Appunti Linguistica inglese, 1 semestre

ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA:

“Under the ELF approach, English becomes a global asset belonging to all users,

regardless of whter it is their mother toungue. (…) It belongs to everybody and

nobody at the same time and no longer embodies a single culture” (European

Commission, Directorate-General for Transalation, 2011:29).

- non-native speakers

are granted the right to

appropriate the language EXPANDI

and shape it. OUTER NG

CIRCLE: CIRCLE:

- English may deviate INNER CIRCLE: bangladesh china

from native speaker australia ghana egypt

canada india

norms, provided that the indonesia

new zealand kenya

users’s communicative israel

UK / USA malasya japan

purposes are achieved nigeria korea

pakistan

- Communicative nepal

philippens saudi

effectiveness becomes singapore arabia

more important than sri lanka taiwan

USSR

zimbawe

FIXED EXPRESSIONS IN ELF:

Idiomaticity is a characteristic of ENL and it can cause problems for ELF users.

Barbara Seidlhofer talks about “Unilateral idiomaticity”, which may derive from

cultural loading, opacity, lexico-grammatical complexity or a combination of these.

- cultural loading: for example the rhyming slang —> it originated in the mid-19th

century in the East End of London.

It may have originated from a linguistic accident, a game or a cryptolect might have

developed intentionally to confuse non-locals.

It may also have been used to maintain a sense of community or it may have been

use by vendors in the marketplace or by criminals.

Example: ‘frog and toad’ instead of ‘road’.

- opacity: e.g. ‘a seasonal blue moon’: the third full moon of an astronomical season

that has four full moons. ‘A monthly blue moon’: the second full moon in a calendar

month with two full moons

- lexicon-grammatical complexity: e.g ‘a bird in the hand is with two in the bush’

- a combination of these

It was found that idiomaticity is very important when ELF speakers interact but it

occurs in a way which is different from native English: ELF speakers usually co-

construct idioms in interaction drawing on both the idiom principle and the open

choice principle. Consequently idioms in ELF can vary formally from their ENL

equivalents: ‘we should not wake up any dogs’- the metaphor underlying the idiomatic

ENL expression has been reawakened.

Metaphors in ELF may be:

- entirely novel/new

- Formally related to existing English idioms (formal variation of the expression) —>

vedi esempio del cane sopra.

- Created with other language idioms Idioms in ELF create a mutual affective space for

speakers (speakers who don’t share the same language/culture —> so they need to

create co-expressions).

The co-creation of idioms in ELF settings may:

- enhance cooperation for mutual understanding

- foster a mutual affective space

WORD AND DICTIONARY TERMINOLOGY:

How many words can you count in this sentences?

1. Lack of packing space was putting potencial customers off

2. In the city centre restaurants, you pay through the nose for your drinks

It depends … we maybe counting collocations (fixed or semi-fixed), or a single word.

The number of words varies according to what COUNTS as a WORD.

LEXEME (or LEXICAL ITEM) = group of related forms which share the same

meaning and belong to the same word class.

Lexemes are terms which also applies to word combinations (es. Phrasal verbs, fixed

or semifixed expressions, frozen expressions …).

It's an abstract unit of vocabulary which underlies different variants of the same word

(WORD-FORMS = concrete realisations).

Lexemes require particular word-forms to realize them in any given context and the

lexeme then encompasses all the word-forms which realize that particular lexeme.

Examples:

1. Speak, speaking, spoke, spoken —> How many words can you count? 1 “Speak” is

the LEXEME, whereas the other are forms of the same word (word-forms) So, we can

say that “speaking”/“spoke”/“spoken” realize the same lexeme “Speak” (as they

represent the conjugation of the verb “Speak”).

Moreover, we can say that the lexeme “Speak” has 3 word-forms.

2. “Dog” and “Dogs” = are 2 difference words —> word-forms that represent the

lexeme “Dog”

ENTRY, HEADWORD OR LEMMA?

DIZIONARIO is the

HEADWORD, also called

LEMMA.

ENTRY = the whole picture

represents the entry (the list

HEADWORD (or LEMMA) = the citation form of a word (the form which is

conventionally chosen to represent a lexeme in a dictionary).

VOCE LESSICALE ENTRY = it’s an independent lexical unit listed in a dictionary in

alphabetical order, it consists of the headword (printed in bold type) and information

about it. DICTIONARIES:

There are different ways of classifying dictionaries on basis of the content. Despite the

fact that many scholars have given their own classification there are various criteria of

classification.

Dictionaries can be:

- Monolingual and bilingual

- Online and paper

- Pocket dictionaries

- General ( = encyclopaedic) or with specific content

So they can be classified on the basis of:

- Content = proverbs, idioms, slangs, etymology, synonyms and antonyms,

pronunciation …

- Intended users = native speakers, learners of ESL/EFL, for beginners/advanced

learners …

- Size = for the desk, for the pocket …

OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (OED):

It is the most authoritative dictionary of English.

It is monolingual and etymological, for native speakers.

Murray was an extraordinary man because he was a teacher from Scotland who could

speak more than 40 languages and created the best dictionary which was ever

created, he had a completely new idea. Every reader was invited to send in

information about words, so English people contributed to the dictionary by working

as word detectives.

This new dictionary differed from the one of Samuel Johnson as in this dictionary there

were fewer words and its definitions were prejudiced not objective whereas in the new

one words came from literary works, scientific journals. The editors had to check the

slips (which contained the headword + quotation and the source) which were sent by

the readers and make sure that those quotations were correct. Quotations were

important as they were examples of usage.

So contributors were ordinary people, and one of them was Minor, who served in the

army but after killing a man he went to the hospital to be cured where he read a lot

and sent many slips to the editors.

Other contributors were Murray’s own children who earned their pocket money by

contributing to the dictionary.

- Bilingual definitions are simpler than monolingual ones. All native speakers’

dictionaries have an unrestricted defining vocabulary it means that any word can be

used to define other words, whereas a restricted defying vocabulary only uses the

most frequent ones. Not all dictionaries for learners have restricted defining

vocabularies so they make an effort to use clear definitions which are simple enough

to be understood. For example, the Longman Defining Vocabulary is a 2000 for lexicon

through which all the words are defined. The chief editor of the dictionary said that a

rigorous set of principles was established to ensure that only the most central

meanings of these 2000 words were used and in this dictionary there are also affixes

(suffixes and prefixes).

- Presence of pictures, graphs, charts are a feature of learners’ dictionaries.

NATIVE SPEAKER’S DICTIONARIES:

How do dictionaries for native speakers differ from learners’ dictionaries?

Learners dictionaries use a simpler language then monolingual dictionaries. You

understand the context where words can be used and they explain the usage of a

word.

Why do native speaker consult dictionaries?

Because they may not be sure about the meaning or the spelling of a word or they

want to know its etymology.

1. Decode = transitive verb.

Decoding information is less precise than encoding information. It enables the

recognition of lexemes and their meaning (receptive use of language). The

information are of different kind: lexical, semantic (about the meaning of a word),

orthographic and etymological.

Grammatical information provided is limited ,because generally a native speaker

already know it and already know how to use a word because a native speakers

already own the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Decoding

information is useful to listening and reading skills.

2. Encode = learners require more specific information (for example, prepositions).

Encoding information is more precise about, for example, the passive form. Once

you’ve decoded information, you encode it and that enables the productive use of

language. To encode word, learners have to know the syntactic behavior of words, for

example if you find an “u” next to the word it means that it’s uncountable —>

Esempio: “e.g. u. Work” —> it means that it is uncountable.

Others features we need to learn about a word are: how to pronounce it and cultural

and stylistic restrictions (LABELS) —> Esempio: nel dizionario monolingue, all’inizio,

c’è una lista di etichette per segnalare che la parola è formale, informale, viene usata

in un determinato ambito; quindi sono informazioni date attraverso singole etichette,

che comunicano in quali aree può essere utilizzata la parola.

All native speakers’ dictionaries have a UNRESCRICTED DEFINING VOCABULARY. It

means that any words can be used to defy other words.

Restricted defining vocabularies = frequent words are preferably used in

definitions and explanations.

Example: - There is a list (in the Longman Defining Vocabulary) of the words beginning

with A —> like ability, able, -able, age, ago, advertise ecc..,

- All definitions in the dictionary are written using the words in the defining vocabulary

(or words defined elsewhere in the dictionary).

- The defining vocabulary was chosen using common English frequency lists.

➤ They usually include affixes: suffixes (-able, -al, -an, -ance, -ar, -ate, -ation, -ion and

-ment) and prefixes (im-, ir-, in-, non-, un-, dis-, for negative forms and re- for iterative

forms) —> advertisement are part of the defining vocabulary LDV (Longman defining

vocabulary) = possono essere usate per definire altre parole.

LEARNER’S DICTIONARIES:

Are bilingual or monolingual dictionaries better for learners?

➤ Encoding information: it enables productive use of the language

➤ Syntactic behavior of words: e.g. u. (uncountable) work

➤ Pronunciation

➤ Cultural and stylistic restrictions (LABELS) —> if the word is formal or info