Riassunto per esame di Lingua e traduzione Inglese, prof.ssa Gatto, libro consigliato Linking Wor(l)ds" di S. Laviosa

LONG? respectively soon, rarely, indefinitely.

4. Adverbs of place answer the question WHERE? For example, here.

5. Adverbs of probability answer the question HOW SURE ARE WE ABOUT SOMETHING? (probably).

6. Linking adverbs show the kind of connection there is between sentences. They may indicate: an

addiction (besides, moreover), a parallel (equally, likewise), a contrast or an alternative (however), a

cause (therefore, hence) and a sequence in time (first, next, finally).

7. Sentence adverbs indicate the speaker’s opinion regarding what is being talked about (surprisingly,

interestingly).

8. Broad negative adverbs are used to make a statement almost completely negative (hardly, barely).

9. Focusing adverbs indicate the most relevant thing involved in what the speaker is saying ( particularly,

especially).

10. lnterrogative adverbs introduce a direct or indirect question (when, where, how).

11. Relative adverbs refer back to a noun in the main clause of a sentence and introduce a subordinate

relative clause (where, when, why). 10

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12. Gradable adjectives have comparative and superlative form with more and most respectively.

5.5. Translation problems. There are some significant differences between English and ltalian with regard to

the encoding of the grammatical category of gender. In Italian, the distinction between feminine and

masculine applies to nouns referring to animate beings such as figlia/figlio and inanimate objects such as

casa/porto. Moreover, determiners, adjectives and some verb forms agree with the noun or the pronoun in

gender and number. In contrast, English nouns are not regularly inflected to indicate gender. Different words

are sometimes used to refer to female and male members of the same animal species (cow/bull, bitch/dog,

duck/drake). A small number of nouns referring to professions are inflected for gender, for example

actress/actor, host/hostess, steward/stewardess. If an ltalian writer doesn't reveal the gender of the person

whom an object or person belongs to, the English translator may have to make explicit the information that

was kept vague in the original. The same problem arises when in ltalian the writer omits the subject personal

pronoun in the third person singular, forcing the English translator to interpret the writer’s intentions and

add information that was implicit in the original. For example the Italian ”m’ama non m’ama” corresponds

to the English ”he loves me, he loves me not” or 'she loves me, she loves me not”.

6. World classes 2

6.1. Introduction. Word classes fall into two main group: major (or open) classes and minor (or closed)

classes. Major classes are nouns (including pronouns), verbs, adjectives and adverbs. They are calle d open

classes because they are more receptive to new members, so new words can be easily incorporated as the

lexical needs of a society change. Minor classes are prepositions, conjunctions, determiners and interjections.

6.2. Prepositions and Conjunctions. Prepositions (P) are words expressing a relationship of meaning

between one word to another word in the sentence. The word following the preposition is called the object

of the preposition (OP). Prepositions normally show how two words in a sentence are related in space (In,

At, 0n, Above, Over) or time (after, before). Most of the common prepositions consist of one word and do

not allow any inflectional or derivational morphology. There are also multi -word prepositions such as near

to, in front of. Most prepositions express more than one relationship for example OVER indicates the position

of something above something else, but also a movement across the space. A word can belong to different

word classes for example AFTER can be used as a preposition when it is fol lowed by a noun or a pronoun

(after breakfast, after you) or as an adverb (Mark got there at twelve and arrived soon after). Normally,

prepositions come before their object. Spoken English often place a preposition at the end of the sentence,

in this position it is called a dangling preposition as in ”who are you going out with ?”.

Conjunctions (Conj) are words joining words, phrases and clauses. There are two types of conjunctions:

coordinators (or coordinating conjunctions) and subordinators (or subordinating conjunctions).

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Coordinators link units which have the same grammatical status in the sentence such as two adjectives, two

noun phrases or two main clauses. The main coordinators are And, which express the meaning of addition,

But and Yet which indicate contrast, and Or that denotes alternatives.

Subordinators link a clause to the main or independent part of the sentence as in "we went for a walk when

it stopped raining”, where the main clause ”we went for a walk” is joined to the subordinate (or dependent)

clause ‘it stopped raining" by the time conjunction WHEN. The same word may sometimes function as either

a subordinating conjunction or a preposition. BEFORE is a conjunction in the sentence “We left before you

called“ and a preposition in “we left before the end of the party'. Some pedagogic grammars call

subordinating conjunctions LINKING WORDS. They may express different meaning: time (until), place

(where), condition (If), concession (though), purpose (in order that) and reason (because).

6.3. Determiners. Determiners (Det) are words that can be used before a noun to form a noun phrase. They

express quantity, possession and definiteness. Determiners can sometimes be preceded by words called pne-

determmers (pre Get). The main one are all, both, half, such. There are different types of determiners:

• definite articles, THE

• indefinite articles, A/AN

• demonstrative determiners, THIS/THESE -THAT/THOSE

• Wh-determiners, WHICH / WHOSE / WHAT

• quantificational determiners, SOME / ANY/ MUCH/ MANY/ EVERY/ MORE

• possessive determiners, MY – YOUR - HIS - HER - OUR - THEIR

6.4. Translation problems. Among the determiners that often pose problems in translation there is the

definite article. It occurs more frequently in Italian than in English because it isn’t only used before a noun

when we speak about a particular person, animal, place, object or idea, but also when we talked in general

about somebody or something. In the latter case English tends to omit the definite article. Similarly to Italian,

English uses the definite article to talk about something in general:

• names of animal, flowers and plants

• names of musical instruments and scientific inventions

• some common expressions like the town, the sea, the rain and so on

• some adjectives with a general meaning, the young, the poor, the blind

• some nationality words, the English, The French, meaning ”the people of that country”.

And also names of geographical places and places of cultural interest:

• Names of oceans, seas, rivers, canals, deserts, island groups (the canaries) 12

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• Places that include a countable noun such as republic, states, kingdom (the united states, the united

kingdom)

• Names of hotels, cinemas, museums, restaurants, pubs The Hard Rock Café).

Unlike Italian, English doesn't normally use the definite article with the names of continents, countries,

states, lakes, individual mountains and Churches named after saints + the possessive ’5: St Mary's Church, St

Paul’s Cathedral.

Finally, English uses possessive determiners to talk about specific objects for example parts of the body or

times of clothing.

The Italian preference for the definite article versus the possessive determiner can be noticed in business

correspondence where this tendency contributes to creating an impersonal style that raises the level of

formality. For example, the English correspondence "once again many thanks for your order" corresponds to

the Italian "rigranziandoLa ancora dell'ordine assegnatoci”.

With regard the prepositions, every language uses them differently. The mismatch between English and

Italian often consists in using different prepositions to express the same relationship of meaning or in using

a preposition in one language and no preposition in the other one. Examples of different prepositions are:

• To go to Italy /andare in Italia

• To be interested in / essere interessato a

• To depend on /dipenda da

• To go on holiday / andare in vacanza

• On television / in televisone

Examples of no preposition in Italian are:

• To look for / cercare

• To look at /guardare

• To listen to / ascoltare

• To wait for /aspettare

Examples of no prepositions in English are:

• To approach / awicinarsi a

• To enter / entrare in

As a conjunction, in English the same word may sometimes be a subordinating conjunction or a preposition.

In Italian, however, a different word would normally be used. For example, BEFORE and AFTER can be used

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as either subordinators or prepositions. In Italian, before corresponds to prima che as subordinator and prima

di as preposition. 7. Phrases 1

7.1. Introduction. In language, words form units that work as wholes in relation to other units and are

organized hierarchically in different levels. These levels are: the word level (including the morphological

level), the phrase, clause, sentence and discourse levels. The phrase level occupies a middle position in the

structure of a language between the word and the clause. A phrase (sometimes called a group) is a string of

words forming a syntactic unit which typically contains more than one word, phrases are named after the

most important word they contain, called the head of the phrase. If the head is a n oun, the phrase is called

a noun phrase. All the four major classes and one minor word class form phrasal constructions, so there are

five types of phrase: the noun phrase, that includes the pronoun phrase as a minor type, the verb phrase,

the adjective phrase, the adverbial phrase, the propositional phrase.

7.2. Noun and pronoun phrase. A noun phrase (NP) is a phrase with a noun as head, called the head noun.

The minimal form of a noun phrase consists of a single noun but its typically structure comprises three parts:

• the head noun, which is the core of the NP and decides on verb agreement;

• the premodification, which contains all the words appearing in the NP before the head noun

including the determiner;

• the postmodification, which comprises everything appearing in the NP after the head noun.

The premodification minimally consists of the determiner (my job). Besides the determiner, it typically

comprises one or more adjectives (my beautiful house, my beautiful comfortable house) or an adjective and

a noun with an adjectival function (my new sports car).

The main types of postmodification are prepositional phrases (the house on the hill), certain kinds of finite

clause (the man I love), and certain kinds of non-finite clause (the lady waitin