Riassunto esame Linguistica Inglese, prof. Camaiora, libro consigliato The Frameworks of english, Ballard

THE FRAMEWORKS OF ENGLISH

PART 1

INTRODUCTION

1. A FRAMEWORK is a structure which holds something together.

Knowing the frameworks of a language enables you to understand that language is structured and what rules operate to produce that structure.

We have four different aspects of language:

• LEXIS = the words of language
• GRAMMAR = the way words are combined into sentences
• DISCOURSE = the way sentences are combined into texts
• PHONOLOGY = the sounds and sound patterns of the language

Language can be SPOKEN or WRITTEN.

Speech is the primary mode of communication. This is because all humans learn to speak; it's an instinctive process.

By contrast, we have to make a conscious effort if we are to acquire the ability to write our language.

ENGLISH can take many different forms. There are many regional variations in the pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar of English.

Standard British English is the language of newspapers, of news broadcasting on television and radio, and the English which is used in public documents and in textbooks. SBE is a DIALECT.

THE FRAMEWORKS OF ENGLISH

PART I

INTRODUCTION

1) A FRAMEWORK is a structure which holds something together.

Knowing the frameworks of a language enables you to understand that language is structured and what rules operate to produce that structure.

We have four different aspects of language:

• LEXIS = the words of language
• GRAMMAR = the way words are combined into sentences
• DISCOURSE = the way sentences are combined into texts
• PHONOLOGY = the sound and sound patterns of the language

Language can be SPOKEN or WRITTEN.

Speech is the primary mode of communication. This is because all humans learn to speak: it's an instinctive process.

By contrast, we have to make a conscious effort if we are to acquire the ability to write our language.

ENGLISH can take many different forms. There are many regional variations in the pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar of English.

Standard British English is the language of newspapers, of news broadcasting on television and radio, and the English which is used in public documents and in textbooks. SBE is a DIALECT.

By dialect we mean the lexis or the grammar of a particular language variety.

PART II LEXICAL FRAMEWORKS

2) WORD CLASSES

In writing we normally leave a space between them. There are some problems with word identification or word definition which cannot be solved simply by stating that a word is a linguistic item which is written with a space on either side.

Words are typically minimal free-standing units which cannot be interrupted.

We use the term vocabulary to talk about words collectively.

In linguistics, a term which is often used in preference to vocabulary is lexis. Lexis is a collective term for words in general or for the vocabulary of a specific language.

When we examine language in relation to its lexis, we are examining it on a lexical level.

A lexical item is an alternative way of referring to a lexeme and a lexical set is a group of closely related words of the same word class.

You may also use the term lexicon which refers to the vocabulary of a language but is sometimes used to refer to a type of dictionary.

All words belong to a particular grammatical category. These categories are known as word classes.

There are 9 major word classes and 2 minor ones.

• Nouns
• Verbs
• Adjectives
• Adverbs
• Pronouns
• Determiners
• Auxiliaries
• Prepositions
• Conjunctions
• Interjections

These are little exclamations (ooh, wow) with which spoken language is peppered.

• Particles (to, not)

These categories are helpful because they group words together according to particular characteristics which they share and give us more precise labels to use when referring to certain words or lexemes.

One group of words which is treated in different ways by linguists is the group of numerals (ordinal numerals and cardinals numerals).

NOUNS

VERBS

ADJECTIVES

ADVERBS

are OPEN CLASS. They form an extremely large group and it’s the extent of the open classes which makes it virtually impossible to count the number of words in the language.

PRONOUNS

DETERMINER

AUXILIARY

PREPOSITIONS

CONJUNCTIONS

are CLOSED CLASS. They form a much smaller group and it’s possible to make a finite list of its members.

The words in the open classes are known as LEXICAL WORDS or CONTENT WORDS and those in the closed classes as GRAMMATICAL WORDS or FUNCTION WORDS.

The open classes are very extensive and contain hundreds