Linguistic Comparison: Italian and English Language Differences and Interlinguistic Shift, Sintesi del corso di Lingua Inglese

Scarica Linguistic Comparison: Italian and English Language Differences and Interlinguistic Shift e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! COMPARING ENGLISH TO ITALIAN Capitolo 1: Nothing can be deeply known if not through comparison. In linguistics we have different aims: compare the stages of a language to investigate its historical evolution, compare 2 national varieties of language, compare languages belonging to the same philological group to see the shared features. - Identify language universals. Contrastive linguistics (CL): compares 2 languages or more to identify and describe similarities and differences. Since languages are systems of subsystems, they cannot be compared as wholes so the only way is to make an analysis of one small subsystem at a time ( only real instances of writing and speaking can be compared, in certain areas). - CL is a synchronic study which analyses languages as they are in the present (different from comparative linguistics> diachronic). CL is located at the centre of a continuum running from monolingual linguistics to multilingual linguistics. CL compares 2 languages and tends to focus on differences. Contrastive research can be carried out for a range of aims that can be theoretical, descriptive or applied. - Origins> United States in the mid 20°" cent. The term was first used in “Languages and Logic” (1941) by the linguist and anthropologist Benjamin Lee Whorf. In Europe + Vilém Mathesius, founder of the Linguistic Circle of Prague. CL came truly into existence in 1957 when Robert Lado published “Linguistics Across Cultures”. Agard & Di Pietro ( 1965, 1966) compared sounds and structures of Eng. and Ita. CL reasons of increase: 1. Integration of Europe 2. Interest in real-life communication 3. Information Technology revolution with new possibilities of research. Today 1. Languages can be compared because they share abstract similarities 2. Each language is deeply embedded in its culture that is expressed through language 3. Aspects of language systems as well as language uses are compared 4.CL In connection with translation 5. CL brings divergent entities into relation with each other 6. The items compared are contextualised, they are examined in their linguistic and cultural context 7. The entities compared are now types of discourse and texts 8. Linguistic data analysed are authentic thanks to new technologies and to bilingual corpora da corpus including texts in language A and on including texts in Language B. - Other fields of research ® Psycholinguistics, concerned with the psychological aspects of language learning and use. It has developed 2 basic concepts: Transfer (psychological process by which learners tend to transfer the characteristics of their mother language to the foreign one) and interference (influence exercised by the learner's L1 that can be positive or negative when they believe that L2 is similar to their L1 in an area where it's different). - Translation studies aim: transfer of a text produced in language/culture A to lan./cult. B. Result: production of a Target text (TT) with a relationship of equivalence with the Source text (ST). The 2 texts must be semantically, pragmatically and culturally equivalent. Understand the TT by identifying semantic content, primary communicative function, and then express the same thing in the target language for target receivers. Quindi anche | traduttori si servono della CL. - Bilingual lexicography (field of research dealing with the compilation of bilingual dictionaries). Comparing languages in the area of lexis. Each word (or entry) of a language A is joined to its equivalent in language B with a similar meaning. Electronic bilingual corpora procedure: researcher select 2 lexeme of 2 languages that have equivalent meaning. By means of software they extract all the occurrences of those lexemes from the 2 languages’ subcorpus. Then they analyse them in contrast, considering both lexico- semantic and grammatical patterns. Since the meaning of a lexeme is partially determined by the context in which occurs, this type of analysis allows to define the various meanings it can assume in different context. It allows also the identification and analysis of the collocations of the lexeme, so the words which most frequently occur to the left or to the right of the lexeme selected. Linguistic description are then compared and the results will form dictionaries. - Descriptive Linguistics® CL makes an accurate description of both languages in contrast, it can highlight characteristics which are unknown or unnoticed. Ex.: word stress for a distinctive function (as in eng and ita) to signalling a difference in meaning between 2 words. Ita + N and Adv(“’ancora” “an'cora”); Engd N and derived V (“’concord” “to con'cord). - Linguistic typology differs from CL in 2 aspects: 1. It analyses the world's languages (CL analyses 2 languages) 2. Its aim is to describe common properties and the structural diversity and to classify them into “language types” according to their common features. The language types can be used as contrastive categories. Ex.: 2 types of language regarding the rhythm: stress-timed language / syllable-timed language. Morphological typology classify languages on the basis of how they form words by combining morphemes: Italian can be described as a moderately synthetic language in which words are often variable, usually consist on 2 or more morphemes and one morph expresses more than one morpheme(or meaning). English can be described as a moderately analytic language in which words are often invariable, the number of morphemes per word is very low and each morph express just one meaning. The typology of constituent order considers the order of S, V, O in declarative main clauses. Both Eng and Ita show basic SVO order but Italian has relatively free word order while English a relatively fixed word order. Capitolo 2: Comparability3 1° principle: Languages can be compared because they share abstract similarities beneath surface differences. (6000 spoken languages and they differ in sounds, process of word formation, building sentences and organising lexis. 2 images to describe the different equipment of languages: 1. Grid > each language works out a particular grid imposed on the real world by conceptualising and classifying aspects of the world in a specific way; 2. Prism > human language is a prism and each natural language is a face of it, which reflects the world from a particular angle.) - Is it possible to compare languages which appear to be different entities? 3 complex. Languages can vary in many ways depending on: 1. Biological/ neurophysiological characteristics of humans as the speech organs employed for communicating and producing sounds. They can utter a range of sounds; 2. Thought: human mind processes an amorphous thought mass segmented in portions and labelled by individual languages (ex: in eng. “hair” for any kind of fine filament growing from the skin, in ita “capelli” and “peli”; in ita “orologio”, in eng “watch” and “cock”). So each language displays a different conceptualisation of reality and experience; 3. Where they live. People name things, describe states ecc.. on the basis of communicative needs. Language has communicative functions articulated in subfunctions such as what people use language for (universals: informing, promising, requesting ecc.). Humans place constraints to avoid redundancies, ambiguities> ex: to avoid repetition of full nouns they employ pronouns. The tertium comparationis> = equivalence. Principi items are comparable when they are equivalent. - What linguistic items are comparable? 3 comparability can be established referring to the tertium comparationis meaning “the third element of comparison”, the other 2 being the languages involved. This expression refers to invariance (what is constant across languages) with regard to which it's possible to identify and describe variants (what varies from a language to another). It denotates a relationship between 2 entities which is symmetrical, reflective and transitive. The concept is central in CL and in translation where it refers to the relationship between ST and TT. Comparability doesn't presuppose an absolute correspondence but a degree of shared similarity. It concerns the deep levels of languages, like: 1. Semantic content of a sentence; 2. Pragmatic content> given by factors such as communicative functions, situational context and participants; 3. Cultural content the sentence is produced in a specific cultural context which gives a culture-specific perspective to meaning; 4. Textual meaning any linguistic item occurs in a text which is the main vehicle for the creation of meaning. vs. imperial system (3 mezzi gallons, 1 pint or 1 pound, square feet). US only adopts imperial system, UK metric system. Capitolo 4: Distinction between simple and complex words 1. We can't dived it into parts 2. Made up of 2 or more parts. Parts=morphemes (the smallest meaningful unit), realised by one or more morphs. 2 classes> 1. Free morphemes which can stand alone (like “tree”) 2. Bound morphemes which cannot, but they must be attached to a free morpheme called root, stem or lexical base (like the plural “-s”). In Italian no morpheme can stand alone (as they also express the gender). Most useful distinction> between lexical morphemes (expressing lexical meaning, es: alber-, mangi-) and grammatical morphemes (expressing grammatical meaning, es: singular -o and the verbal morpheme). Formation process of complex words> divided into 3 parts: 1. Inflection (production of various word- forms of a single lexeme (es: finds/found as forms of the verb find; fiore/fiori. 2. Derivation (creation of a new lexeme from an existing one (es: play> player; felice dfelicità). 3. Compounding ( creation of a new lexeme by joining 2 or sometimes more words which can also stand alone (es: scolapasta, textbook). Inflection and derivation> altering the stem in systematic ways: 1. Affixation (addition of affixes to the stem that, according to the position they occupy, can be: prefixes, suffixes, infixes when they are incorporated into the stem as cant-icchi-are). 2. Internal modification of the stem, occurring as alternation in vowels or consonants and stress shift. 3. Suppletion (replacement of one form by another, es: è/ sono ; g0/ went). Productivity is the capacity of forming new words by using word formation processes Inflection> serves to complete a word by adding suffixes which are applicable to any item of a given word class. Some parts of the speech are variable (inflected) others invariable. Difference between ita and eng>ita is inflection and synthetic language so several parts of the speech are inflected and consist in 2 or more morphemes (prend-er-ò), one morph realises more then 1 morpheme (in giardino the -o expresses gender and number). Eng is isolant and analytic language meaning that several parts of speech occur in an invariable form and words consist of one morpheme, so there is a one-to-one correspondence between morph and morpheme. Another difference Italian inflection is realised by substitution, so a morph is substituted by another (es: fior-e/fior-i), English inflection is realised by addition, so a morph is added to the stem (es: tree/tree-s). Another difference in ita 4 parts of speech are invariable (adverb, prep, conjunction, interjection) and 5 are inflected (nouns, articles, adjectives, pronouns, verbs); in eng the parts of the speech that are regularly inflected are nouns, adjectives, verbs nouns: plural -s, genitive marker ‘s/ verbs: 3" person singular present -s, past tense -ed, past participle -ed, non-finite verb-form marker -ing / adjective: comparative -er, superlative -est. there are very few suffixes in English and some express more than 1 meaning (like -s for plural or for the 3'° person ecc.), then some words are orthographically different but phonologically the same (es: dogs, dog's, dogs’ so the value of -s is to be interpreted by taking into account the syntactic context. Inflectional suffix -ing can derive also a noun from a verb (build > buildings), - er can derive also a noun from a verb ( play player). Inflection can occur regularly by suffixation but also irregularly by: vowel alternation® siedi/siedete, foot/feet; consonant alternation > only in eng have/has, build/built; stress shift only in ita canto/ canto; suppletion> è/sono, is/are; both vowel and consonant alternation> only in eng catch/caught. Morpho-phonological phenomenon in eng > suffix -es is phonologically realised by 3 allomorphs pronounced in 3 different ways depending on the final sound of the stem (vowel, voiceless or voiced consonanti) like: kiss dish (in general after sibilants /s/ /z/ /sh/ /3/ and affricates) + [iz] > [kisiz], [dishiz]. / lip let (after voiceless consonants)+ [s] > [lips], [lets] / pig play (after voiced consonants and vowels) + [z]> [pigz], [pleiz]. Similarly process happens with -ed : beg play (after vowels and voiced consonants except /d/) + [d] > [begd], [pleid] / ask (after voiceless consonants except /t/)+ [t]> [askt] / wait (after /t/ and /d/) + [id] > [weitid] (affixation> derivation, inflection) Derivation> 1. Ita derivation mainly occurs by affixation (attached to the stem according to the word-class of it, to the category of word formed), eng derivation occurs by affixation and zero derivation (or conversion. 2. Derivational affixes in eng can be prefixes(write®rewrite) or suffixes (free freedom), the same in ita (attento > disattento, cortese+cortesemente) but also infixes (parlare parlottare). 3. In both languages a word may contain more than one derivational suffix (industry-al-ise, leggi-bil-ità) and if there is also an inflectional suffix, this must follow any derivational suffix (play-er-s, gioca-tor-i). 4. In both languages most prefixes do not change the word-class of the stem to which they are attached (obey(V)>disobey(V), morale(adj) ®amorale(adj)). Most suffixes change the word-class (nation(N)>national(adj), bello(adj) > bellezza(N)). Parasynthetic verbs in ita > formed from adj by adding a prefix and a suffix simultaneously to the stem (duro >+indurire, largo > allargare, ricco 3 arricchire, dolce > addolcire). 3 these are causative verbs conveying the meaning: “make X” where X is the meaning expressed by the adj. In eng causative verbs are formed by adding the prefix en- or suffixe -en to the adj (large + enlarge, rich > enrich, hard>harden, sweet > sweeten. In ita parasynthetic verbs can be form also from nouns (bottone + abbottonare, vited avvitare, gabbia>ingabbiare, zero> azzerare). > in this case English use a systematic pattern which involve a shift word-class without any affix (button>to button, screw> to screw, cagedto cage, zerodto zero). Verb formation in eng: suffix -ify, -ise/-ize (more productive), terrodterrorise, mummy3mummify; this kind of verbs that means “cause X” have the equivalents terrorizzare, mummificare in ita. From verbs to nouns® eng: suffixe -er (write writer, slice>d slicer; ita: suffixes -tore/-trice (trice anche per lo strumento che fa qualcosa tipo affettatrice, mentre inglese usa sempre -er). Eng: there are pairs of words both of which derive from a same verb (employer > employee, trainer 3trainee, examiner dDexaminee, interviewer > interviewee), so the suffix -er forms agent nouns and suffix -ee forms patient nouns; ita: datore di lavoro+ impiegato, allenatore+---, esaminatore> esaminato, intervistatore> intervistato, so it uses, where it's possible, passively the past participle as equivalent to -ee nouns. Nouns formation that means action, process, result of X ita: -ione, -mento (rapier> rapimento, operare operazione), -ura (scrittura). Eng: various suffixes, -tion(classify classification) -ment (manage management) -ure(fail > failure) -age(marry® marriage) -al(arrive> arrival)- ance(accept + acceptance) -th(grow>growth). Zero derivation> a word may be shifted from one word-class into another without adding an affix. It is also found in ita but it is less productive and restricted to certain categories (es: adj Vecchio N il Vecchio, V cantare> N il cantare, past part deciso + adj un uomo deciso, past part coperto N un coperto al ristorante, present part tagliente adj un coltello tagliente, present part cantante + N un cantante / in eng: N bottle> V bottled, particle down to down V). In some cases, in eng, word-classes can be distinguished by the stress shift (es: N ‘suspect > V su'spect, ‘permit + per'mit) or by consonant alternation (es: belief> believe). The 2 languages only share one type of shift: Adj3N. Compounding* is a productive morphological process (word formation process) but language-specific rules establish which parts of the speech can be combined. Compounds are composed by a head which classifies them. It expresses the basic meaning of the whole compound (es: a string apron is an apron and capostazione is a capo). We identify 3 types in both ita and eng (from a semantic point of view): 1. Endocentric® the head is contained within the compound itself (cassaforte, blackboard); 2. Exocentric> the head is not expressed but is to be recovered outside the compound (portalettere > a person who delivers letters, redhead 3a person with red hair); 3. Coordinative> have 2 heads that are of equal status and there is a relationship of coordination between them (agrodolce, bittersweet). Difference> in endocentric compounds: in ita the head is usually the left-hand constituent, in eng the right-hand one (ita: head+modifier, eng: modifier+head). Other asymmetries> V+N3N (posacenere, pickpocket) is more productive in ita; they also differ in the way of marking the plural: in ita compound inflection is very irregular (the first one may be inflected like navi traghetto, or the second one like ferrovie, or both like cassepanche) in eng the second constituent is usually inflected (blackbirds); another divergence is the way the same parts of speech combine into different sequences: ita N+Adj> N (cassaforte), AdjN>3N (gentiluomo) / eng: AdjN3N (fast-food, software). In ita both sequences are observed but no longer productive as in egnlish; antoher case is when they differ in the parts of speech selected: only in ita V+VN (saliscendi, giravolta), AdvtAdv>Adv (sottosopra) / only in eng: V+particle>N (fallout, stand-by, take-away)usually originated from phrasal verbs, V+particle> Adj (see-through, wrap-around) usually originated from phrasal verbs, -ing form+N3N (fishing rod, sleeping bag, washing machine). Another difference is in the former, compounding is a morphological process non-distinguishable from a syntactic device. Es: blackbird compound is distinguished from the syntactic sequence adj+ N black bird (a bird that is black) by stress> ‘blackbird, black ‘bird Compounds can also be formed by employing elements called prefissoidi and suffissoidi, or semiparole (in ita) and combing forms(in eng). They have Greek or latin origins and are associated with the category N. they can be attached to the stem or the combining form (-logy> musicology, anthropo- 3 anthropology). This process make up the technical and scientific vocabulary in both languages. Es: ita elettro- >elettrosmog, auto- 3 autostop, tele- 3telefilm, -logiadfilologia, -filod cinofilo / eng -phile>bibliophile, -cide> insecticide, socio- + socio-economic, bio- dbioenergy. The compound adjective > compounding is a process much more exploited in English. English: compound adj are commonly used in written discourse> adj+adj: (bittersweet) highly productive, usually the constituents are of equal status and the relationship can be paraphrased as “and”, but sometimes the first constituent modifies the second one (as in colour terms dark blue, pale green); N+Adij: (life-long) frequent and productive. The N can indicate a standard of comparison whose function is to intensify (crystal-clear) or specify a particular shade of colour (bottle-green). It can indicate a temporal or spatial extension of the adj, literally (week-long, shoulder-high) or metaphorically (sky-high, skin-deep). It can make up a construction if followed by a PP (sugar-free>free from N, burglar-proof proof against N, user-friendly 3 friendly to N, self-evident>in respect of N, germ-resistant® resistant to N); Adv+V-ing: semantically transparent, it reproduces an adjectival phrase (fiercely-competitive, politically-correct); ADjtV-ing: between verbs that are frequently of perception (good-looking, far-seeing); N+V-ing: very productive, the N is the object of the V (animal-loving, self-cleaning)or its complement (theatre-going); Adv+V-ing: the left constituent that modifies the V can be an adjective functioning as adverb (hard-working) or an adverb (never-ending); Adj+past part.: british-born, French-built the semantic relationship is one of agency (built by French) or location (born in great Britain); N+past part.: highly productive, N=prepositional phrase that can be agentive, locative, instrumental (church-owned, home-baked, London-based, hand-painted), “self” is often the first constituent (self-taught); Adv+past part.: the Adv modifies the V, it has well, long, ill as first constituent (well-known, long-established, ill-judged); derivational compounds [[Adj+N]+ed] and [[N+N] +edi]: in literary text, express the meaning of possessing, provided with, characterized by [AdjN]/[N+N] (grey-haired, blue-eyed, lion-hearted); formation including a numeral [numeral+N] and [numeral+N+Adj]: temporal or spatial measure terms (five-mile (walk), four-star (hotel), three-metre-wide, nine-year-old); compound nouns with various patterns: Adj+N (second-hand car), N+N (fall-winter collection); formation including particles: particle+V (incoming), V+particle (see-through, built-in); formation on the boundary between affixation and compounding: N+like/type/fashion/style, the relationship can be paraphrased as similar to, typical of, resembling N (Star Trek-style, child-like). The most versatile is the affix-like type combining with nouns (police-type badge), proper names (California-type barbecues) and adjectives (continental-like café) > compressed simile (name of this type of formation). / Italian: p. 121 Comparison> 9 types of compound adjectives in eng and 2 in ita, the pattern adj+adj is the only symmetry between the two languages. Equivalent [numeral+year+old] > when the numeral is up to 9 the equivalent is a prepositional phrase, when it is from 10 to 99 the equivalent is a compound [numeral+enne], when it refers to the age of objects the equivalent is a prep phrase or relative clause (es: 80-year-old tree > albero di 80 anni, albero che ha 80 anni. Some symmetries also between [bene/male+past part.] and [well/ill+past part.] (beneducato> well mannered, maleinformato+>ill-informed). Cases of interlinguistic shift in the morphological level > how meaning are expressed through compounding