Riassunto esame Lingua e traduzione inglese - 2, Prof. Laviosa Sara, libro consigliato Linking Worlds, Sara Laviosa

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The vocabulary (or lexis) of a language is made up of all the words in that language. A

word is an item of language that can stand alone as a complete unit of meaning.

Words can be built up out of smaller units of meaning called morphemes. Morphology

is the branch of linguistics that studies the structure of words in terms of morphemes.

The analysis of words into morphemes is called morphemic analysis.

Morphemes can be either free or bound. A free morpheme can occur on its own as a

word, while a bound morpheme is only ever found as part of a word.

Most bound morphemes are affixes. Affixes can be added to the beginning of a word,

in which case they are called prefixes; or they can be added to the end of a word, in

which case they are called suffixes.

Most English affixes are either inflectional affixes (also called inflections) or

derivational affixes. Inflections are always suffixes, they signal a grammatical

relationship. Derivational affixes can be either prefixes or suffixes. They may indicate a

different meaning of a word or a different part of the speech (or word class).

Affixation and compounding are two major types of word formation in English.

Affixation involves forming new words by adding prefixes and/or suffixes to existing

words, and gives rise to derivatives. Compounding involves combining two or more

existing words, and gives rise to compounds.

Paraphrasing is the most common translation procedure used to translate the English

words formed with derivational suffixes that have no direct equivalents in Italian.

Paraphrasing is also used when there are no direct equivalents of English compounds.

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Collocation is the tendency of certain words to occur together regularly in a given

language. Words that are bound together by collocation are called collocates.

Collocational range is the set of collocates that usually accompany a given word. The

collocational range of a word is determined by the number of senses that a word

conveys and by the language varieties in which it occurs.

Languages may have collocations that convey the same or a similar meaning but are

different in form. In these instances the translator should avoid producing collocations

that do not sound natural in the target language.

Collocations may be culture-specific, that is they may express ideas linked to cultural

situations that may be unfamiliar to the speakers of another language. In order to

render the original meaning of the source language collocation the translator may use

a paraphrase or create an ad hoc collocation.

Synonymy is the relationship that links words that have the same or almost the same

meaning in a particular context. Words that are synonymous with one another are

called synonyms.

The propositional meaning of a word relates to what a word refers to in a concrete or

imaginary world.

The expressive meaning of a word relates to the speaker’s feelings and attitudes.

The evoked meaning of a word arises from variation in dialect or register. Dialect is a

variety of language that is used in a particular geographical area, in different periods

in the history of a language, or by a particular social class. Register is a variety of

language that a speaker or writer considers appropriate in a particular situational

context, whose relevant components are field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and

mode of discourse.

Antonymy is the relationship that links antonyms, that is words that are opposite in

meaning in a particular context.

Hyponymy is the relationship that links a specific to a general word when the specific

word (called hyponym) is included in the general word (called hypernym or

superordinate). The group of words that are linked by a relationship of hyponymy form

a semantic field.

Many cases of non-equivalence at word level between the source and target language

concern a mismatch in propositional meaning. The target language may not have a

word which expresses a culture-specific concept in the source text. The procedures

that are usually adopted by the translator are: use of a hypernym, use of a loan word,

or use of a loan word followed by an explanation.

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Homonymy is the relationship that links homonyms, that is words that have the same

sound and spelling but different meanings.

Polysemy is the term used to refer to the different propositional meanings conveyed

by the same word. Words that have more than one propositional meaning are called

polysemous (or polysemic) words, while words that have one propositional meaning

are known as monosemous (or monosemic) words.

Wordplay (or pun) is a witticism that often relies for its effect on playing with the

different meanings of a polysemic word or on bringing two homonyms together in the

same utterance.

Metaphor is a figurative expression that enables us to talk of one thing (the topic) in

terms of another (the vehicle).

Puns in the source language cannot always be rendered in the target language owing

to mismatches in homonymy and polysemy across languages. Translators adopt a

variety of translation procedures to overcome these difficulties as summarized by Dirk

Delabastita (1996).

The main challenges that translators meet with regard to metaphor consist in

recognizing and correctly interpreting metaphor in the source language as well as

relaying it in the target language.

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A significant part of the vocabulary of a language consists of fixed (or frozen)

expressions that are complete units of meaning made up of more than one word. They

are generally known as multi-word units because, being semantically equivalent to

single words, they represent single lexical items rather than flexible combinations of

words.

An idiom is a multi-word unit whose meaning cannot be generally inferred from the

meaning of the individual words. Idioms vary from being semantically opaque to being

semi-opaque to being relatively transparent.

Idioms can be recognized fairly easily when they refer to unreal events or conditions,

when they do not follow the grammatical rules of the language, or when they have a

simile-like structure.

Idioms that have a literal as well as an idiomatic meaning and idioms that have an

apparently direct equivalent in the learner’s or translator’s native language but convey

a different meaning are fairly difficult to recognize. Idioms with a literal and an

idiomatic meaning are often used in wordplay.

Mona Baker (2011) has identified six common translation procedure adopted by

translators when translating idioms: using an idiom of similar meaning and form; using

an idiom with similar meaning but different form; borrowing the source language

idiom; translation by paraphrase; translation by omission of a play on idiom; and

translation by omission of entire idiom.

A lexical phrase is a multi-word unit whose meaning can be generally inferred from the

meaning of the individual words. Lexical phrases are chunks of language of varying

length and complexity. They are semantically transparent and perform a number of

functions.

James R. Nattinger and Jeanette S. De Carrico (1992) group lexical phrases into four

main types: polywords, institutionalized expressions, phrasal constraints, and

sentence builders.

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Words are classified into word class on the basis of their semantic, morphological, and

syntactic features.

Nouns (abbreviated as N) refer to concrete and abstract objects as well as people.

Most English nouns express the grammatical relationship of number. They can all

‘s

occur in the possessive case and can be derived from adjectives and verbs. They

can combine with the definite article to form a complete phrase.

There are five categories of nouns: common, proper, countable, uncountable, and

collective.

Pronouns (abbreviated as pro-N) replace nouns to refer to a person, thing, situation,

place or animal that has been mentioned earlier. There are eight sub-classes of

pronouns: personal, indefinite, reflexive, reciprocal, possessive, demonstrative,

interrogative, and relative.

There are two main types of verbs: lexical verbs (abbreviated as V) and auxiliary verbs

(abbreviated as Aux). Lexical verbs refer to actions, processes, states, or events. Their

inflectional morphology encodes the third person singular in the present tense, the

past tense, the present participle, and the past participle. There are different forms for

the past tense and the past participle of irregular verbs. Auxiliary verbs accompany

the lexical verbs and are of two types: modal verbs and primary verbs. Modal verbs

are further subdivided into core modals and marginal modals.

Adjectives (abbreviated as A) denote qualities or states relating to things like shape,

taste, size, colour, or judgements. Typical adjectives are gradable and have an

absolute, a comparative, and a superlative form. Adjectives can be derived from nouns

or verbs.

Adverbs (abbreviated as Adv) describe a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.