Riassunto esame Linguistica Inglese II, prof Dore, libro consigliato: Understanding Language Structure, Interaction and Variation, Brown, Attardo, S, Vigliotti, (2014) 3rd edition, The University of Michigan Press"

ADJECTIVE PHRASE

4. (AdjP) = a group of words that has an ADJECTIVE as its head and which

functions together as an adjective:• despicable, absolutely despicable, as despicable as possible

ADVERB PHRASE

5. (AdvP) = a group of words that has an ADVERB as its head and which functions

together as an adverb: quickly, too quickly, much too quickly

Remember: there is also a word class preposition to define the fifth kind of phrase, PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE

(PP) = A group of words that consists of a preposition followed by a Noun Phrase:in the basket up the road,

down his throat.

THE TREE DIAGRAM

It is traditional to represent the structure of the sentence with a tree diagram that shows with branches and nodes

the process of breaking down the sentence given above it.

TYPES OF SENTENCES

1- Coordination

2- Subordination

TYPES OF SENTENCE TRANSFORMATION

Transformations can be used to move parts of a sentence into different positions or to insert phrases or clauses in

a sentence, as in "a good student he is not".

In the case of SUBORDINATION, a clause is called a subordinate if it is placed "inside" another clause: a

higher-order sentence has as one of its components another sentence (the subordinate clause): for example, a

sentence may have its direct object replaced by a subordinate clause, which will appear under the comp

(complementizer) nod or a word that introduces a complement/ subordinate clause.

In the case of COORDINATION, the 2 sentences, or phrases, are on the same level.

Other examples of transformation:

Particle Hopping:

• Mary stood up John -> Mary stood John up: NP+ V+part+NP -> NP+V+NP+part

(detachment of the particle of the phrasal verb)

Question:

• Mary stood up John -> Did Mary stand John up?: NP+ V+NP -> Aux+ NP+V+NP

Negation:

• Mary stood up John -> Mary did not stand John up: NP+ V+NP -> Aux+ Neg+V+NP

Passive:

• Mary stood up John -> John was stood up by Mary: NP1+ V+ NP2 -> NP2 +BE+V-en+ by+NP (-en

indicates the past participle form of the main verb)

Dative Movement:

• Mary gave a book to John -> Mary gave John a book: NP1+ V+NP2 + Prep+NP3 ->

NP1+V+NP3+NP2 (John is called an "indirect object")

Another way of asking question is the so called wh-question: questions are formed by taking the complement

phrase and moving it to the beginning of the sentence, in the empty node nder the "comp" node.

SYNTAX, UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR AND THE CHOMSKIAN PROGRAM

Most of what we have now studied in syntax has been influenced deeply by the work of Noam Chomsky, whose

grammatical theory has a very significant and controversial psychological and biological underpinning.

Chomsky claims that the rules of grammar are governed by principles

(syntax, morphology and phonology)

that are universal (all languages of the world obey them). He also claimed that principles that govern grammar

are genetically programmed in human beings: these principles are called universal grammar (UG).

Each individual specification toward the nature of universal grammar is called a parameter: for example, "piove"

in Italian is correct while "rains" is incorrect: what we have here is a parameter that says roughly that in a given

language one either can or cannot have an empty subject position. Parameters can be thought or as yes-no

switches: a parameter allows either one option or the other.

BEYOND THE SENTENCE

Sentences do not occur in isolation but they may occur in paragraphs or as part of a conversation: the disciplines

text linguistics discourse

of linguistics that look at these units larger than the individual sentence are called and

analysis.

We distinguish between:

1- textual cohesion, which happens at the level of the surface of the text

2- coherence, which happens at the level of the meaning of the text.

COHESION

Cohesion is the property of the surface structure of the text to "hold together":

Peter is the most handsome boy in town. He is also a celebrity (Peter= antecedent; “He” = anaphoric item, a

linguistic item that refers to another part of a text).

The relationship between any anaphoric item and its antecedent is a cohesive relationship.

Other cohesive devices are articles, adverbials, discourse markers ("on the one hand.. on the other hand",

"however"), lists, parallelisms, explicit markers (chapters, section titles, tables of contents).

Contrast Addition Reason and cause Opinion Modify or explaining

However, Moreover, Because (of), As, In my opinion, In my To a certain extent, More

Nevertheless, On the Furthermore, Since, Seeing that, view, From my point or less, At least, Basically,

Especially, In particular,

one hand... On the In addition, Therefore, As a of view, Personally, As

other hand, result / consequence far as I’m concerned Above all, That is (to

Besides,

Although, Though, What's more, of, Consequently, say), In other words,

In spite of, Despite, On top of that, Hence, In order to, Essentially, In general, On

Whereas, While, Yet As well as So as to the whole

, Unlike, In fact

Exercise 1

Read the newspaper article below and find all markers of cohesion (pronouns, repetitions, synonyms,

conjunctions, linkers, etc.)

A 15-year old boy was pistol-whipped in his home at Golders Green, North London, yesterday by two robbers to

make him reveal where his family’s money and valuables were hidden.

The robbers, who posed as delivery men, fled empty handed after hearing the boy’s father making a 999 call

from the library where he had been locked. The family have asked police not to reveal their identity.

Exercise 1- Keys

boy his yesterday robbers

A 15-year old was pistol-whipped in home at Golders Green, North London, by two

him where and

to make reveal his family’s money valuables were hidden.

robbers, who after boy’s

The posed as delivery men, fled empty handed hearing the father making a 999 call

where he

from the library had been locked.

The family their

have asked police not to reveal identity

COHERENCE overall meaning of the text

Coherence is the (main point, idea, etc.) that happens at semantic level. Besides by

cohesion, coherence may be established by any of the following means:

1- The setting and fulfilment of expectations in the text; e.g. Harry Potter Cooperative principle by implicature

2- Reasoning by inference; e.g. cause and effect -> Can I have a glass of water? (s/he is thirsty)

3- Activation of our knowledge of a common situation: discussing food since we are going to the restaurant

4- The cooperative principle, by implicature: one asks for walking directions to a given address, only to be told

that that address is 5miles away. The answer assumes the implicature that the question is being asked with the

purpose of going to the address

REMEMBER: a non-cohesive text can be coherent and a cohesive text can still be incoherent (although usually

coherence and cohesion go together)!

Cohesion is neither a sufficient nor a necessary component of coherence:

"john likes to swim. Mary is fond of skydiving. Ann is a pro golfer. What athletic children I have": there are no

cohesive ties and coherence is easily achieved by invoking the frame for "family", which tells us that one may

have 3 children

"john likes to swim. It is a very good sport, from an exercising point of view. Exercise is a good way to lose

weight": there are cohesive ties between each sentence and the following one, yet the paragraph fails to be

coherent because there is no unifying theme or no one thought that is expressed by the text.

CONVERSATION ANALYSIS (CA)

A speaker may choose not to complete the adjency pair immediately but instead delay it by introducing another

adjacency pair (A: When are you going on vacation? B: Why do you want to know?A: I have to write a report

for the boss. B: Ah. The second week of July.")

TURN TAKING

One of the central issues in the analysis of conversation is how to regulate turn taking: in general, people tend to

avoid overlapping turn because it is fairly complex to follow what someone is saying while someone else is

speaking too. During conversation people are continuously negotiating the floor, sometimes with funny results

depending on the culture under scrutiny.

People have developed strategies to ensure that speakers who have the floor, or are speaking, will not be

interrupted.

In middle class American culture the conviction is that whoever is speaking is entitled to keep the floor until he

or she arrives at a transition-relevance place (the end of a sentence, a pause in speech). Then, unless the speaker

signals with appropriate means that he or she is not done speaking (e.g. by making a hesitating sound), the floor

is up for grabs. The speaker also has the option of selecting the next speaker, for example, by asking a question.

This is not to say that speakers never interrupt but however, interruptions are viewed as "rude" and disruptive

(not every: speakers may interrupt to agree or to express interest and these kind of overlapping turns are called

back channel).

Conversation Openers in American Pop Language

What’s up, dude? / What’s up?/ ‘Sup, Bro?/ Hey/ What’s happening’?

Conversation Closers in American Pop Language

It is what is it/ so?/ no way/ way/ it could happen/ whatever/ make my day

THE MEANING OF WORDS

Meaning is the mental representation of a word (morpheme): e.g. the English word dog (which is a sign); try and

imagine it....

The Referent is the object, living being or concept a word refers to: in the real world there is a dog, the animal

we can see, touch, hear or smell

The sign is the word that allows us to connect the meaning and the referent ("dog"), which would be otherwise

completely unrelated, as they belong to different spheres (thoughts and real objects).

SIGNIFIER AND SIGNIFIED

The Signifier is the sequence of sounds that wake up a word (d+o+g = dog).

The Signified is the meaning (mental representation) of a word (or sign).

The signifier and the signified are unrelated because there is no special reason for a dog to be called"dog": it is a

matter of convention. The fact that the connection between a word's phonological shape and its meaning is

arbitrary is called the principle of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign.

REMEMBER: sign is ALWAYS arbitrary!

FEATURES OF WORDS

Words can be distinguished according to their specific features (what they are and what they are not).

man woman boy girl rooster hen boar sow

[female] - + - + - + - +

[animal] - - - - + + + +

Ideally, we could continue until we described the entire meaning of each word by breaking it into semantic

features, or meaning components. In reality, things do not work out entirely this way because the lexicon, or all

the words of a language, is a very complex part of how a language works. When one tries to apply this system to

the lexicon, one soon realizes it