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

-PREDICTION, VOLITION.

There are two tipes of modality:

-deontic or intrinsic modality: is used to indicate events and actions that can be controlled by

humans: ability, permission, obligation, volition;

-epistemic or extrinsic modality: is used to talk about events and states with different levels of

likelihood and possibility, they are linked to human judgement: possibility, logical necessity,

prediction.

ADJECTIVE PHRASE: the head is an adjective. It can stay alone or be accompanied by modifiers.

Pre-modifiers are usually adverbs (very happy) or noun phrases (fourteen years old). Post-

modifiers are usually adverbs (good enough), prepositional phrases (unhappy with your behaviour)

or clauses (unhappy that you behaved like this).

ADVERB PHRASES: the head is an adverb. It can stay alone or be accompanied by modifiers,

which generally are adverbs. Pre-modifiers: very, extremly. Post-modifiers: enough, indeed.

PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE: the head is a preposition and it is always followed by another

element, called complement of the preposition. The complement of the preposition is usually a

noun phrase (for your brother), but can also be a clause (for which I worked). Prepositional

phrases can be ambiguous. ES: the doorkeeper hit the woman with the umbrella: 1) the

doorkeeper hit the woman usingan umbrella; 2) the doorkeeper hit the woman who was carrying

the umbrella.

CLAUSE ELEMENTS

The clause elements are: subject, verb, object, complement, adverbial.

SUBJECT: it is the topic; it is obligatory and can’t be omitted; it always precedes the verb with a

unique exception: the interrogative clause, where the subject follows the auxiliary (have, be) or the

operator (do); if it is a pronoun, it must be in the nominative case. DUMMY SUBJECT: it is

semantically empty; it coincides with IT or THERE; when it coincides with THERE, we have the

EXISTENTIAL THERE structure; the dummy subject precedes the verb and after the verb there is

another subject.

VERB: the number of the verb depends on the subject; it is the main element of the clause,

because it determines the number and the type of the other clause elements. Each verb needs

proper slots, which are called VERB COMPLEMENTATION. The slots are obligatory and if only

one misses the clause is grammatically incomplete. According to the number and type of slots the

verb can be:

-INTRANSITIVE (one place verb): the structure is SV;

-MONOTRANSITIVE (two place verb): the structure is SVOd;

-DITRANSITIVE (three place verb): the structure is SVOiOd;

-COMPLEX (three place verb): the structure is SVOdCo or SVOdA;

-COPULAR (two place verb): the structure is SVCs or SVA.

Clauses can be divided in 2 parts: the subject and the predicative (verb+verb complementation).

OBJECT: the object follows only transitive verbs. It can be direct (it is directly affected by what is

said in the clause) or indirect (it isn’t directly affected by what is said in the clause, but it is

involved). The indirect object stays between verb and direct object when it isn’t preceded by any

prepositions, while it stays after the direct object when it is preceded by the prepositios to or for.

ADVERBIAL: it can be optional (even if it missed, the clause would make sense) or obligatory (if it

missed, the clause wouldn’t make sense.

TYPES OF CLAUSE: there are different types of clauses:

-finite vs non finite: in finite clauses the verb phrase is finite; in non finite clauses the verb phrase is

non finite;

-main vs subordinate: the main clause can stand alone, it is independent, it is always finite; the

subordinate clause can’t stand alone, it depends on the main clause, it can be finite or non finite;

-declarative (express a statement), interrogative (express a question), imperative (express a

command or a request), exclamative (express an exclamation);

-simple (only the main clause), complex (main and subordinate clauses), compound (coordinate

clauses).

DECLARATIVE CLAUSES: the unmarked structure is SVO.

INTERROGATIVE CLAUSES: the unmarked structure is VS and the verb can be preceded by WH-

words. QUESTION TAGS: yes-no questions, typical of spoken language, they follow a statement,

are composed of an auxiliary and a personal pronoun corresponding to the subject of the

statement. Statement and question tag can have a contrasting or a constant polarity.

CONTRASTING POLARITY: one is negative and one is positive, used when the speaker isn’t sure

of what he is saying and wants to receive assurance from the hearer. CONSTANT POLARITY: they

are both positive or both negative, used to express surprise, sarcasm, disappointment.

IMPERATIVE CLAUSES: the structure is V.

EXCLAMATIVE CLAUSES: the structure is what/how + SV.

An example of marked structure is CLEFTING. Clefting is used to give emphasis to a specific

element. It consists in the division of the clause in two clauses. Both the clauses have a verb.

There are two types of clefting:

-IT CLEFTING: it + be + emphasised element. ES: I want a book for Christmas=it is a book I want

for Christmas, it is for Christmas that I want a book.

-WH-CLEFTING: wh-word (usually what) + clause + be + emphasised element. ES: I want a book

for Christmas= what I want for Christmas is a book.

COMPOUND SENTENCE: coordinate clauses.

COMPLEX SENTENCE: main clause + subordinate clause.

Subordinate clauses can be finite or non finite.

FINITE SUBORDINATE CLAUSES: they can be nominal, relative, adverbial, comparative.

NOMINAL: it functions as subject, object or complement; it is introduced by wh-words.

RELATIVE: it is introduced by wh-words; it is often the post modifier of a noun phrase; it refers to

the head of the noun phrase; it can be defining (it defines the head; es: the man who is crossing

the road is my brother) or non defining (it gives extra information about the head, that is already

defined; es: Benigni, who won an Oscar, is my favourite actor.

ADVERBIAL: it give different information:

-time: is introduced by as soon as, before, after;

-place: is introduced by where, wherever;

-condition: is introduced by if, in case, unless. A conditional sentence consists of a conditional

clause (that expresses the condition) and a main clause (that expresses the consequence). There

are 4 types of conditional sentences;

-concession: is introduced by although, even though,

-reason: is introduced by because, as, since;

-purpose: is introduced by in order to, so that.

COMPARATIVE: express comparisons. ES: the film was as nice as/nicer than/less nice than I

expected.

NON FINITE SUBORDINATE CLAUSES: they don’t contain a subject and their interpretation

depends on the main clause. They are INFINITIVE, ING CLAUSES, ED CLAUSES.

VERBLESS CLAUSES: they don’t contain a verb and are usually adverbial clauses.

Lexicography describes the nature, the history, the meaning and the use of the vocabulary of a

language. The vocabulary of a language i salso called LEXIS or LEXICON. The lexis has many

peculiarities.

DYNAMIC NATURE: lexis changes continually. It is easly and deeply influenced by social and

cultural changes. Lexis can innovate and develop through 3 different processes:

-COINAGES: the creation of completely new words. It is very rare and typical of advertising;

-LOANWORDS: the borrowing of words from other languages. The number of loanwords is

different in each language and depends on the political strenght and cultural prestige of the donor

language;

WORD-FORMATION PROCESSES: the creation of new words from already existing ones. Word-

formation processes coincide with derivational morphology. There are different types of word-

formation processes:

-AFFIXATION: the addition of an affix to a base;

-the addition of Latin or Greek forms in initial position, like maxi and mini, or in final positon, like

phile and crat;

-COMPOUNDING: the combination of two existing words to create a new one, like jet leg and box

office;

-SHORTENING: sit-com for situation comedy, flu for influenza;

-the fusion of two existing words into a new one, like smog (smoke+fog);

-SEMANTIC SHIFT: the meaning of an existing word changes, like zap (from moving quickly to

changing tv programmes);

-FUNCTIONAL SHIFT: the grammatical function of an existing word changes without any formal

change, like download (it is both a verb and a noun: we can recognize it grammatical function

according to the context).

Word-formation processes can be used only on words deriving from another word-formation

process. Word-formation processes are at the base of the concept of WORD FAMILIES. A word

family is composed of a headword (es. nation) and of words deriving from it (es. nationally,

international, nationality).

Semantics is the scientific study of the meaning of words. When we talk about meaning we have to

consider the concept of reference. The referent is the real entity that the word denotes. The

referent can be somthing concrete (table, book), something abstract (love, faith), a non-existing

entity (ghost), a whole category (birds). When we say birds we aren’t referring to a specific real

bird, but to the image of bird that we have in our mind. This idea depends on our experiences and

includes a sufficient number of distinctive features (it can fly, it lays eggs, it is an animal, it has 2

wings). The images in our mind are called PROTOTYPES. Words can denote things but they can

also suggest semantic and emotional associations. In the first case we have DENOTATION, in the

second case we have CONNOTATION. The associations can be individual or widely shared. ES:

lion: it can denote the animal (denotation) or suggest an idea of power, courage, force

(connotation). A word with a unique referent is called MONOREFERENTIAL TERM. A

monoreferential term indicate somenthing specific (computer, macroeconomics). A word with

different referents is called POLYSEMOUS WORD. A polysemous word becomes monoreferential

in context. The meanings linked to the same word can be related (POLYSEMY) or totally unrelated

(HOMONYMY). Polysemous words are written in the same entry of a dictionary. Homonyms are

written in different entries. HOMOPHONES are words written in different ways, but pronounced in

the same way (flour-flower). Homophones have different meanings.

The component analysis consists in the description of a words through its smaller components.

The component analysis can be adopted only with words which can be described according to

binary features. ES: cow (+animal+female), lion (+animal-female).

Words don’t exist in isolation. They are linked through sense relations, also called choice or

paradigmatic relations. There are 3 typer of sense relations:

-SIMILARITY: two words are synonyms if they have the same referent and the same meaning. We

can distinguish between complete synonyms and near-synonyms. Complete synonyms can be

used in the same context. Near-synonyms are used in different contexts. ES of near synonyms:

LEXIS (used in academic register, very specialized, latin origin), VOCABULARY (less specialized,

romance origin), WORD (isn’t specialized at all, anglo-saxon origin).

-OPPOSITIO