Riassunto esame lingua inglese, prof. Halliday, libro consigliato English Language, Halliday

Onset Maximalization Principle: normally onset creation takes

• precedence over the creation of codas.

Stress is very important in English. The more prominent syllable is said to

be stressed and the weaker one is said to be unstressed. Especially in long

word we can distinguish primary stress, also called main stress, and

weaker secondary stress.

A stressed syllable and normally any unstressed syllable that occur

following it constitutes a “metrical foot”. A weak syllable followed by a

strong syllable is called an “iambic foot” while a strong syllable followed

by a weak syllable is called “trochaic foot”.

Content words must always have a syllable stressed while monosyllabic

function words are unstressed.

Intonation is pitch modulation used over an entire utterance. It has a lot of

functions such as underline key word and mark restrictive and non-

restrictive relative clauses.

Chapter 5

Morphology is the study of word structure, it studies the rules used to

form or interpret new words.

New words can be formed by combining two existing full words (ear-

witness) or by combining chunks of words (televangelist) or by combining

the first letters of words in a phrase (f.i.n.e.).

A word is define as a minimum free form that means that it is the smallest

form that can occur by itself as an utterance. Words contain morphemes

(boy-s). Simple words contain just one morpheme while complex words

containing more than one morpheme. The relationship between a linguistic

sign and its meaning is arbitrary. Morpheme are classified ad free

morpheme that can occur in isolation (dog, write) and bound morpheme

that cannot occur in isolation (-ing). Many morphemes have variant which

are called allomorphs that represent them in various contexts. Allomorphs

are always in complementary distribution, each allomorph can be appear

only in some context. For example the indefinite article “a” and “an”; they

have exactly the same meaning but they occur in different contexts.

A base is a unit to which elements can be added in word-formation. An

affix is a bound morpheme that must be attached to a base. If it precedes

the base it is called prefix while if it follow the base it is called suffix.

Another distinction is about lexical morpheme (also know as content

words) and functional morphemes (also called functional words).

Morphological process:

Inflection is a word-formation process that is syntactically motived

• (she sleepS – we sleepS).

Derivation is another word-formation that isn't motivated by the

• syntax but its role is to create new lexical items with a different

meaning from that of the original word (possible-impossible, sing-

singer).

Conversion: a new word is formed by assigning an existing word a

• new syntactic category without changing its form.

Affixation: involved the use of affixes. Normally the head is the

• right-hand element. This principle is known as the right-hand head

rule. English has two classes of suffixes: neutral suffixes that come

from Old English and non-neutral suffixes that come from classic

language like Latin.

Internal change: sometimes inflection is done by changing a vowel in

• the base (foot-feet)

Suppletion: ex. good and better; go and went.

• Reduplication: is the creation of a new word by repetition of an

• existing word (bye-bye)

Compounding: complex word containing two bases that are

• themselves words. Compounds always have a headword which

assign its syntactic properties to the entire word.

Back-formation: a chunk of a word is analysed as an affix and is

• removed (text from text message; adulate from adulation).

Clipping: shortening long words by dropping a part (bus from

• omnibus; gym from gymnasium).

Acronyms and abbreviations (BBC, NATO, laser, radar).

•

Chapter 6

Words can be classified in 11 word classes know as part of speech. Four of

those 11 word classes (noun, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) are called

NAVA words. These classes have a very large number of members and

they are an open class which can expand. They are very important to

communicate information. The non-content word, often called function

words, are determiners, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, auxiliary,

numeral, discourse and marker. They belong to a closed class.

A noun refers to a thing, person, substance etc.

An adjective is a word that describes something about a noun.

A verb is a doing word: it refers to an action.

An adverb is a word that says something about other types of words such

as verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

Chapter 7

There are five classes of phrase.

Three of these are: noun phrases, adjective phrases and adverb phrase. The

head is the only word that has to occur in the phrase; the modifiers are

optional. A noun phrase as a noun as its head. The other two types of

phrase are: prepositional phrases begin with a preposition and verb phrase.

A main phrase isn't part of another phrase while an embedded phrase is

part of another phrase. These types of phrases are represented in a tree

diagram.

In a clause we can distinguish the subject and the object. A subject is a

noun phrase, it precedes the verb phrase, agree with the verb phrase and

refer to the doer of an action. The adjunct is a phrase that isn't connected

with the verb but which describes incidental circumstances such as place,

time or manner of an action and it can occur in various positions in the

clause.

Chapter 8

English is often said to be an SVO language because these three elements

occur in that fixed order.

After certain verbs, especially the verb to be, a noun phrase is not an

object, it is called Predicative Complement and it can be an adjective

phrase.

If we take a clause with the structure SVO it is possible to turn this into a

passive clause: the object of the active clause becomes the subject of the

passive one; the subject of the active clause becomes the agent of the

passive one and the active verb phrase is replaced by the passive verb

phrase.

A clause can be classified into four types:

declarative: the clause acts as a statement, tell us something about

• the world of reality.

interrogative: the clause acts a question. They begin with one of the

• question words and they have an inversion, the auxiliary precedes the

subject. Wh-questions and yes-no questions.

imperative: the clause acts as a directive, a request, instruction or

• suggestion. They generally have no subject.

exclamatory: the clause acts as an expression of emotion. They

• begin with “what” or “how” but there isn't an inversion.

The auxiliary “do” is very important in English language. In a phrase if

there isn't an auxiliary and we want to form a question we use do. It is used

also to form negative phrase.

Embedded (or subordinate) clauses are part of main clauses and they are

adverbial clauses (are Adjuncts in the main clause), complement clauses

(complete the meaning of the main clause) or relative clauses (tell us more

about what the noun denotes).

Coordination is another way to elaborate sentence. The three most

common coordinating conjunctions are “and”, “or”, and “but”.

Non-finite clauses have no finite verb (infinitive, -ing form, -en form) and

generally have no subject. They tend to be shorter and are useful for

simplifying sentences.

Clauses are classified as:

simple sentences consisting of just one clause

• compound sentences consisting of two or more coordinated clauses

• complex sentences consisting of one main clause with one or more

• subordinate clauses inside it

compound-complex sentence consisting of coordinated and

• subordinate clauses.

Chapter 9

Text is a combination of different elements. It cannot usually be

understood fully without understanding its context. Two important

characteristics are cohesion and coherence.

Cohesion describes the way in which a text is tied together by linguistic

elements (that, for example, link sentences).

Coherence is based on semantic relationship. Coherence means that the

text is easy to read and understand because it follow a certain kind of

logical order and the organization of ideas is systematically an logical.

The term junction is used to refer to a set of words that relate propositions

to one another in a variety of ways.

The job of the word “and” is simply the addition of information.

“But” establish a contradiction between two statements.

“Meanwhile, while, during” imply a parallel event.

It's important to distinguish story (the chronological sequence of episodes)

and plot (the order in which the text presents them). Even when episodes

are mixed, text maintain its cohesion and coherence by markers that

indicate the time.

Chapter 10

Semantic study the linguistic meaning.

Reference is the relationship between linguistic elements and the non-

linguistic world of experience.

Third-person pronouns are used to refer to entities, situations or events that

be denote in the text and they are called anaphora or cataphora or

sometimes to entities, situations or events that are outside the text and they

are called exophoric.

Indefinite articles introduce a new referent while definite article mentions

a referent already introduced.

Sense is typically understood as the mental representation of a linguistic

expression. Unlike the reference, which is dependent on context of use,

sense is intended to capture the aspect of meaning which is invariant

across contexts.

Examples of sense relation are hyponymy, meronymy, synonymy and

oppositeness.

Hyponymy is the sense relation holding between, for example, “rose” and

“flower”, “scarlet” and “red”. X is a type/kind/sort of Y.

Meronymy is the part/whole relation, which holds between, for example,

“hand” and “finger”, “book” and “cover”.

Synonyms are two words that have similar meaning (father and dad).

Oppositeness is a word that is opposite in meaning to another. They are

complementaries (alive/dead) or antonyms (large/small, long/short).

A lexical item may have more than one sense. We speak of polysemy

when the senses of a lexical item are related to each other and of

homonymy when they are not.

Sentences consist of words and morphemes put together according to the

grammatical rules of a language. Their meaning is invariant across

contexts and who produce them, when and where.

People do not normally produce sentences, they produce utterances. A

sentence, written or said, becomes an utterance when it acquires a context,

a speaker, addressee, etc.

Chapter 11

Pragmatic is a component in a theory of language and it focuses on

language use in context, not languag