Riassunti esame di Lingua inglese II - parte lingua, morfosintassi e lessico, prof. Francesca Caracciolo, libro consigliato English lexicography. Volume II: Selected Readings, 2010, F. Caracciolo

English lexicography

Grammar

Grammar is a set of rules that allow the production of well-formed sentences or utterances. We have to distinguish between descriptive and theoretical grammar. Descriptive grammar describes how the language works. Descriptive grammar is deeply influenced by theoretical grammar. Theoretical grammar includes models made up by linguists. These models create the new metalanguage, which is terms and concepts typical of these new theories. The main core of grammar is represented by morphology and syntax.

Units of grammar

They can be ordered according to a hierarchy and so they create a rank scale. This scale can be described from the largest to the smallest (top-down description) or from the smallest to the largest (bottom-up description). The units of grammar are: morphemes, words (made up of one or more morphemes), phrases (made up of one or more words), clauses (made up of one or more phrases), sentences (made up of one or more clauses. When a sentence is spoken it is called utterance), text (sequence of coherent and cohesive sentences. Examples of texts are emails, novels, interviews, dialogues).

Criteria of word definitions

• Orthographic word: It is a linguistic unit that in the written form is preceded and followed by spaces or punctuation marks. Unit means a sequence of uninterrupted letters. According to this definition, compounds (ice cream, box office) aren’t single words.
• Phonological word: It is a linguistic unit preceded and followed by pauses and with a unique main stress. According to this definition, compounds and nouns in the genitive case (Maria’s) are single words, but articles and prepositions aren’t words because they are usually unstressed.
• Internal integrity: It is a linguistic unit where we can’t insert material. We can only add material at the end of it. According to this definition, words like brother-in-law and sister-in-law aren’t words because they form the plural adding the –s after brother and sister and not at the end.
• Meaning: It is a linguistic unit that refers to something specific. There are 2 problems with this definition:
  • If I say “brother-in-law” I’m referring to a specific person, but also if I say “the man with the blue jacket” I’m referring to a specific person. However, I can’t say that “the man with the blue jacket” is a word.
  • According to this definition, articles and prepositions aren’t words, because they don’t have a meaning.

Lexeme

A lexeme is a word in the dictionary, it is abstract, and it is written in capital letters. A word or word form is the concrete realization of the lexeme, it is a variant of the lexeme, it is written in italics. Word and word form are synonyms, but word is less specific, while word form is more specific. Example: DOG (lexeme): dog and dogs (word forms of the lexeme dogs).

Dictionary units

The abstract dictionary units are entry, headword, and lemma. Entries are ordered alphabetically and they represent the independent lexical units. The entry consists of a headword. The headword is the word that represents the entire lexical unit, it is written in bold, and it is followed by information about its pronunciation, spelling, word class, meaning, examples of use. The headword is also called lemma and it is the word form conventionally chosen to represent the lexeme in dictionaries. Example: English nouns use the singular form; English verbs use the base form.

Word classes or parts of speech

According to their meaning, structure, and position in a sentence, words are grouped into 9 word classes: nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, determiners, auxiliary verbs. Nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are open word classes because they often admit new members. They are also called content or lexical words, because they have a proper meaning. Pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, determiners, and auxiliary verbs are closed word classes, because they rarely admit new members. They are also called function or grammatical words because they don’t have a proper meaning, but they show the relationships between content words. Biber identified another word class: the inserts. Inserts are typical of spoken language and show emotional and interactional meanings. Examples of inserts are: interjections (oh), responses (yeah), discourse markers (well, right), attention signals (hey).

Nouns

Nouns can be abstract or concrete. Concrete nouns can be countable or uncountable.

Lexical verbs

Lexical verbs are the main verbs.

Adjectives

Adjectives describe and qualify nouns and pronouns. They can be gradable or non-gradable. Gradable can be graded. Non-gradable can’t be graded (married: I can’t be quite married: I am married or single; dead: I can’t be extremely dead: I am dead or alive).

Adverbs

Adverbs have different functions:

• Can grade adjectives. Example: very happy.
• Can occur with other adverbs. Example: very strangely.
• Circumstance adverbs or adjuncts: give information about time, place, manner of what is said. Example: yesterday, inside, carefully.
• Stance adverbs or disjuncts: express the point of view and the emotions of the speaker. Example: probably, fortunately.
• Linking adverbs or conjuncts: create a link between clauses. Example: furthermore.

Conjunctions

We can distinguish between coordinating conjunctions or coordinators and subordinating conjunctions or subordinators. Coordinators create a link between elements with the same status, the same importance. Example: and, but, or, nor. Subordinators create a link between a main clause and a subordinate clause. Subordinators can express: time, place, condition, concession, purpose, reason.

Prepositions

We can distinguish between simple and complex prepositions. Simple prepositions are composed of a unique word. Complex prepositions are composed of more than one word.

Determiners

Determiners precede nouns and determine them. The main determiners are: articles, both definite and indefinite, quantifiers (two, some, many), demonstratives (this, that, these, those), possessives (my, your).

Pronouns

Pronouns replace nouns that have been mentioned before and that can be deduced from the context. Pronouns can be personal, possessive, indefinite, reciprocal, reflexive, demonstrative, relative, interrogative.

Auxiliary verbs

There are primary auxiliaries and modal auxiliaries. Primary auxiliaries can be both lexical and auxiliary verbs. They are be, have, and do. Modal auxiliaries can’t occur alone, but always with a lexical verb. They determine the modality of the verb they precede.

WH-words

Function words beginning with WH, except for that and how. They usually introduce relative and interrogative clauses. They don’t belong to a specific word class. Their word class depends on the context.

Numerals

They determine the number and the quantity of something. They can be ordinal (first, second) or cardinal (one, two).

Grammatical functions

The grammatical functions include subject, verb, object, complement, and adverbial.

Subject:

It is the topic, the theme of the sentence.

Verb or predicator:

It is what is said about the subject.

Object:

It can be direct or indirect.

Complement:

It is necessary to complete the meaning of the verb. It can refer to the subject (subject complement) or to the object (object complement).

Adverbial:

Morphology studies words in isolation. There are two types of morphology:

Inflectional morphology:

Studies the different forms that words assume according to the grammatical context.

Derivational morphology:

Studies the creation of new words.

Morphology

Morphology studies morphemes. The morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit. It can’t be divided. Morphemes are abstract.

Morphs

Morphs are concrete, they are the concrete realizations of morphemes.

Allomorphs

Variants of the same morpheme. Allomorphs are complementary: you can choose a unique allomorph. There isn’t always a one-to-one correspondence between morphemes and morphs:

• The morph –ED represents the morpheme PAST TENSE. It can be pronounced in different ways (t, d, id). The different pronunciation depends on the sound preceding the morpheme. T, d, id are allomorphs of the morpheme PAST TENSE;
• The morph –S represents the morpheme PLURAL. It can be pronounced in different ways (s, z, iz). The different pronunciation depends on the sound preceding the morpheme. S, z, iz are allomorphs of the morpheme PLURAL;
• The morpheme NEGATIVE can be represented by different morphs: il- before words beginning with l (illegal), im- before words beginning with m and p (immaterial, impossible), ir- before words beginning with r (irresponsible), in- in all the other cases (inaccurate). Il, im, in, ir are allomorphs of the morpheme NEGATIVE;
• The morpheme DEFINITE ARTICLE can be represented in two ways: A before nouns beginning with a consonant, AN before nouns beginning with a vowel. A and AN are graphic allomorphs of the morpheme DEFINITE article.

Types of morphemes

• Free morpheme: can stand as single words. There are free lexical morphemes (they are content words and are also called free roots because they have a proper meaning) and free functional morphemes (they are function words and don’t have a proper meaning).
• Bound morpheme: can’t stand as single words, but they occur always with other morphemes. There are affixes and bound roots. Affixes are morphemes attached to the beginning (prefixes) or to the end (suffixes) of another morpheme. Bound roots have a proper meaning, but they never occur as single words. They usually derive from Latin. Example: dent- in dental, liber- in liberal or liberty.

Roots, bases, and stems

Affixes are attached to a root, base, or stem.

• Root: the core of the word, it has a meaning, it has no affixes.
• Base: the word-form to which affixes can be attached.
• Stem: the word-form to which affixes are attached.

All roots are bases. Bases are stems only when affixes are attached. Affixes can be inflectional or derivational.

Inflectional and derivational affixes

Inflectional affixes express the grammatical function of the word and they are always suffixes. Derivational affixes are used to create new words and they can be both prefixes and suffixes.

English words

English words have proper inflectional morphemes. They are obligatory and correspond to grammatical categories.

Nouns

Nouns have 2 grammatical categories: number (singular-plural) and case (only the genitive case, which expresses possession).

Number

• Countable nouns usually form the plural by adding the suffix –s to the singular form. There are also irregular plurals.
• Uncountable and proper nouns don’t have the plural form.

Irregular plurals

• Irregular suffixes: child-children, ox-oxen, brother-brethren.
• Foreign plurals: medium-media, corpus-corpora, curriculum-curricula.
• Change of vowel: man-men, tooth-teeth, foot-feet, goose-geese.
• Change of morph: mouse-mice.
• Voicing of final consonant: wife-wives, leaf-leaves.
• Zero morph: singular and plural forms are identical: sheep-sheep, fish-fish.

Case

The genitive case is represented through the -‘s inflection.

Verbs

Lexical verbs can be regular or irregular. The regular lexical verbs have 5 word forms: the base form (play), the present tense of the third singular person (plays), the past tense (played), the past participle (played), and the present participle (playing). The base form has no inflection and so we can say that regular lexical verbs have 4 inflections:

• The –s inflection for the third singular person of the present tense: this inflection characterizes also irregular verbs.
• The –ed inflection for the past tense.
• The –ed inflection for the past participle: the past tense and past participle forms are identical, but they are used in different ways.
• The –ing inflection for present participle and gerund.

Irregular lexical verbs

Irregular lexical verbs tend to be irregular only for the past tense and past participle forms, while they tend to be regular in the other forms. The irregularities are:

• Zero morph: the two forms are identical to the verb base. Example: put-put-put, hit-hit-hit.
• Change of the vowel: Example: swim-swam-swum, sing-sang-sung.
• Change of vowel and –en inflection to the past participle form: Example: take-took-taken, shake-shook-shaken.
• Change of morph: the two forms are identical. Example: make-made-made, sleep-slept-slept.
• Suppletion: the verb forms are so different that they seem totally unrelated. Example: be-was-been, go-went-gone.

Modals

Modals have only two forms. Example: can-could, shall, should, will-would.

Adjectives and adverbs

Gradable short (one or two syllables) adjectives and adverbs form the comparative and superlative degree through the suffix –er and –est. Gradable long (more than two syllables) form the comparative and superlative degree through the periphrastic forms with more and most. There are some irregularities: good-better-best, bad-worse-worst, well-better-best, much-more-most, little-less-least. These irregularities are suppletions.

Determiners

Some determiners have the grammatical category of number, like for example the demonstratives (singular: this, that; plural: these, those).

Pronouns

Pronouns express: person, number, gender (masculine-feminine), case (nominative, accusative, genitive). Example of case: he (nominative), him (accusative), his (genitive).

Syntax

Syntax studies the combination of two or more words to create larger linguistic units. For English syntax, word order is very important. Examples:

• The nominative and the accusative case aren’t expressed through inflections and so we can recognize them thanks to word order. In the clause “Luca hates Marco” we know that Luca is the subject because it precedes the verb and we know that Marco is the object because it follows the verb.
• She is happy vs. Is she happy: We know that the first one is a statement and that the second one is a question thanks to the word order.

Word order

The word order can be unmarked or marked. It is unmarked if it is common (SVO). It is marked if it isn’t common (OSV). Marked word order is used to highlight something. If I say “her, I hate”, I want to underline that the person that I hate is her.

Italian vs. English word orders

Italian and English word orders are different: Italian word order is more flexible than the English one; in Italian, the personal pronoun can be omitted, in English not; in Italian, the subject can follow the verb, in English not.

Phrase

A phrase is made up of one or more words. It makes sense and is built around a word, called the head of the phrase. The head can stay alone, but can also be preceded and followed by modifiers. If they are before the head they are called pre-modifiers. If they are after the head they are called post-modifiers. The head is obligatory, because if it missed, the phrase wouldn’t make sense. The modifiers are optional.

Noun phrase

The head is a noun, but can also be a pronoun (pronoun phrase). The noun can be alone, but can also be accompanied by determiners and modifiers. Determiners stay in initial position.

Appositive noun phrase

Also called noun phrase in apposition, refers to the head of the main noun phrase. It is separated by the head through a comma or in other ways.