Riassunto esame Linguistica inglese, prof. Camaiora, libro consigliato libro A handbook of present day English, Pulcini

NOUNS

are lexical words which refer to concrete objects (such as things, places, events, people) or abstract

Nouns

notions and things, states or quality.

There are different kinds of nouns: common nouns, proper nouns, countable nouns,

uncountable nouns.

We have to know the characteristics of a noun in order to use correctly the other parts of speech: for example,

we have to know if the noun is countable or uncountable to understand if we have to put the article or not in

front of the noun, or to understand if this noun has the plural or not.

VERBS

are words which express actions, events, states, processes and show the relationship between the

Verbs

participants in what is referred to by the verb.

There are different kinds of verbs: (also called main verbs) and

lexical verbs auxiliary verbs.

ADJECTIVES

are lexical words which describe qualities and properties of things or people, and states of

Adjectives

affairs.

These adjectives provide information about nouns and pronouns.

ADVERBS

are lexical words which can carry out several functions.

Adverbs

These adverbs usually accompany an adjective or a verb or they also can give information about

circumstances of an action, event, process or state, so for example information about place, time, manner,

degree, frequency, duration.

There are different kinds of adverbs: (which express the

circumstance adverbs or adjuncts

circumstances in which the action happens: place, time, manner, frequency, duration,…), stance adverbs

(they can be left out because they aren’t connected with the information and they refer to the

or disjuncts

speaker/writer’s attitude, feelings or point of view– es. Luckily, Probably) or linking adverbs or

(they are very important because they are connected with the information and they provide a

conjuncts

linking between clauses or sentences – es. however, though, furthermore).

CONJUNCTIONS

are functional words which link linguistic items such as words, phrases, clauses and

Conjunctions

sentences.

There are two different types of conjunctions: and

coordinating conjunctions or coordinators

subordinating conjunctions or subordinators.

Coordinating conjunctions join elements which have equal grammatical status and syntactic role (for example

two nouns or two adjectives): and, but, or, for, yet, not.

Subordinating conjunctions join clauses where one clause is the dominant one and the other is subordinated:

here the dominant, the main clause is linked to the subordinate clause with conjunctions like if (conditional) ,

when (time), where (place), although (concession), so that (purpose), since (reason).

PREPOSITIONS

are functional words that link words or syntactic elements and express the relationship

Prepositions

between them.

There are different types of prepositions: (they are composed of one word: in, at, for,

simple preposition

with, to, in, after, before, by, of, under) and (they are made up of two or more

complex preposition

words: next to, according to, in spite of, in line with, for the sake of).

DETERMINERS

are functional words that are used before a noun to indicate the type of reference the noun

Determiners

has.

The different types of determiners we have are:

the;

the definite article:

­ a, an;

the indefinite article:

­ this, that, these, those;

demonstrative determiners:

­ my, your, his, her, its, their, our;

possessive determiners:

­ some, many, enough, more, few, a little, all.

quantifiers:

­

PRONOUNS

are functional words that are used to replace nouns when we want to refer to a person, an object,

Pronouns

a situation, an event or a place which has been mentioned before or whose referent can be deduced from the

context of the situation or the surrounding text.

There are different types of pronouns:

I, you, she, he, it, we, you, they;

personal pronouns:

­ my, your, his, her, its, our, your, their;

possessive pronouns:

­ this, that;

demonstrative pronouns:

­ himself, myself;

reflexive pronouns:

­ each other, one other;

reciprocal pronouns:

­ which, who, that;

relative pronouns:

­ someone, everyone, all;

indefinite pronouns:

­ who?, what?, which?.

interrogative pronouns:

­

AUXILIARY VERBS

are a small class of verbs which accompany a lexical, or main verb and they cannot

Auxiliary verbs

usually occur alone.

There are two different types of auxiliaries:

be, have, do they can also be used as independent verbs;

primary auxiliaries:

­ can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should, must.

modal auxiliaries:

­

To these 9 main classes, two other different classes can be added and they are:

WH­WORDS

are functional words which begin with wh­ and introduce clauses, such as questions and relative

Wh­words

clauses.

They are: which, what, whose, who, when, and we can also add how and whatever.

NUMERALS

are a set of words referring to number or quantity which are used as determiners or as heads in

Numerals

noun phrases.

Numerals can be (1,2,3) or (first, second, third).

cardinals ordinals

4. Grammatical functions

A word can have different functions:

(S): the subject is what the sentence is about, it’s the topic; it usually precedes the verb and

subject

­ determines whether the verb is singular or plural;

(V): the verb is what is said about the subject; it’s also called

verb predicator;

­ (O): the object can be (O ) or (O );

object direct object indirect object

­ d i

(C): the complement can be a (C ), which complete the

complement subject complement

­ s

idea conveid by the verb, or an (C ), which gives more information about the

object complement o

object; (A): there are different types of adverbials according to the information they provide; there

adverbial

­ are which provide information about the circumstances of what is

circumstance adverbials,

said (they can be time, place, manner etc. adverbial), which express the

stance adverbials,

speaker’s attitude or comments on what is said, which have a linking function.

linking adverbials,

MORPHOLOGY

1. Morphology is, as we said, the area of linguistics that deals with the structure or form of words and it

Morphology

describes the ways in which small elements, called morphemes, can be combined to create words.

As we said, the is the smallest grammar unit, which cannot be divided into smaller units;

morpheme

morphemes are for this reason the minimal, indivisible elements of words, which are able to carry meaning.

There are also which are words composed of more than one

polymorphemic or complex words,

morpheme.

The are instead words composed of only one morpheme.

monomorphemic or simple words

We can say that morphemes are abstract entities.

are instead the concrete realization or representation of morphemes.

Morphs

Morphemes are usually written in curly braces {} (es. played = play + ­ed).

Then there are also which are the different phonetic or graphic realizations of a morpheme

allomorphs,

(es. plural: both with –s and –es).

Examples of allomorphs:

the morph that indicates {past tense} in English is –ed this morpheme can be realized phonetically in

­ different ways, depending on the phonological context: [d], [t] and [ed] these are allomorphs of that

morpheme;

the morph that indicates {plural} in English is –s this morpheme can realized orthographically in

­ three different ways: [s], [z] and [iz] allomorphs;

the morphs in­, im­, il­, ir­ are graphic allomorphs of the same morpheme which indicates oppositeness

­ of meaning they realize the same morpheme {­in};

the morph that indicates the English indefinite article has two different orthographic shapes “a / an”

­ “a” is used before a phonetic consonant, “an” is used before a vowel.

The choice between the different allomorphs is determined by the context in which the morphs occur.

They are said to be in complementary distribution when each morph only occurs in a specific environment and

if we select one we cannot select its alternative representation.

2. Types of Morphemes

Not all morphemes have the same characteristics, functions and status.

There are in fact different types of morphemes:

they are called “free” because they can stand alone as words; they are also

free morphemes:

­ called because they are able to carry the semantic content of the word.

free roots,

These free morphemes can be: these are free morphemes which belong to the class of

free lexical morphemes:

o lexical words, which carry semantic content;

these are free morphemes which belong to the class of

free functional morphemes:

o functional words, which don’t carry semantic content (es. the, be, by, a);

they are morphemes which cannot occur on their own as separate words,

bound morphemes:

­ but they need to be attached to another morpheme.

These bound morphemes can be:

they are linguistic units which are attached to another word; they can precede

affixes:

o another morpheme (prefixes), such as re­, or they can follow another morpheme

(suffixes), such as –ness, ­er, ­s.

These affixes are attached to:

the which is the minimal part of a word which is no further divisible into other

root,

• morphemes and it determines the meaning of a word (es. deconstructed “construct”

is the root);

the which is the part of a word to which inflectional affixes are attached (es.

stem,

• reprinted “reprint” is the stem);

the which is the form of a word to which any affixes can be attached (es.

base,

• happiness “happy” is the base).

Affixes can also be divided into these two classes:

this kind of morphemes are used in order to create

derivational morphemes:

• new words, attaching this morpheme to another; for example the morpheme “­ness” is

used to derivate a name from an adjective;

they are always affixes, but they aren’t used to

inflectional morphemes:

• derivate new words; their role is only to express grammatical relations and functions;

for example the morpheme “­ed” expresses only past tense, but it doesn’t derivate

new words.

they are some roots which cannot occur on their own as independent words,

bound roots:

o but need to be attached to another morpheme; bound roots often derive from Latin, but their

meaning isn’t always easy to determine.

3. Inflectional morphology

Modern English has a more limited presence of inflectional morphology compared to Old English and

compared to other languages.

Noun inflections

For example English nouns have only two