RIASSUNTI LIBRO "THE CAMBRIDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE", Appunti di Lingua Inglese

Scarica RIASSUNTI LIBRO "THE CAMBRIDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE" e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! THE CAMBRIDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CHAPTER 8- THE NATURE OF THE LEXICON Lexicon and lexemes The term “lexicon” goes back to the 17°" century and it's referred to the stock of meaningful units in a language. It is studied by lexicologists, who write dictionaries. The word “Lexeme” comes from the Greek, and means "word, speech”. A “lexeme” is the typical fundamental unit of lexical meaning which exists regardless of any inflectional endings. It is often a single word which may have grammatical variants but it can also be made up of different words. A “multiword lexeme” or “composite lexeme” is composed of more than one orthographic word such as a phrasal verb (pull through), an open compound (fire engine) or an idiom (throw in the towel, give up the ghost). For example, “fibrillate” is a lexeme because the words “fibrillating, fibrillates and fibrillated” lie behind it, as well as the expressions “it is raining cats and dogs”, “put up with”, “face the music” and “come in” or the words “elephant” and “happiness”. Thus, a lexeme is defined by its sound form and its spelling, its grammar category that is noun, verb or adjective, its inherent grammar properties (for example the gender), the set of grammatical forms and its lexical meaning. How large is the English lexicon? According to “the Oxford English Dictionary” and “Webster's Third New International”, the English lexicon has about half a million lexemes. The Oxford has more historical references and British dialect items than the Webster, which has more local American items. A lot of new lexemes were invented in India, in Singapore and Nigeria but they were not recorded into dictionary as they are reflections of the oral language. Abbreviations There are half a million abbreviations in the English language. The majority of them refers to science, technology and other special fields. They are important and beloved because they are part of linguistics economy. We know 5 main different types of abbreviations: ® Initialisms: are also called alphabetisms since they are pronounced letter by letter. www, tv, USA, OMG, BTW and PhD are initialisms. The majority of abbreviations are initialisms. * Acronyms:are initialisms pronounced as a single word such as NATO, UNESCO, MOTEL. * Clipping: are made by reducing a long word which becomes a syllable word such as “ad”, “phone. * Blends: are words which are made up of the shortened forms of two other words, such as bruch (breakfast+uch), smog (smoke+fog), slanguage (slang+language). In general, brand names and scientific terms are blends. * Facetious forms: are fun abbreviations such as TGIF (thank God it's Friday), GCMG (God calls me God) and CMG (call me God). There are also “latin abbreviations” as “etc” and “DG” in the English language. Proper Names English proper names are the on the boundary of the lexicon. In general, some of them have a language specific form, such as Christmas, January, the Moon and can be found in the dictionary, others can only be found in encyclopedias. This is the case of Diplodocus, Alpha Centauri, Caesar. Proper names increase the size of the lexicon and must be written in capital letters. How large is your lexicon? Commonly, the number of lexemes in an English speakers vocabulary mostly depends on their hobbies and educational background. On average, who left school knows between 10-12.000 words, whereas a college graduated knows between 20-25.000 lexemes. Anyway, a person's vocabulary is divided into two categories: * active vocabulary, namely lexemes actively used in speech and writing ® passive vocabulary, that depicts lexemes known but not very used Shakespeare had the largest vocabulary among the English writers. It included round 30.000 words. How English words came about? Why does English have more words than any other language? The reason for this is historical. English was originally a Germanic language, related to Dutch and German. However, after the Norman Conquest in 1066 it was hugely influenced by Norman French (the language of the ruling class) and by Latin (the language of scholarship and of the Church). English is also very ready to accommodate foreign words. CHAPTER 9-THE SOURCES OF THE LEXICON Native vocabulary The English lexicon has an Anglo-Saxon base, in fact Germanic invaders settled in Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries and brought words that have never fallen out of use. The invaders all spoke a language that was Germanic and displaced the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants. Anglo-Saxon words dominate everyday conversations, whether it be grammatical words (in, on, be, that), lexical words (father, love, name) or affixes (mis-, un-, -ness, -less). They are parts of the body (arm, bone, chest, ear, eye, foot, hand, heart), the natural environment (field, hedge, hill, land, meadow, wood), the domestic life (door, floor, home, house), the calendar (day, month, moon, sun, year), animals (cow, dog, fish, goat, hen, sheep, swine), common adijectives (black, dark, good, long, white, wide) and common verbs (become, do, eat, fly, go, help, kiss, live, love, say, see, sell, send, think). There are also Celtic borrowings in the English language. Although the Celts were already resident in Britain when the Anglo-Saxons arrived, there are few obvious traces of their language in English today. Words that survive in modern English include brock (badger), alongside many geographical place names such as lake and river. Scandinavian borrowings are present in this language too. The Norse invaders settled in Britain (9th century) and they had a great influence on English (e.g. take, they). A good number of sc- or sk- words today are of Scandinavian origin (scathe, dirt, kid, scorch, score, scowl, scrape, scrub, skill, skin, skirt, sky). Foreign borrowings When a language takes lexemes from another one, new items are called “borrowings” or “loan words”. The borrowings began before the Anglo-Saxons arrived. Latin loans spread after the arrival of Christianity such as church, priest, bishop, school. In 1950 Middle English developed and the English language emerged as a world language. That is why this language has a lot of foreign loans in it. After the Norman Conquest in 1066 the influence of French doubled the number of lexemes. A trilingualism in English, French, and Latin was common in the worlds of business and the professions: e Government: parliament, chancellor, government, country, crown ® Finance: treasure, wage, poverty in the case of heavy and line, which collocate with a large number of lexemes, others the predictability is strong, as in the case of auspicious that collocates only with occasion and a few closely-related items. ® Free combinations Free combinations are sequences which come to the mind of the speakers in a natural way. An example can be “I like” which suggests sequences as “I like films, I like music”. ® Associative responses It is important to distinguish between collocations and associative responses. Collocations come to mind following the language, while associative responses are related to the person itself and are generally idiosyncratic. In fact, if | say “peach”, a native speaker could think of the fruit while a normal person could respond with cat because their cat's name is Peach. ® Idioms They are idiomatic expressions which are grammatically and lexically fixed. No lexeme can be replaced in order not to alter the idiomatic meaning. Some of the idioms are “at first hand, face the music, put a sock in it (stop talking), wash my hands of... (I don't care), are we on the same page? (are we in agreement about that?)”. ® Lexicalphrases They are also called “composite forms” or “sentence stems”. Lexical phrases are specially assembled sequences of items. These phrases are used in both speech and writing and form part of the study of pragmatics. They are divided into 4 main types: 1. Polywords are short phrases which act like individual lexemes. They cannot be separated and are “in a nutshell, by the way, so far so good”. 2. Institutionalized expressions are units of sentence length which function as separated utterances. They include proverbs and aphorisms. They could be “how do you do?, have a nice day, give me a break”. 3. Phrasal constraints are quite short phrases which allow some degree of variation, for example “as I was (saying, mentioning), good (morning, afternoon), a...ago (day, week, long time), as far as | (can see, know). 4. Sentence builders are phrases which provide the framework for whole sentences, such as “not only...but also, my point is that..., let me begin by... The difference between idioms and lexical phrases is that you can understand the meaning of the lexical phrase by analyzing the meaning of the single words. Investigating sense relations e Synonyms They are lexemes which have the same meaning. There may be dialect differences as with the words “autumn” and “fall”, stylistic differences “insane” and “loony” or “salt” and “sodium chloride”, collocational differences “rancid” and “rotten” or “kingly”, “royal”, “regal”. There may be a difference of emotional feeling too as in the case of “young” and “youngster”. Sometimes there are perfect synonyms as in the case of enough/sufficient, cherublic/angel. e Antonyms Antonyms are lexemes which are opposite in meaning and exist in several forms. There are opposites capable of comparison called gradable antonyms (small/large, happy/sad, wet/dry), opposites which complement each other in the meaning known as complementary opposites (single/married, alive/dead, single/last) and antonyms mutually dependent on each other called converse terms. Their quality is converseness because each item presupposes the other (over/under, buy/sell, wife/husband). ® Hyponymsand hypernyms A hyponym describes what happens when we say that “an X is a kind of Y”, for example “a daffodil is a kind of flower”. In this case the term “flower” is called hypernym or superordinate term, while lexemes as tulip, daffodil and rose are hyponyms because they are all kind of flowers. It includes one meaning into another. ® Incompatibles When we want to exclude one meaning from another we talk of incompatibility. For example in the sentence “I am thinking of a flower and it is a daffodil and a rose” we have no incompatibility because the terms are hyponyms of the same hypernym, while the sentence “I am thinking of a flower and it isa daffodil and a prizewinner” succeeds because daffodils and prizewinner are compatible in it. Other sense relationships * Parts andwholes: many areas of the lexicon show a part-whole relationship such as clothing that reminds of zip, collar, button, jeans, etc; house that reminds of bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, door window. ® Lexical series are series of lexemes in which items are defined in mathematical order. An example can be the calendar that shows three different series, that is to say days, months and dates. * Hierarchies are graded series of lexemes in which each item holds a particular rank being “higher” or “lower” than adjacent terms. They often reflect relationships between people, as in the case of military rank or church seniority (priest, bishop, archbishop) but they also refer to units of measurement (second, minute, hour). Definition A definition is the linguistic mechanism which brings everything together. It is a special sentence which relates the relevant aspects of a lexeme's meaning in order to allow its understanding to everybody. Each definition (cow) has distinguishing features (4 legs, horns, a tail), functional features (gives milk, lives in a field) and attributes. CHAPTER 12-LEXICAL DIMENSIONS Each lexeme contains information relating to different linguistic dimensions. These dimensions are the historical dimension (when it came into English), the structural dimension (how it is formed), the regional dimension (whether it is in standard use or regional), the social dimension (if it carries resonance of gender, class or ethnicity) or the occupational dimension (whether it has a special resonance in a specific domain such as science, law or religion). The loaded lexicon e Connotation and denotation Denotation is the objective relationship between a lexeme and the reality to which it refers. It is the meaning which everyone agrees on (the rose is a flower). Connotation refers to the personal aspect of lexical meaning (rose could mean love, passion). Connotations vary according to the experience of individuals. When a lexeme is highly charged with connotations, it is defined “loaded”. Fields such as religion and history are characterized by a lot of “loaded lexicon” and we can notice that with words as radical, capitalist, fascism, priest, dogma. ® Taboo words and euphemism They are words that people don't like to hear or read, such as swear words. People avoid them in polite society because they could be harmful, embarrassing or offensive. There are a few ways of avoiding a taboo item: one of them is to replace that word with a more technical term, as it happens in medicine, or, if the language is written, to spell the word. Another method, which is the most used, is to mitigate the taboo term by using a euphemism. Euphemisms are words or phrases that talk indirectly about something unpleasant or offensive. For example, “my gold fish passed away” means that it died, “tired and emotional” to say “drunk”, “little girls room” to mean “toilet”. ® Swearing Swearing refers to the strongly emotive use of a taboo word or phrase. Its forcefulness is reflected in its use of short and sharp sounds and emphatic rhythms. It is important because it expresses a wide range of emotions, from annoyance to anger and frustration. In general swearing phrases are nonsense, such as the expression “fucking hell”. Swearing can mark social distance and social solidarity too. ® Technical words/Jargon Jargon is a loaded word as every group, activity or specialized subject has its own technical vocabulary. (chemistry, maths, English language study, sport). Jargon is important because it helps specialists to be precise and it also economizes their communication, it keeps it simple. Jargon is the so-called know-how and it adds peace, variety and humor to speech. Despite all, jargon is also considered a bad use of the language because the speaker uses words that not everyone can understand. It can also provide a way of hiding uncertainties and inadequacies. ® Doublespeak During the 70s in the USA people knew that jargon was used by people in power to confuse or deceive them, so they started to talk of doublespeak. Doublespeak is a language that changes the meaning of words, that hides the true meaning of a word and avoids responsibilities. Sometimes, it may take the form of euphemism. Doublespeak may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversion of meaning, such as Orwell said talking about political language. ® Political correctness Most of the loan words are associated with the way society talks about itself and especially to those who feel oppressed. There was a period in history where the word “black” was considered offensive, so people replaced it, even words like “mentally handicapped” are replaced with “people with learning difficulties” and “disabled” is replaced with “differently abled”. Political correctness minimizes offence to gender, race, culture and disability. “Language creates categories for thought, words can create either opportunities or boundaries”. The problem arises when the linguistic constructs we use influence our way of thinking in negative ways. Playing with the language We play with language when we manipulate it as a source of enjoyment. We “manipulate” it, in fact we take some linguistic features and make them do what we want. We break the rules of the language. uncountable nouns. Proper names, names of subjects, diseases, games and nouns in a noncountable use only have the singular form. There are also plural-only nouns such as names of two-part items (jeans, scissors) nouns ending in -s (congratulations, outskirts, thanks) and nouns which seem to be singular but are plural (people, folk). Other nouns can have two different plural forms, especially animal names, that's the case of rabbit. Nouns can be concrete or abstract. Nouns can have two cases in English, that is to say “common case” and “genitive”. In the common case nouns have no ending, in the genitive case they have an -s at the end and there's an apostrophe. The genitive denotes possession (John's house, a summer's day). There is a close similarity between a noun in the genitive case and the same noun preceded by “of” (the cover of the book). Personal nouns and the higher animals tend to take the genitive ending, while inanimate nouns take the of-genitive. The of-form is also used for titles (the Duke of Kent). 3. VERBS The verb is the element which makes everything hold together. It always says something about a person or a thing. We normally have a main verb in a sentence, sometimes we may have an auxiliary verb as well. There are two main types of verbs, that is to say stative verbs and action verbs. Stative verbs are used to describe a state or a situation and are opposed to an action or a process, because action verbs also identify a mental action or process. Verbs can also be classified into “regular verbs”, namely verbs which have predictable forms, and “irregular verbs”, that is to say verbs that has no predictable forms. Regular verbs appear in 4 forms: the base form, which has no endings and is also called infinitive, the -s form used for the third person singular of the present tense, the -ing form and the -ed form used for the past. Most irregular verbs change the vowel of the base to make their past or -ed participle, such as “take=took, make=made”. The -ed ending is never used with the verbs meet, win and cut. 4. ADVERBS Adverbs give further information and details of the action, for example quickly, carefully. The usual way to make an adverb is to take an adjective and add the suffix -ly at the end, but not all adverbs work like that. It's the case of good, whose adverb is well. We have different types of adverbs: manner, time and frequency degrees. They answer to questions such as “how?, when?, how often?”. 5. CONJUNCTIONS Conjunctions link two different sentences. We have two main types of conjunctions, namely “coordinating conjunctions” and “subordinating conjunctions”. The main coordinating conjunctions are “for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so”. There are several types of subordinating conjunctions, for example “as much as, before, if, then, unless, where, although”. Coordinating conjunctions are always preceded by a coma. The difference is that coordinating conjunctions simply join two sentences together, while subordinating conjunctions show that one clause is part of the other. 6. PREPOSITIONS Prepositions show how nouns relate to each other in space and time, so they answer the questions “why?, where?, when?, how?”. Most of the common prepositions are made up of just one word, such as “about, at, before, by, for, down, up, with”. Several prepositions are multi-word prepositions, it is the case of “in spite of, instead of, because of”. They are important in English because they are part of phrasal verbs, so depending on the preposition, the whole meaning changes, 10 7. INTERJECTIONS Interjections are used to express our emotions. They do not form part of a sentence, in fact they can stand on their own. They are language dependent because they change as the language changes. For example, “gnam” is “chomp” in English. 8. PRONOUNS They are called pronouns because pro means “for” in Latin, so pronouns are words which stand in for nouns, words that are used to replace nouns. There are different types of pronouns in English, that is to say demonstrative, reflexive, interrogative, etc. In English there are gendered pronouns: “he” and “she”. They indicate the gender of the noun when the gender is unspecified, we use “their” in informal and colloquial situation. In formal writing, the problem can be avoided by changing the sentence to the plural or eliminating the pronoun. Pronouns have the genitive case too for subject and object function, such as I/me, we/us, he/him, she/her, they/them. CHAPTER 15-WORD CLASSES To tell which word class a word belongs to, we need to look at how it behaves in a sentence. ® Theclass of nouns Different factors are involved as regards the way nouns behave. They are “syntactic structure”, “grammatical morphology” and “lexical morphology”. The syntactic structure shows how a noun is the chief item of a noun phrase, such as “the new car”, in fact it is always preceded by “the” or “some”. Grammatical morphology allows a noun to change its form to express a contrast in singular or plural number and to mark the genitive case as in dog, dogs, dog's, dogs’. ® Theclass of pronouns Pronouns can replace a noun or a noun phrase, that is the case of “l have a black pen and John has a blue one” or “My brother has just quit. He was really angry”. Someone can also be a pronoun “I see someone over there” e The classof adjectives An adjective can occur before a noun, as in little bag. In this case the adjective has an “attributive” function. An adjective can also be alone after forms of the verb to be (Her bag was little). This function is called “predicative”. The adjective can be preceded by very and other intensifying words (very big, terribly old), it can be compared (bigger/biggest) and it also permits the addition of the suffix -ly to make an adverb (mad/madly). The adjectives have different suffixes, such as “able, -esque, -fil, -ic, -ish, -ive, -al, -ed”. ® Theclass of adverbs Adverbs have two chief uses. Most of them are related to the meaning of the verb or some other elements of the clause (we're leaving tonight/ morally, he should resign). Other adverbs affect the meaning of an adjacent word or phrase, as in “quite a party, the day before or someone else”. Adverbs normally end with -ly but they can also end in different ways such as -wise and -wards. 11 ® Theclassofverbs Three classes of verbs can occur into a phrase, that is to say lexical verbs, modal verbs and primary verbs. Lexical verbs have a meaning that can immediately be identified, such as run, jump, walk. They act as main verbs. Modal verbs are used as auxiliary verbs. They are “must, will, can, may, might, shall, would, could, used to, ought to, need, dare”. Primary verbs can be both main verbs or modal verbs. They are just three, that is to say “be, have and do”. Verbs can be finite form or nonfinite form. The limit form limit the verb to a particular number, tense, person, or mood, the nonfinite form do not limit it and occur when the -ing form is used (he was leaving/he is leaving/he might be leaving). CHAPTER 16-THE STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES The study of the sentence structure is called syntax. ® SENTENCES Sentences can be “grammatical”. These sentences are constructed according to a system of rules known by the adult mother-tongue speakers. A sentence can stand on its own and only a certain combination of words can be called sentence. A sentence usually makes sense. We have two major types of sentences, that is to say “major sentences” and “minor sentences”. Major sentences are formed by using the basic grammar rules of a given language and can be broken down into specific and predictable patterns of elements. Each pattern of elements is called “clause”; if a sentence is made up of one clause it a simple sentence, when they have more than one clause they are called multiple sentences. On the contrary minor sentences don't follow these rules and for this reason are hard to analyze. Minor sentences can be “hello! how do you do?, cheers, eh” Major sentences are of 3 different types: 1. Simple sentences consist of only one clause. 2. Compound sentences consist of two or more independent clauses. An independent clause can stand on its own. They are generally linked by coordinating conjunctions, such as “and, or, but”. 3. Complex sentences are composed of an independent clause and one or more dependent clause. An independent clause and a dependent clause are linked by a subordinating conjunction as “because, when and since”. The subordinate clause cannot stand as a sentence on its own. Both compound sentences and complex sentences can contain different instances of subordination or coordination, and so a multiple structure. With multiple coordination we have different main clauses united by the conjunction “and” (I like dancing and singing”. With multiple subordination we have a main clause and two subordinate clauses “he said that we would eat when the cafe opened”. Several instances of subordination can occur at the same level, we have in this case a sentence which is made up of two subordinate clauses “what | say is what I think”. Coordination and subordination may also occur in the same sentence and create a compound-complex sentence in which we usually find a main clause and subordinate clauses “I went when the rain stopped and after | found my shoes”. 12 -Future tense English also has future tense but no future endings. In fact, we find the “going to future”, used to describe actions that will take place soon, the “present progressive”, which expresses immediate actions that will take place following an arranged plan, such as “the match is starting at 11 o'clock pm”. Other futures are the “simple present tense”, that implies definiteness as in “go to bed”, modal verbs and the use of “be to, be about to, have to”. To express future time, people should use “shall” with first persons and “will” with second and third persons. e Aspect Each verb tense has an aspect that refers to how the time of action of the verb is regarded. There are two aspects in English: the “perfective aspect” and the “progressive aspect. The “perfective aspect” is constructed using forms of the verb “have” (present perfective “I've lived in Paris for 6 months” and past perfective “l have missed the train”). It is used to express specific events, states and habitual actions. The “progressive aspect” is formed with the -ing form of the main verb to express an event in progress at a given time. It is used with both tenses, such as “they're jumping, they were jumping, they'd been jumping, they've been jumping”. The action can always be seen in two ways, that is to say “passive form” and “active form”. Adding a comment * Disjuncts: they are adverbial. Some of them convey the speaker’s comment about the style or form of what is being said. Words of this type are “literally, briefly, honestly, confidentially”. Other disjuncts make an observation about the truth of a clause or a judgment about its content. In this case we use words as “fortunately, foolishly, curiously, hopefully, regrettably, undoubtedly”. * Commentclauses: they are disjuncts united in a phrase, such as “to my regret, | regret to say”. They are particularly used in informal conversations. Comment clauses express several types of meaning, that is to say “tentativeness (I think, | assume, | suppose, I'm told, rumor has it), certainty (I'm sure, I know, it's true), emotional attitude (I'm afraid, I'm pleased to see, | hope) and asking for attention (you know, you see, as you may have heard)”. Reporting speech We report someone's speech in by using a special reporting clause, such as “he said, he wrote”. The accompanying speech is given in the reported clause, which can appear in direct speech or indirect speech. Direct speech gives the exact words used by the speaker or writer. They are usually enclosed by quotation marks. When it occurs in the middle or at the end of the sentence, the order of subject and verbs can be inverted. This happens in journalism too. Indirect speech or reported speech gives the word as reported by someone. Sentence information We can organize the information contained in a sentence in many different ways, for example “I have been taught English by my friend” or “my friend taught me English”. 15 There are generally two types of information in a sentence, namely given information and new information. Given information gives the theme of a sentence and tells us something that we are already aware of. On the contrary, new information is the part on which we have to focus. Beyond the sentence When sentences cohere, we have a text. Coherence is given by different factors, that is to say general knowledge, vocabulary, punctuation and layout and prosody. Prosody depicts variations in pitch, loudness, speed, rhythm and pause in order to provide the spoken equivalent of a written text. What is a corpus? According to Sinclair, a corpus, or body, is a collection of naturally-occurring language text, chosen to characterize a state or a variety of a language. It is a collection of texts assumed to be representative of a given language, dialect or other subset of a language, to be used for linguistic analysis. That's Francis’ definition. The “British national corpus” is made up of 100 million words of contemporary spoken and written British English. It is representative of British English as a whole. British national corpus is designed to be appropriate for a variety of uses: lexicography, education, research, commercial applications. The corpus is balanced with regard to genre, subject, matter and style. An example can be the phrase “to keep an eye on” which means to watch someone or something or stay informed about the person's behavior, especially to keep someone out of trouble. Style is a part of sociolinguistics. It's a set of linguistic variants with specific social meaning. Linguistic variants are choices made from the repertoire of a language. Social meanings can include group membership, personal attributes or beliefs. A style is not a fixed attribute of a speaker because it can also change. The paradox of grammar Grammar is fundamental, dynamic, relevant and real. It is at the core of communication and the heart of the language. Despite this, the study of grammar is complex and boring. CHAPTER 17-THE SOUND SYSTEM The sound system Everyone acquires the ability to listen and speak before the ability to read and write, so the origins of the written language lie in the spoken language. PHONOLOGY AND PHONETICS Phonology is the study of speech sounds, so how they are organized in the mind of the speakers of a given language and how they are used to convey meaning. It is important to make a distinction between phonology and phonetics. Phonetics belongs to descriptive linguistics, while phonology belongs to the theoretical linguistics. Phonetics is a subdiscipline of descriptive linguistics. It studies the production, transmission and reception of sounds, phonology studies different patterns of sound in different languages, so phonology studies abstract and mental entities, while phonetics deals with the actual production of sounds. The brain ears phonology, the ear ears phonetics. 16 Phonetics can be divided into 3 branches: * Articulatory phonetics: deals with the configuration of the vocal tract in order to produce speech- sounds. It deals with the “articulators”, that is to say the parts of the body which produce speech- sounds, so it focuses on how speech sounds are made. Speech organs are the lips, the tongue, the joe, the palate. There are active and passive articulators. The tongue is active and it is a moving one, while the palate is a passive waiting articulator. For example, to make the /1/ sound (life), the tip of the tongue makes contact with the palate just behind the teeth. Other articulators are the lungs, the larynx, the glottis, the uvula, the pharynx, the soft palate with the velum, the hard palate, the alveolar ridge, the nose, teeth. * Auditory phonetics: deals with how sounds are heard and received * Acoustic phonetics: deals with how speech-sounds are transmitted For this reason, phonology can study one specific language, while phonetics doesn't do that. The symbols of a language are called phonemes. They have to do with phonetics. Phonemes represent the actual sound and pronunciation of words. When you study phonetics you also study allophones, that is to say two different ways of pronouncing the same phoneme. When the consonant /t/, for example, occurs in a word such as “top”, at the beginning of a word and followed by a vowel, it's aspirated; when it follows a /s/, in the middle of a word, such as in “stop”, it is not aspirated. The sounds of English and their representation In English, there is no one-to-one relation between the system of writing and the system of pronunciation. The alphabet has 26 letters but in standard British English there are approximately 44 speech-sounds. The basic sounds of spoken languages are represented in the “international phonetic alphabet”, also known as IPA, that changes depending on the language that we are studying. The colon (:) represents longer duration of pronunciation and is found in long vowels such as [go:d]. Vowels There are 5 or 6 vowel letters in the alphabet but around 20 vowels in most accents of English and their sound qualities vary from accent to accent. They are usually in the middle of words. We have different types of vowels: - Monophthongsor pure vowels, where there is just one vowel quality sound in a syllable, such as in sheep [fi:p]. There are 12 pure vowels in English. - Diphthongs are vowels where two vowel qualities can be perceived, such as in [saiz] or [mas]. It is a homograph because it has two meanings. - Triphthongs are vowels in which three vowel qualities can be perceived. It's the case of player=[pleia] and fire= [faia] All vowels have some properties in common. From a phonetic point of view, they are articulated with a relatively open configuration of the vocal tract, so the mouth is not closed. We can perceive the air passing through the mouth and so and “audible friction”. From a phonological point of view, they generally occupy the nucleus of the syllable, such as in “cat”, that is why /y/ can be either a vowel or a consonant. Vowels involve the vibration of the vocal cord, so we talk about “voicing”. English vowels are all oral vowels and only take on a nasal quality when they are preceded by a nasal consonant, as in "man, long, nose”. The most used method to describe the articulation of vowels is that of Daniel Jones, known as “the cardinal vowel system”. 17 Sound symbolism Linguistic also includes sounds that have no meaning. The phenomenon is known as “sound symbolism” and refers especially to onomatopoeia. We can identify a symbolic meaning in words as “clap, bang, knock, cough, cuckoo, bang”. These sounds are typical of comic books, advertising and primitive poetry. Pronunciation in practice The study of the sound system in English is not so difficult but we generally tend to take pronunciation for granted and notice it when it becomes distinctive. Most people are unfamiliar with the phonetic terminology required to describe vocal effects and even after they have learnt and understood it, they are not able to apply them in the recognition of sound qualities. CHAPTER 18-THE WRITING SYSTEM It is a system of symbols that are used to represent a given language. It is one kind of graphic expression English, Italian, French and Spanish, for example, are alphabet-based systems and each graphic mark represent individual speech sounds, while Chinese is a logographic-based system because the system of writing is not based on alphabet but on logographs. Writing can refer either to a process or a result and it can refer to an everyday or a professional activity because everybody can write but only a few are writers. Written language refers to any visual manifestation of spoken language. The standardizes writing system is known as orthography. English orthography consists of the set of letters and their variant forms, the spelling system and the set of punctuation marks. The orthographic system can be studied from two points of view, that is to say: - Graphetics is analogous to phonetics. It is the study of the way human beings make, transmit, and receive written symbols. - Graphology is coined on analogy with phonology. It is the study of the linguistic contrasts that writing systems express. It recognizes the notion of the grapheme, that is the smallest unit in the writing system capable of causing a contrast in meaning. For example, <s> and <r>. When two letters represent a single sound, we have a digraph. Consonant digraphs include “sh” in “ship” and “gh” in “trough”, vowel digraphs include “ea” in “bread” and “oa” in broad. Trigraphs also exist, they are three letters representing a single sound, such as “tch” in “watch”. The alphabet The earliest-known alphabet was the 22-letter North Semitic which developed 1700 BC in the Middle East. Then we had the Phoenician in 1000 BC and the Greek in 800 BC. This alphabet was the 23-letter alphabet. Old English was first written in the runic alphabet, but the arrival of Christian missionaries brought the rapid introduction of the Roman alphabet. Latin letters were applied to the Old English system. After the Norman Conquest, the Anglo-Saxon symbols disappeared because the French preferred more familiar letters. To this alphabet of 24 letters were added, from the Middle Ages, other two letters. The result is the 26-letter alphabet known today, which lacks of diacritics. Properties of letters The letters of the alphabet are the basic elements of the writing system and have no meaning in themselves. They need to maintain a distinctive graphic form. The dot is important too. 20 Graphemic symbolism Graphemes, like phonemes, have no intrinsic meaning. They combine and contrast and it's the largest unit which have meaning. Analyzing handwriting Graphology studies handwriting and graphologists try to find out what handwriting can tell about people's character and personality. Graphetic variety Topography studies the hierarchical structure of the writing system. Each typeface is represented by several alphabets and these consist of letters, punctuation marks and other symbols. The symbols can be combined into larger units of text. The interaction of type-face, type size, letter and line spacing produces texture. Extra graphic dimensions The choice of typography can provide additional dimensions to the meaning conveyed by the words and sentences, such as irony, humor and atmosphere. English spelling English spelling is not regular, in fact there are less than 500 words in English whose spelling is irregular. Much of this irregularity depends on the notion of regularity. Regularity implies the existence of a rule which can generate a large number of words correctly. Only 3% of everyday English words are irregular to the point that they have to be learnt by heart. Spelling involves a set of active process which is not required for reading, in fact it is a letter-by-letter act. Complications in spelling come from Old English 23-letters alphabet and 35 phonemes. After the Norman Conquest, Old English forms were replaced and English spelling was a mixture of two systems, that is to say Old English and French. The introduction of print led to further complications because people shortened or lengthened words. Then people changed some letter in order to recognize the origin of words, above all Latin words and in the 16° and 17° century, words like “cocoa, bizarre, intrigue and pneumonia” arrived in English from Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Greek and Latin were introduced in the English language. Spelling reform In the 16° century people showed their willing to reform the traditional orthography. They wanted to standardize it by using familiar letters more regularly, to add new symbols, to supplant TO letters with symbols and apply existing rules. Reformers wanted to build a new Phonetics institute where phonetics referred to his system of writing and printing as they are pronounced, called phonography and phonotypy. Punctuation Punctuation plays a central role in modern writing system. It helps written language to be read coherently through the use of sentence-ending points, clause-dividing comas, it helps the reader understanding prosody and the type of text they are going to read. The intonation can be suggested from exclamation marks, question marks and parenthesis. Punctuation may highlight semantic units and add semantic dimensions. 21 Punctuation marks The modern punctuation system is wide-ranging, including the use of capitals and spaces, but also asterisk. Some features identify paragraphs and sections, others identify clauses, phrases and sentences. A few express meaning, such as the question and exclamation marks and the apostrophe. There are marks which separate constructions: ® the point(full-stop), identifies a sentence * semi-colon, corresponds to the conjunction “and”, separates complex points in a list and identifies the coordinate parts of a complex sentence * colon(:), is followed by an amplification or explanation of what precedes ®* comma, marks a sequence of similar grammatical units such as words, phrases and clauses * parentheses (round brackets) are an alternative to commas e dash(_)isused to show a comment at the end of a sentence * invertedcommas (quotation marks) (“ “) are used to draw attention to a part of a text * hyphen(-) marks a break at the end of the line or the parts of a compound word ® space, separates two words and identifies paragraphs Other marks convey meaning: * question mark, shows that the preceding sentence is a question * exclamation mark, shows that the sentence that precedes it is an exclamation * apostrophe, is used in grammatical contractions CHAPTER 19-VARIETIES OF DISCOURSE Constructing a discourse A discourse applies to speech and writing. It is the analysis of the realities of monologue and dialogue in any mode of transmission, that is to say writing and speaking. A text can also be a discourse, so we can analyze a discourse. While creating a discourse, we need commas to create points of pauses, which in turn create rhythm. We also use possessive adjectives in order to create a sense of community. In a discourse, people have to pay attention to pauses, interruptions, false starts and hesitations. These items control the direction of movement in a discourse. While making a discourse we focus on “global macro-organizers”, which determine the overall shape of the discourse, and “local macro-organizers”, which are feature that mark changes of direction operating in a more restricted way. Global macro-organizers are: topic markers (let's look at, let me start with), topic shifters (by the way, let's move on to) and summarizers (in a nutshell, to cut a long story short). Local macro-organizers are: exemplifiers (in other words, for instance), evaluators (seems to me, I think), qualifiers (it depends on, that's true but) and asides (where was 1?, I'm getting ahead of myself here). A discourse has to please people. We also have media-discourses which are interactions that take place through a broadcast platform, whether spoken or written, in which the discourse is oriented to a non- present reader, listener or viewer. Texts and varieties 22 cinema, and also internet, have brought a universal awareness that English dialects operate on a word scale and they are considered “world Englishes”. Regional tags Dialects operate both intranationally and internationally but people can find the same constructions in different dialects. The tag question is one of them. It agrees with the main verb of the clause, for example “she is a great girl, isn't she?”. In several parts of the world, especially where English is a second language, there are “invariant tags”. They are invariant forms which avoid the tag construction in the Standard language, such as “is it?, isn't it?” and “not so” which is like “no” at the end of sentences and questions in Spanish. Other tag words are “eh” and “right”. Variant tags can be found in a first language English community. They are “ought, shall” and “ain't”. Some examples can be “he took his car, did he no?” or “we ought to help, oughtn't we?” or “we ought to help, shouldn't we?”. Functional differences Sometimes a tag question differentiates dialects. In fact, the hard use of them is typically British. The two models When comparing written English from around the world we have to judge whether the language is American or British English or a mixture of the two. It is remarkable through the use of certain words written in a certain way, for example “holiday” is British and “vacation” is American. Even sports reporting brings regional varieties out into the open and it helps to have a knowledge of acronyms. It is important not to misunderstand regional trends as absolute when carrying out linguistic comparisons. American and British English The differences between regional varieties increase in the informal spoken language. In the last decades American and British English have influenced each other, especially among younger people. There are differences of pronunciation and spelling differences between American and British English, in fact in England they say “aeroplane, connexion, offence, paralyse”, while in America they say “airplane, connection, offense, paralyse”. British English uses a short “a”, while American English uses a long “a”. There are many words whose stress varies between the two accents for example “address, garage, magazine, weekend, translate”. Classifying lexical differences In describing the lexicon of the two regions there are 3 distinctions that have to be made: some words are found only in British English, others in American English and others have become part of Standard English. Some words reflect cultural differences but are not part of World Standard English. Some words have a single sense and a synonym in other variety. For example, “estate car” in BrE in “station wagon” in AmE. Some WSE words have additional meanings that are specific to either BrE and Ame, in fact “caravan” in is “trailer” in AME and “vehicle towed by a car” in BrE. Other words have a meaning in WSE and a synonym in one or the other varieties, such as “undertaker” which exists in both AmE and BrE, but AmE has also “mortician”. Some words have no WSE meaning but different meanings in AME and BrE, for example “flyover” in BrE means “overpass” in AmE but the same word in AmE means “flypast” in BrE. Words such as “flat” and “apartment”, “shop” or “store” are common in both varieties but much more common in one of them. 25 People have to be careful with the use of idioms. In fact, “the play was a real bomb” in AmE means that It was a disaster, in BrE means that is was a success. Some BrE idioms are “hard cheese (bad luck), the best of British (good luck), a turn-up for the book (a surprise)”. AmE idioms are “out of left field (unexpectedly), a bum steer (bad advice), feel like two cents (feel ashamed)”. Grammatical differences There are a few grammatical differences between BrE and Ame, for example irregular verbs. In fact, in AME they use “burned”, while BrE uses “burnt”. There can also be differences of word order such as “half hour and half an hour”, in the use of the article, such as “in hospital or in the hospital”. AmE prefers collective nouns in the singular (the government is), while BrE uses the plural form (government are). AmE uses a lot the subjunctive (I asked that he go) and prefers “were” to “was”, for example “I wish she were there”. There are also differences in prepositions and adverbs, such as “backward and real good” in AmE and “backwards and really good” in BrE. Regional variation in American English General American and Received Pronunciation depicts each regional version of America. The northern area is the “New England” and it different in west and in east. In the east area the loss of final -r is typical. In southern America the loss of final -r is typical too, while in Midlands there is a division between north and south. In the north of Midlands, for example the pronunciation of “don/dawn and cot/caught” is the same. The “Dictionary of American Regional English” (DARE) is the official dictionary of the American Dialect Society. It is divided in 5 volumes and covers the letters from A to O. Variation in British English British regional variations exist since the 14° century but the study of dialect began in the 19°" century with the publication of the “English Dialect Dictionary” by Joseph Wright. Depending on the region there are consonant and vowel variations, but also lexical variations, as in the case of “headache” that can be also called “bad head, sore head, skullache or headwark”. Other typical variations are morphological variations, as in the case of the verb “to be” and syntactic variations, for examples “give itto me, give me it, give it me”. Cockney English refers to the accent and dialect of English traditionally spoken by working-class Londoners. Urban grammar Dialects relate historically to the dialect division recognized in Old and Middle English. Over the years they have changed in vocabulary and grammar. Some grammatical features characterize the modern urban grammar, for example the auxiliaries in reading, in fact people use “dos” and not “do” and add an -s with all subjects except third person singular. In north of Manchester, people use the words “aye, yigh, no and nay” to say “yes or no” but also “noan” to say “not”. However, next to Newcastle people change the past participle of irregular verbs, as happens with “fallen” that becomes “fell” and “eaten” that becomes “ate”. Estuary English It is a term which identifies the way features of London regional speech seemed to be spreading throughout the counties around the river Thames. The influence of London speech has been evident in Oxford and in the area to the east and to the south of London. This variety can now be heard around the Humber, the Dee and the Severn. It has spread thanks to social mobility and new patterns of settlement. This type of English has not the suffix -ly atthe end of adverbs, it uses certain preposition such as “I looked 26 out the window”, it uses the confrontational question tag, as in the case of “I said | was going, didn't 1” and uses negative forms without any double negative. Variation in Scotland The Scottish dialect is the most divergent dialect of English. It was used in the late Middle Ages and it has defined history if its own. Scotland is generally called “dialect island”. This dialect represents institutionalized social structure and is also used in law. It also has a dictionary which is known as “Scottish National Dictionary”. Despite of this, the Scottish variant is not considered as a language. This dialect presents some features such as irregular plurals “een/eyes, hors/horses” but we have “wifes, wolfs, lifes”. The numeral “one” becomes “ae”, laughed is lauched, told is tellt, sellt is sold. “not” appears as “nay or no”. Shall, may and ought are replaced by “will”. Some different words are “outwith” to say “out of”, “kirk” to say “church” and “dominie” to say “teacher”. Scots has different variants, for example “Lallans” which has its own distinctive vocabulary. In the grammar and spelling, it shows the marked influence of Standard English. Welsh English The Welsh was the language of the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons. This language is considered a”dead language” because during the 20° century we have assisted to a decline of its number of speakers. Some features of this variety are: the use of the tag question “isn't it?”, the use of the predicate before the subject to express emphasis, such as “Running on Friday” or “Fed up I am” and Welsh loan-words such as “Duw” (God), “nain” (grandma) and “taid” (grandpa). Irish English This dialect is typical of Ireland and has a different way of stressing words. Irish English in all its variants is called “Hiberno-English”. Influences of this dialect are noticeable in the dialect of Liverpool (also called Scouse English), in North America, in the Caribbean, in Australia and New Zealand. It uses “youse” to say “you” in plural, “anymore” is used in a positive way, “it is so”, the use of “mustn’t” instead of “can't”. Canadian English Canadian English has a lot in common with the English spoken in North America. It is nor a British variety of English or an American one even because it is quite influenced by the French spoken in Quebec. Some features of this variant originate within Canada, such as “ice hockey” and are independent of US and UK models. Others originate outside the country, above all US, UK and French. Some features are typical American or British and are used by some sections of the population. The Canadian vocabulary uses words originated in Canada, such as “chesterfield” to say “sofa”, “first nations” to say “the indigenous people”. Canadian people use to replace question tags with “eh” and they generally stress the first element of a diphthong while pronouncing it. Canadian English is characterized by a lot of different dialects. Caribbean English It is spoken in many of the islands of the Caribbean Sea and in some areas of Central and South American mainland. In the region people speak a variety of Standard English which differs depending on the country and on the populations, which colonized the country. In this area, we can see a historical and linguistic heritage of the local peoples, so people talk of “West Indian English” too. In the area there are a lot of vernacular varieties such as creoles, in fact we speak about “Creole English”. Standard English is a second language in Puerto Rico. In the Caribbean, people speak “creole”, that is a pidgin language which has become the mother-tongue of a community, and use “pidgin” which is a system of communication which has grow up among people wo do not share a common language. 27 The word “man” originally referred to both males and females but it is not so neutral. So “man” and “men” may be replaced by “humans” and “people”, while “mankind” can be replaced by “humankind” or “humanity”. Gender neutral language (honorifics) This type of language also has an impact on the use of honorifics. * “Mr” is used for men, regardless of marital status. e “Miss”, “Mrs”. Miss is used for married women, while Mrs is used for women who are not married. They are not neutral. In order to avoid this, people use the 100% gender-neutral honorific “Ms” regardless of marital status. e “Mx” it is 100% neutral for both men or women. Occupational varieties The term “occupational dialect” depicts the language used in a specific job, that is to say technical terms and administrative vocabulary. The more specialized the occupation, the more technical the language has to be. This variety also refers to sports, games and hobbies. Occupation could not exist without language because you use language to communicate to colleagues and with information. It may change depending to the culture, so if occupation changes, language changes as well. Religious English It is a sacred language cultivated and used primarily in religious service or for other religious reasons. It is based on Early Modern English, especially in some parts of the Anglican Communion, the Continuing Anglican Movement and English-Speaking Protestants. It is a retrospective language because it goes back to its origins, it's prescriptive. It is imaginative and exploratory because people make their response to the claims of religious belief. Scientific English It has some specific features among which we find long sentences with many clauses, adjectives, passive structures, specialized use of vocabulary and phrases. Furthermore, scientific English is characterized by scientific nomenclature, which comprises most of the English vocabulary. This variety qualifies notions and has to be objective. Scientific communication is not limited in books, it can also be found in TV series. Legal English It relies on Latin phrases like “ab initio, mens rea” and French loanwords as “lien, tort”. It's used in legal writing and speaking, such as in code. It is also known as a sublanguage to intend that it is different from Standard English. This language can be considered a mixture of scientific English and religious English because it is coherent and precise and it also respects rituals and the historical tradition. The main features of legal English are consistency, validity and completeness. It has developed a complex grammatical structure, it has long sentences and uses a lot of specific items, such as “bills, account, debts”. then it is full of modal verbs that distinguish between discretion and obligation. There are different types of legal English, for example “the language of case-law, that of the courtroom and that of legislature”. People should understand this language and keep the benefits of a human-like language that must also be clear as possible and intuitive. Plain English 30 It is the language that is easy to understand, clear. It avoids complex vocabulary and technical jargon. Its key rule is “keep it simple”. This type of language is appropriate to the audience’s educational level and familiarity with the topic. It is used in business communication or government. It is a flexible language which can be adapted depending on the audience. Political English It is the language of politicians and it uses many of the rhetorical and dramatic techniques which we associate with advertising or the media. This is the language of the half-truth and Orwell said that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. This language is, in fact, not clear on purpose, so it is complex and meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth. News media English In media the “object” mustn't be confused with the language. Radios, newspapers and televisions use many varieties of English that can be available to everyone. The reporting of news it's very difficult and it's all in the originality of the writers themselves even if the editor’s decision is final. Famous reporters see their articles different in journals because many people read and change them following the instructions of editors in order to attract more people. Some important UK newspapers are “the Guardian” and “the Sun”. News reporting is characterized by a lot of features. The headline is critical and tends to summarize and draw attention to the story. The first paragraph summarizes and begins to tell the story and it's at the same time the source of the headline. The original source of the story is given and the participants are categorized, so their name is usually preceded by adjectives and a general term, such as “prisoners” and “champ”. Other features include explicit time and place locators, facts and figures and direct and indirect quotations. Broadcasting Several types of language are used while broadcasting. Commentary is one of the most important uses of English. Sports commentary is divided into two elements, that is to say the “play-by-play” that provides an audience with pre-event background, post-event evaluation and event interpretation and the color-adding commentary. This variety helps fluence and reduces the memory load on the commentator. There is no sign of hesitation noise and false start. The prosody reflects the atmosphere and the drama, and grammar is characterized by the use of the present tense, inverted word order, they use the passive and omit some elements of the sentence. In this variety, the commentator uses some specific expressions, such as “they're off!” and “into the straight they come!”. Moreover, the most common tense which is used is the past tense and the most commonly structure is a pyramid structure called “inverted pyramid structure” because the most important elements are placed at the beginning of the article (the 5 W are placed at the top of it). News stories at least contain one of these characteristics: * Timeliness: news stories are the most interesting stories. You can think of news as a baked good that is best served fresh, * Proximity: people are interested in home-grown news, news that refer to their town near towns, ® Impact/Consequence: the key question is “will the information change our lives?”, so if it's something that is worth quoting, ® Novelty/Rarity: we have to considered if it is an unusual story, 31 * Conflict: “good news is no news”, so in order to be more interesting as possible, stories have to have a conflict because everyone loves confflict. This is why new always seem so negative, ®* Humaninterest: people are interested in other people, * Prominence: people are interested in famous people Advertising English Each variety of the language can be found in advertising. It tends to use words which are vivid such as “new, bright”, concrete like “soft and washable”, positive as in the case of “safe, extra” and unreserved, that is to say “best, perfect”. Grammatically it is conversational and elliptical, it uses highly figurative expressions and strong sound effects, such as rhythm, rhyme and alliteration, especially in slogans. Restricted English All linguistically distinctive uses of English are restricted, that is to say that they can be found in some situations than in others. Restricted varieties appear in domestic and occupational situations. At home, they are in cookery recipe or book indexes, while in the wider community they are in newspaper headlines, in postcodes and in shipping forecasts. Internationally, restricted varieties can be found in traffic control, maritime control and electronic communication too. Fashion and technology influence language too. CHAPTER 22-PERSONAL VARIATION Individuality in language arises from variations in sex, personality, background, experience and interests. Physique, personality and physical condition are important too, for example they can influence a person's voice quality and the handwriting. Individualistic features are unimportant in communication because when we listen to somebody, we only focus on what they say and not on how they say it. Idiolect It can be defined as your own personal dialect, so you would be very unlikely to find two people who have the same way of using language and speaking, even people from the same country or region or even from the same family. Deviance The notion of individual difference, that is to say of a linguistic effect which doesn't confirm the rule, is known as “deviance”. Deviance produces instances of a language which cannot be accepted, such as “langauge, cat the, goodnessness and please, thanks”. Anyway, this use of the language can be accepted in any art form. There are different level of deviance and even the way adults speak to children, to animals, talking backwords can be considered deviant. A deviant sentence is a sentence which breaks the rules of the English language, but to count as deviant it has not to be a mess. Deviance is more common in speech than writing, because when people speak, they have to think on their feet. (they have to make a decision very quickly. An example can be the sentence “visitors are aggressively requested to remove their shoes before leaving the temple”, where they should have used the term “firmly, strong or insistently”. Word games People use to play with words in schools, on the Web, on radio and television but also on mobile-phones and magazines, when they play crosswords, for example. Any aspect of linguistic structure can provide the basis for a game. Most are based on the written language and people have to recognize the letters of the alphabet, reorganize them in order to create new words and being able to spell. One of the most important games are “word squares”, where people have to make 32 Visual form The use of white space and textual shape define the semantic structure of a poem, they control the tempo of a reader's interpretation and the pace of an oral performance. Phonetic freedom The phonetic properties of English sounds are source of special effects, especially in poetry and in drama. We generally talk about speech sounds using aesthetic judgments, such as “beautiful” or “harsh”, that's why the term “phonaesthetics” appeared. Phonological freedom With phonology we focus on the distribution of speech sounds within words and sentences. The phonological status of sounds is always manipulated, for example through vowels, consonants and patterns of syllable structure. Graphological freedom The conventions of the written language are more limited and perceptible than those of speech, so deviations are more obvious. Graphological deviance occur in prose to convey the prosodic features of conversation. Grammatical freedom There are limits on the freedom of writers to deviate from the norms of English grammar, in order to maintain coherence and intelligibility. It is generally accepted in literature for obvious reasons. In poetry it is used to satisfy the phonological demands of a line or verse. Sometimes, grammatical deviation adds an archaic tone to a text, such as “hath, ye, thou”. Lexical freedom Lexicon can be mixed too in order to create some particular effect. In fact, people can mix taboo words and jargon with old English if they do it for some specific reason. Discourse freedom A few stylistic studies have investigated the largest parts of discourse in essays, short stories, novels. Typical topics are novel openings and closing, the use of figurative expressions, modes of speech presentation and the functional use of sentence types. Variety freedom The features which define regional and social varieties are also important in the levels of the language structure. A text may begin with a variety and continue with another or incorporate effects which are typical of another. It is more difficult to do in poetry. Stylometry The basic approach of stylometry is to calculate the frequency and distribution of a small number of linguistic variables in a text, comparing texts of unknown or uncertain authorship with texts whose authorship is known. 35 CHAPTER 24-LEARNING ENGLISH AS A MOTHER-TONGUE Language acquisition It's the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, comprehend and use language. It usually refers to first-language acquisition, that's why it is distinguished from second language acquisition. The first language acquisition is that where everyone learns its own language from their mother, so people learn their “mother-tongue”. In some countries, there is the local (first) language and a second (official) language. A second language is a language in which one must be very fluent, so that they can use it quite naturally, but it is different from bilinguism. In fact, while second language refers to a language that is used for public communication of that country, foreign language refers to a language that is not widely used by the people of that country. The first language acquisition corresponds to critical period hypothesis (CPH), so the first few years of life constitute the time during which language develops readily and quickly. Neuroscience of multilingualism “Multilingual individuals consistently demonstrate similar activation patterns in the brain when using a language they fluently know”. In a bilingual individual the frontal, temporal and parietal hemisphere of the brain are more developed and best connected than those of a monolingual person. Everyone needs acquire ability in language structure, interaction and use. To be an adult people have to know: - the 20 vowels and 24 consonants of a spoken dialect of the language, and over 300 ways of combining these sounds into sequences - a vocabulary which can reach 50000 active words - to govern sentence and word formation - howtousethe prosodic features of loudness, pitch, speed and rhythm along with other tons of voice - different rules in order to govern the ways in which sentences are combined into spoken discourse - different conventions in order to know the differences between the varieties of the language - strategies through which those rules can be broken to obtain special effects such as in jokes and poems The development of grammar- Stages to learn a language Grammar learning is a continuous and unnoticeable process that happens very quickly. 1 Children say things for three purposes: to get something they want, to get someone's attention and to draw attention to something. They also use intonation to ask a question. Ex. You go? Their grammar is composed of a series of utterances which are one word long, such as “dada, hi”. Approximately 60% of these words have a naming function and 20% express an action. This stage is called “holophrastic stage” because the children put the equivalent of a whole sentence into a single word. It goes from 12 months to 18 months. 2. In this stage, two words are put together to make primitive sentence structure subject+ verb, verb+ object. Children ask questions using using an interrogative pronoun (what, where) followed by a noun or a verb. Ex “Where gone?/ cat jump”. It goes from 18 months to 2 years and children learn several basic lessons of the English grammar. They also become concerned with naming and classifying things by frequently asking “wassat?”, which means “what's up?”. Then, they begin to talk about the characteristics of things. Ex. “ball small”. They are taught to learn things in opposite pairs such as up/down and hot/cold, using synonyms and antonyms. 36 3. Children add extra elements to the clause. Basic sentence structure has expanded: subject+ verb+ object+ adverb or any other element used/preposition+ article+ noun. Ex “on the table”. They refer to events in the past and less often in the future. In this step questions start having more complex structures but intonation is still alone. Ex “Sally play in garden mum?”. This stage is known as “telegraphic stage” because simple words like determiners are left out but sentences can clearly be understood. 4. At around 3 years, children use increasingly complex sentence structures and begin to explain things, ask for explanations (why?), use negation (he doesn't want one) and making requests (can/may | have?). They don't rely on intonation and signals anymore as they explain more fully. Now, they are able to use more flexible language tools for expressing a wide range of meanings. Children use “and” and other linking words such as “because, so, then”. Sentences become longer because children start to tell stories and to express thoughts. 5. At around 4 years, children regularly use language to do all the things that they need it for, such as to give information, asking and answering questions, requesting directly and indirectly, suggesting, offering and stating. Children are now able to talk about things hypothetically and conditionally. Ex “If | were you, I would...”. They are now able to explain conditions required for something to happen. “You've to turn the tap on first in order to wash your hands”. As well as making general references to past and future, children now talk about particular times. Ex “after tea” and “before bedtime”. This learning process will continue until early teens. They are very comfortable with all questions (they don't rely on intonation anymore), so they give the impression of having assumed at least % of all grammar there is to learn. Grammar and children- active vs passive structures Crystal carried out an experiment testing whether children at certain ages used more active or more passive sentences. His study shows that at around 3 years old, none of the children produced a passive sentence but at 7 years, the ability to use passives increased. Stages of grammatical growth 1. Silent/receptive: students have very few oral skills and may only respond non verbally, by pointing, gesturing, nodding or growing. 2. Early production: students listen with greater understanding and can produce a limited number of words, phrases and simple sentences. 3. Speech emergence: students have better comprehension and produce simple sentences. They make common pronunciation errors. 4. Intermediate fluency: students demonstrate increased levels of accuracy and correctness and are able to express thoughts and feelings. 5. Advanced fluency: students produce language utilizing varied grammatical structures and vocabulary, comparable to native speakers of the same age. The foundation year Speech perception abilities are notable in children from the first days, when they respond with noises. They are able to distinguish their mother's voice from their father's one. They understand changes in intonation and rhythm and distinguish consonants and vowels. They show signs of comprehension between 2 and 4 months, when babies respond to adult tones of voice. Between 6 and 9 months the child recognizes different utterances in their situations, such as “say bye-bye” or “clap hands”. Most children know the meaning of almost 20 words by the end of the first year. 37