;  Reflexive pronouns : myself, yourself, herself, himself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves  Indefinite pronouns : all, another, any, anybody, anyone, anything, both, each, either, everybody, everyone, everything, few, many, most, neither, nobody, none, no one, nothing, one, other, others, several, some, somebody, someone, something, such;  Demonstrative pronouns : such, that, these, this, those;  Interrogative pronouns : what, whatever, which, whichever, who, whoever, whom, whomever, whose;  Relative pronouns : as, that, what, whatever, which, whichever, who, whoever, whom, whomever, whose. Preposition: it is a functional word that is directly connected to the noun phrase or the pronoun; used before a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction, time, place, location, spatial relationships. Inside a sentence they relate to another element in the sentence; they are usually followed by an object (noun, noun phrase, pronoun) and usually show how the object it’s related to another word in the sentence. (“Mary is laughing about you”) CLOSED CLASS Prepositional phrase: is a group of words where the preposition is the main element followed by other words called modifiers or complements (“I studied with Mary” “I studied with Mary yesterday” “Before we start the meeting, I'd like to thank everyone.”) Determiners: it’s a word put before a noun that gives information about the kind of reference that noun has. Other types of words that can work as a determiner include indefinite pronouns: somebody, some, others, many, everybody.  Articles: a/an, the. CLOSED CLASS Verbs: refers to an action, event or state. A tensed verb is a property of verbs when they can turn into the present third person and the past. OPEN CLASS They can appear in:  Untensed forms: verbs without tense, they don’t carry inflectional morphemes and are also called nominal because the verb is acting more as a noun or an adjective than a verb as such. They are also called non-finite and include infinitives and participles; o Infinitive, is usually the verb preceded by “to” (to swim), it can also appear in the bare form, without the “to”, like after modal verbs (She will swim). The infinitive is the verb without tense or anything else. The full infinitive is used as a noun phrase (I like cake); o Participle, defined as a verbal form that functions as an adjective. We can distinguish two types of participles: past and present.  Present participle, the “-ing” form: singing, watching, loving;  Past participle, the “-ed” form: watched, loved, sung (irregular verbs have different past participles).  Tensed forms: verbs with tense, they carry inflectional morphemes for tense and person (three persons in the singular and plural forms). They are also called finite and include the present (I sing), the past (I sang/I watched) and the continuous form (I am singing). Heuristics are discovery procedures about subconscious knowledge about grammar. It is an approach to puzzle out the solution of the questions which researchers and students ask to themselves. It is not a perfect and rational method. Rules are by definition exceptionless. But when a rule has exceptions, this means that the rule doesn’t work in that situation, so the exceptions go to create another rule. For example the English plural is formed by adding -s at the end of words, but there are some words with an irregular plural like “goose” and this creates a new rule for those who have irregular plural. Grammaticality is the conformity of a sentence to commonly accepted grammar rules. The complications arise when during a real conversation we realise that the rules are often ideal rules, because a sentence can be perfectly grammatical but not understandable. So when we speak about grammaticality, we mean a sentence that follows rules of grammar, relative to a given context. Prescriptivism is the belief that there is only one correct way to use a language. This idea was born in the 18th century when middle classes pushed grammarians to device a way to distinguish them to the lower class, so the grammarians started to inventing rules and writing books, that lower classes couldn’t afford to buy, on how English was supposed to be speak. A prescriptive grammar gives rules about what is right/grammatical and what is wrong/ungrammatical. Descriptivism is the scientific approach to language started by De Saussure. A descriptive grammar doesn’t tell you what you must do or must not do, but observes how people speak and write giving the possibility to people to choose what variety of language they want to speak according to the context. Grammar and language are systems. A system is a number of different things that serve a common purpose. Grammar’s parts work together aiming a common purpose, which is to encode certain meanings that we use frequently in language. Cohesion is defined by the presence of cohesive ties between expressions that refer to the same concept or object, these expressions are also called co-referential. For example, in the sentence “The book is expensive. It costs 100£” “It” sets a cohesive tie referring to “book”. Cohesion can be objectively checked. Coherence is defined by the presence of links between segments of text and one or more topic that the text deals with. For example, the sentence “Mary likes to swim; Adam plays basketball; Jules is a runner” is not coherent because there is nothing that links the three things said, but if we add the segment “What athletic children you have” at the end, this establishes what the three statements had to do with one another. Coherence depends on many factors: the context of a verbal exchange, the amount of shared knowledge, the expectation about the text genre and what has been called the script or frame of a communicative situation. Mechanisms of cohesion and coherence vary across languages and varieties of the same language if repetition occurs in writing or speaking; also considers how speakers of English with different backgrounds can use different strategies. Sentence In writing, sentences are easy to define, because it’s what is placed between punctuation marks. In speaking, sentences are not easy to find, because there’s no punctuation to define them. The simplest period we can find is built upon a simple verb, which shows how central the verb is in any sentence. Except for the imperative, some constructions and the subject of coordinated sentences (if it is the same as in the main clause), the subject, which is the noun or pronoun that precedes the verb, has to be expressed in all sentences. The subject can affect the form of the verb and it is the only part of the sentence that can do that, this is called subject-verb agreement. Right after the verb can appear a simple noun phrase which is directly connected to it, this is called direct object because there no preposition that introduced. The sentence can have a second object called indirect object and can appear as a prepositional phrase or without a preposition. These depend on the verb, because if it is an intransitive verb there is only one object which is usually the subject (Mary laughs); if it is a transitive verb there are two arguments which are usually the subject and the direct object (Mary eats cake); if it is a ditransitive verb there are three arguments which are usually the subject, direct object and indirect object (Mary showed the painting to John). Circumstantial are pieces of information about the sentence that are not essentials. When we find a sentence in which there’s no verb we feel that there’s a gap, this left out is called ellipsis and a sentence with something left out is called elliptical. To decide which is the information that has been eliminated you have to create an image in your mind, fill all the information to understand and discover what’s empty. There is a group of verbs called copular or linking verbs used to link the subject with adjectives or nouns, these verbs represent actions not controlled by the subject but still performed by it (Tom is tall). These verbs can be classified in three classes:  Prototypical, expressing essence and accident, to be called copula when it works this way (Mum is worried);  Current, indicates the current state, appear, feel, lie, look, remain, rest, seem, smell, sound, stand, taste (I feel good);  Resulting, expressing the outcome and the result, become, come, get, go, grow, fall, run, turn (I become an adult). A simple sentence consists of a main tensed verb and its arguments, if any. A complex sentence includes a sentence, called main clause, and other clauses and their arguments. Passive voice It is a syntactical construct in which the direct object of the active sentence is moved in subject position; while the subject is moved after the verb into a prepositional phrase introduced by by. The verb is transformed into a past participle and accompanied by a form of the auxiliary to be. In English, the active/passive opposition makes sense only for verbs that are used as transitive or ditransitive. Linking verbs and intransitive verbs cannot be transformed into the passive. Coordination and subordination A sentence with coordination means that is composed of at least two clauses arranged as if they were at the same level. A sentence with subordination means that is composed of a main clause and one or more subordinates or dependent clauses that are attached to the main clause at a lower level. Coordination allows the conjoining of two or more clauses into one larger sentence when there is some reason to stress the connection between the events described by each clause. Most of the coordinating conjunctions can be used to conjoin components smaller than clauses like noun phrases and adjectives or modifiers. Subordination allows attaching to the main clause other clauses that are in some way dependent on it. If there is no other verb beyond the one of the main clause, it does not make sense to talk about subordination. A subordinate clause replaces one of the components of the main clause. The elements that are more frequently replaced are: subject, direct object, circumstantial components. A subordinate clause can be included in other subordinate clauses, it’s also possible to have a main clause with several subordinate clauses which are coordinated with each other. Relative clause: is one of the ways in which a clause can be subordinated to a higher-level clause; it must have a verb and a relative pronoun that replaces the element dropped in their original structure. Typically, a relative clause tells us something about a noun in the higher-level clause or they modify the noun or noun-phrase (“Mrs Clark will submit the letter. Mrs Clark was my last employer. Mrs Clark, who was my last employer, will submit the letter.”). The only relative pronouns in English are that, which, who, whom, whose. In some relative clauses, we can delete the relative pronoun and the verb to be (The kids ate the cookies that were baked yesterday. The kids ate the cookies baked yesterday.); this type of relative clauses is often called truncated relative clauses or whiz. Restrictive clause it is a descriptive clause that is essential to the definiteness of the word it modifies; it gives argumentative information. Non-restrictive clause is a part of the sentence that is not essential to the definiteness of the meaning of the word it modifies; it gives circumstantial information. Variation Across time-Diachronic analysis is when we can make a comparison across history about a variation of a word class. Across space-Diatopic variation based on the variation of language depending on the geographical place that we are analysing. Across social strata-Diastratic variation it depends on the age and social position of the speaker, on the ethnic groups and on the social groups. Across situation-Diaphasic variation it depends on the context, formal and informal. Across means of communication-Diamesic variation it depends on the means people use to communicate, written, spoken language. While with diachronic variation we can make a comparison across history, in synchronic analysis we can study the variation in a specific moment, that could be present or past, but never both. Interlanguage it’s an in-between language spoken by someone who is learning a new language but has not mastered it yet, this leads to mistakes in speaking and writing. Transfer it is a practise of someone who uses the same way of thinking in his native language and applies it to the language he is currently learning, this leads to some mistakes caused by the different syntax and other elements of the other language. Communication accommodation theory of Howard Giles concerns the behavioural changes that people make to attune their communication to their interlocutor. It is focused on the convergence and divergence of communication behaviours. Convergence refers to strategies through people adapt to other’s communicative behaviours. Divergence refers to the instances in which individuals accentuate the speech and no-verbal differences between themselves and the interlocutor. Braj Kachru classified English around the world organising each variety within three circles. The inner circle refers to the traditional cultural and linguistic bases of English (UK, USA, AU, NZ, IR, CA). The outer circle represents the English of countries that have passed through extended periods of colonisation (India, Pakistan, Nigeria). The expanding circle includes regions where there are varieties of English as foreign language (China, Russia, Brazil, Egypt). Writing  Writing is acquired;  Writing uses the visual channel;  The writer and the reader deal with the text at different times;  Writing usually implies a reader who can be far away from who writes, also in time. This is the reason why in writing, we tend to avoid ambiguities more so than in speech;  Phoneme, abstract unit, the smallest unit of sound that carries no meaning, but it can distinguish it.  Allophone, a variant of a phoneme.  Minimal pairs, help us understand whether two phones in one language belong to two different phonemes or they are variants (allophones) of the same phoneme. In English, /ɪ/ and /i/ are two different phonemes, because I can build this minimal pair: /ʃ ɪ p/ (ship) - /ʃ i p/ (sheep). In Italian, they are mere allophones because if we try to build a minimal pair, such as: /p ɪ n o/ (pino) and /pino/ (pino) the meaning doesn’t change. Prosody, studies the rhythm, the emphasis and the pitch. Lexicon, it’s about vocabulary and the choice of words. Morphology, conceives the word shape and the internal structure of the already existing words and the rules that let other words be created.  Word, a minimum free form, the smallest unit that can be manipulated by syntax, in written language word-forms are called orthographic; in spoken language word-forms are called phonological.  Lexeme, term used when, by word, we mean vocabulary item.  Grammatical word, a word viewed as a syntactic unit.  Morphemes, are the smallest units of language that have their own meaning or grammatical function within a specific language. A word must consist of at least one morpheme. Abstract level. Types of morphemes: o Autonomy, free morpheme (or content morpheme) which is the element that conveys the bulk of meaning (can occur alone); bound morpheme that is the element that adds detail to the meaning of the content morphemes or that helps the content morphemes to fit the grammatical context;  Examples: RECHARGE→ RE (bound morpheme, adding detail) CHARGE (free morpheme); APPLES→ APPLE (free morpheme) S (bound morpheme, helping to fit the grammatical context e.g. the plural). o Position, Base + affixes. Based on their position, affixes can be divided into prefixes, if they precede the base, and suffixes, if they follow the base.  Examples: LOAD (Base) → LOADING (Base + suffix -ing) → RELOAD (prefix re-+ base). o Function, derivational if they change the word class or the lexical meaning, deriving new words from existing ones; inflectional, marking inflection and creating alternative grammatical forms of a word.  Examples: DEVELOP → DEVELOPMENT (derivational); SLEEP → SLEEPS (inflectional, third person singular). o We distinguish lexical morphemes and functional/grammatical morphemes.  Lexical morphemes are: always free morphemes; nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs; open class, can be expanded.  Functional/grammatical morphemes are: bound morphemes; prepositions, pronouns, determiners; closed class, do not admit new elements.  Morph, is the concrete realisation of a morpheme.  Allomorphs, are the variant of the same morpheme across different contexts. Same morpheme, different morphs. Allomorphs are distinct with regard to form, but they have the same grammatical or semantic function. Examples: im-, ir-, in-, ig-, il- are allomorphs of the morpheme negative form through Latin and Old French. Syntax, studies how words combine and interact between each other. Semantics, studies the meaning of the word. Pragmatics, gives information about the syntax and also studies the way in which the context contributes to the meaning. Morphological processes Conversion: a new word is formed by assigning to an existing word a new syntactic category without changing its form. (“A fast (adjective) train; The train goes very fast (adverb)”) Affixation: is a word-forming process that involve the use of affixes, called prefixes if they precede the root or suffixes if they follow the root. Syncretism: refers to a situation where morphosyntactic category that are represented by distinct forms elsewhere are mapped onto a single form in some contexts. (“past=cooked/past participle=cooked; past=gave/past participle= given no syncretism”) Haplology: when two identical or very similar syllables or sounds occur next to each other, one of them it’s deleted. (genitive= Charles’s agents-Charles’ agents). Stress placement: nouns can be derived from verbs and verbs from nouns by changing the position of the stress. (‘import (noun) im’port (verb)/ ‘progress (noun) pro’gress (verb)) Reduplication: the creation of a new word by repetition of an existing word in its entirety (full reduplication) or in part (partial reduplication). (go-go, bye-bye, razzle-dazzle) Compounding: the process of creating complex words formed by at least two bases that are themselves words with their own meaning. Compounds always have a headword and usually it is right-handed, the other word serves as modifier of the headword. Compounds that contain the headword are called endocentric compounds (schoolboy, speed date, strong man); exocentric compounds, otherwise, do not contain the headword that is external at the compound (carbon footprint, greenhouse). Coinage: creation of new words non existing (nylon) Eponyms: new words created by widening the meaning of a personal name to refer a place, a product associated with that person. (Victoria (in Australia, British Columbia from Queen Victoria), mesmerize from Franz Mesmer). Backformation: is the reinterpretation of the structure of a word so that a part of it is considered an affix and then removed, leaving behind the assumed root. (editor-edit, beggar-beg) Blending: is a process of forming new words by combining chunks of words. (Wi-Fi=Wireless Fidelity, Brunch= breakfast+lunch) Clipping: is the process of creating words by shortening long words dropping a part, it can distinguish three types of clipping: fore clipping (phone=telephone), middle clipping (flu=influenza) and back clipping (ad=advertisement). Hypocorism: is used to refer to words formed by suffixing a vowel (-y or -ie) to a monosyllabic root or after clipping a complex compound, it is used to create familiar form of names (Johnnie=John, Mandy=Amanda) Acronyms: is when a group of words representing a concept or an organization is reduced to their initial letters and these create a well-formed word (NATO= North Atlantic Treaty Organization/SIM (card)= Subscriber Identity Module). Abbreviations: is when a group of words representing a concept or an organization is reduced to their initial letters and these do not create a well-formed or pronounceable word (EU=European Union/ECB=European Central Bank). Borrowing: when a language incorporates words, especially when they are referred to specific things, from another language into its vocabulary (pizza, yogurt, mozzarella).