Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Filip Bacalu
I. General Issues
This course has the aim of presenting the students a review of specialized grammar (phonetics, morphology, syntax) as well as differences in the discursive style in English and Romanian, applied/applicable in literary translations. Thus, the students shall become familiar, both in a theoretical and practical framework, with recognizing the hypothetically problematic grammatical structures and their translation, with the observance of the stylistic, discursive, pragmatic, cognitive and mentality differences between the two languages/cultures under study. Such knowledge shall be very useful in successfully passing the final graduation exam as well as in better handling, in translation, of the transfer from one system of thought to the other. The course is structured in 12 lectures, as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. The relevance of linguistic layers for translation (1 lecture) The phono-morpho-syntactic level surface structure (1 lecture) Hierarchy of the grammatical problems (1 lecture) Typical features of the source/target language at the morphological level (1 lecture) Difficulties in translating the noun phrase (2 lectures) Verbal categories of mood, tense and aspect (2 lectures) The predication (2 lectures) Word order difficulties/differences (1 lecture) Contrastive Elements at the Level of the Sentence (1 lecture)
Agent the animate initiator, performer and controller of an action: work, laugh; eat smth., build smth. etc. Patient/ Theme the affected entity, be it a person or a thing undergoing the effect/impact of some action: die, fall; the object which is eaten, written etc. Experiencer the participant experiencing a psychological state or process (cognitive, affective etc.).: love, dislike, think, remember etc. Goal the location or entity in the direction of which something moves: (go )to London, ( give smth.) to smb. Benefactive/ Beneficiary the entity that benefits from the action or event denoted by the predicate: (buy a gift) for smb., (cook a dish) for smb. Source the location or entity from which something moves: (come) from the north Instrument the medium by which the action or event is carried out: (mix the sauce) with a spoon Locative / Location the specification of the place where the action / event takes place. Role structures are part of our mental linguistic Lexicon, they represent lexical conceptual structures (LCS).
II. Morphology
1. Collective Nouns. Distributive and Collective Plurals
Collective nouns such as class, audience, government can be defined as nouns designating a whole class of individuals. They consist of individualizable elements but their morphological form is singular.
The list of collective nouns below reflects the most significant socio-cultural groupings of society as found in the area of politics, trade and industry, religion, sports, etc (cf. tefnescu 1988, Baciu 2004): (a) Politics: assembly, air-force, cabinet, House of Commons, senate, government, party, opposition, Foreign Office, minority, majority, ministry, mass, council, congress, press, jury, committee, public, people, police, proletariat, army, troop, fleet, society, squadron, etc. Trade / Industry: firm, staff, board, sales division, department, management, union, club, team, etc Religion: congregation, clergy, parish, choir, ministry, etc. Education / Sports: class, crew, group, school, audience, etc Others: family, proportion, crowd, mob, company, aristocracy, gang, data, nobility, media, household, flock, herd, poultry, mess, swarm, pack, flight, livestock, money, etc.
To this list we can add the names of many organizations which also display the behavior of inherently collective nouns: the NATO, the BBC, the EU, etc. though these nouns are usually interpreted as singular terms, since they refer to one unique body.
Nouns that designate wild animals, wild fowl and fish have the unmarked (singular) form used for both singular and plural contexts. They are countable nouns and have count properties, except for the lack of plural marker on the noun, which is again explained in terms of the diachronic evolution of English. They co-occur with cardinals and plural anaphoric pronouns. In terms of verbal agreement, the verb is always in the plural: (6) a. Fresh-water fish are more valuable for the sport they provide than for the market
b. Are these duck or mergansers? c. Did you get many salmon after I left? d. Between four and five moose are annually eaten at the forts These nouns are also called collective singular nouns. Some of these nouns such as fish, trout, carp take the plural marker s when reference is made to varieties of fish. The use of the singular form of the noun is the general tendency but there are also exceptions to the rule: (7) a. You may kill a few antelope b. The true antelopes you saw are remarkable for the graceful symmetry of their bodies The collective use of the singular form of these nouns is found particularly with the shooting jargon. Compare: (8) to shoot duck vs, to raise ducks to shoot waterfowl vs, to keep fowls
Other countable nouns form their plural by Ablaut (or vowel change): foot feet; goose geese; tooth teeth; louse lice; mouse mice; man men; woman women. Again, Ablaut preservation in plural formation is explained on historical grounds. Compounds of man change to men as in fireman firemen, postman postmen. Similarly, compounds of woman form the plural by using women as in house-woman housewomen, charwoman charwomen. Anglicized foreign derivatives of man such as German, Norman or Roman form the plural according to the general rule by adding the suffix s: Germans, Romans. Other survivals from Old English are a few nouns that form the plural in en: child children, ox oxen, brother brethren. The plural forms brethren (confrai, from the singular brother) is nowadays used in religious contexts: (9) The persons least surprised at the Reverends deficiencies were his clerical brethren
Nouns such as cattle, livestock, poultry, people, folk, vermin are morphologically not marked for plural (but are understood as designating sets of individuals) and agree with the verb only in the plural. These nouns lack the singular plural contrast: (10) a. These cattle belong to John b. *This cattle belongs to John
Another peculiarity of these nouns is that they cannot occur with low numerals but only with high numerals (as in (8a,b)). Moreover, distinct lexical items must be used when individuation takes place (as in (8a)): (11) a. *four cattle vs. four cows b. two hundred cattle, poultry
Instead, the nouns folk and people can be used with low numerals: (12) These seven people/city folk
When the noun people means popor it displays regular singular plural forms: (13) a. The people of Romania b. The peoples of Europe
The newly formed terms in (14) are count terms since they have plural form, the verb agreement is in the plural, the quantifier is a count quantifier (14b) and the anaphoric pronoun is plural in form (14a). Proper names like Murfatlar, Bordeaux, Malaga, etc., represent lexicalizations of kinds of wine. Syntactically and semantically these names function as mass terms: (15) He drank too much Bordeaux; it went straight to his head
Another class of mass terms that can be recategorized into count terms contains mass terms, which through pluralization denote an act / an instance / an occasion of the mass term. The act / instance / occasion count terms have the quality of the mass term. Here are some examples: attention - attentions, confidence - confidences, regard - regards, curiosity -curiosities, novelty - novelties, tin - tins, paper - papers, rubber - rubbers, silk - silks, implication implications, mentality - mentalities, respect - respects: (16) a. He shouted in order to attract attention. They showed the old lady numerous attentions b. She showed much confidence in life. The two girls were exchanging many confidences b. He has lost all feeling in his leg. Are your feelings the same for me? As shown by the examples in (16) the recategorized plural nouns evince count properties as they take count quantifiers and the agreement with the verb is done in the plural. There is another class of mass nouns that have a corresponding plural form but this time the newly formed noun is also a mass term. What is peculiar of these newly formed mass nouns is that the sense of the singular mass term includes the sense of the mass plural term. Here are some examples: water - waters, snow snows, sand - sands, wit - wits, salt - salts.
These plural mass terms differ from their corresponding singular term in that they trigger plural agreement with the verb (due to the plural form of the noun), plural anaphoric pronouns but mass quantifiers: (17) a. Water is a liquid. The waters of the Nile are essential for the countrys agriculture. They make life possible. Much of them make life possible b. There is plenty of snow in the Alps. The snows round the Aiguilles are the least trodden
In what follows, the discussion of gender in English mainly concerns listing nouns that evince semantic gender. (The description draws on tefnescu 1988). In English, the distinctions between animate / inanimate and human / non-human cut across the classification of nouns according to gender.
sibling
Other nouns that denote human beings bearing gender information form the feminine member by adding specific suffixes: #ess, # (t)rix, #ina, #ette. Consider the list below: (20) prophet prophetess peer peeress poet poetess host hostess baron baroness lion lioness executor executrix czar czarina count countess shepherd shepherdess heir heiress prior prioress god goddess prince princess hero heroine suffragette / usherette
Nouns that denote animals are also organized in pairs: one member of the pair designates the male animal and the other the female animal. Several of these nouns have a third member that designates either member of the pair but is unmarked for gender (illustrated in the (21a) list below). Other nouns denoting animals use the male animal to designate either sex (illustrated in the (21b) list below). Other nouns use the female animal to designate either sex (as in the (21c) list below) while still other nouns make use of compound nouns with the pronouns she/he, the adjectives male/female or proper names to indicate sex (as in the (21d) list below): (21a) stallion bull ram boar stag mare cow ewe sow hind horse sheep pig/swine deer
cock (21b) dog ruff (21c) gander drake (21d) otter fox cat ass goat hare rabbit pheasant pigeon bear
hen bitch reeve goose duck dog-otter dog-fox tom-cat jack-ass billy-goat buck-hare/jack-hare buck-rabbit cock-pheasant cock-pigeon he-bear
fowl dog ruff goose duck bitch-otter bitch-fox/vixen tabby-cat jenny-ass nanny-goat doe-hare doe-rabbit hen-pheasant hen-pigeon she-bear
The present tense progressive plus future time adverbs is used when an element of human volition is involved and it has the flavor of a planned, arranged action that takes place in the future. The sentence in (24b) below is ill formed because no conscious, human agency is involved: (24) a. John is rising at 5 tomorrow b. *The sun is rising at 5 tomorrow
Present progressive sentences with future time adverbs also convey a sense of imminence that is absent from the use of the simple present tense with future time adverbs: (25) a. The Smiths are leaving tomorrow b. My aunt is coming to stay with us this Christmas
Palmer (1978) contrasts the use of the simple present tense form with the present progressive form with future time adverbs in the following terms. Consider first the sentences: (26) a. Im starting work tomorrow b. I start work tomorrow
The first sentence suggests that the speaker now expects or intends to start work he may perhaps, have been ill. The second indicates that tomorrow is the time fixed for him to start, e.g., by his firm or by the doctor.
It is evident that will/shall also refer to future predictions due to their modal nuance. As said above, the mixture of modal and temporal values of these modal verbs is due to the diachronic development of English: at the beginning will/shall had only modal values and in time they also developed a future reading when they occur with future time adverbs. Leech (1971) makes the following comments with respect to their usage: frequently a sentence with will/shall is incomplete without an adverbial of definite time: *It will rain / *The room will be cleaned. These sentences are relatively unacceptable on their own, presumably because of their factual emptiness: we all feel certain that it will rain at some time in the future, so there is no point in saying it will rain unless an actual time can be forecast.
Be Going To
Consider the following example: (29) Im going to call him
Be going to is a frozen form that cannot be analyzed into two separate verb forms: it is listed as such in the lexicon. Jespersen (1931) remarks that the structure is going to derives from the progressive form of the verb to go: going loses its meaning as a verb of movement and becomes an empty grammatical word. The same process occurred in French with the form je vais faire. In contemporary English, be going to is mainly used in colloquial speech. The basic meaning of be going to is that of future fulfillment of the present (Leech, 1971). Leech (1971) identifies two extensions of this general meaning of to be going to: ---the first one is the future fulfillment of the present intention that is found with human subjects who consciously exercise their will: (30) What are you going to do today? I am going to stay at home and watch television
On this reading the sentence I am going to watch television is felt as stronger than I intend to watch television. ---the second extension of the general sense of be going to can be stated as future fulfillment of present cause. This sense is common with both agentive and non-agentive verbs: (31) a. She is going to have another baby (i.e., she is already pregnant) b. I think Im going to faint (i.e., I already feel ill) c. Theres going to be a storm in a minute (i.e., I can see the black clouds gathering)
Notice that be going to can also be used when speaking about periods remote from ST: (32) a. Im going to be a policeman when I grow up b. If Winterbottoms calculations are correct, this planet is going to burn itself out 200,000,000 years from now
Palmer (1979:130) remarks that for future in the past, be going to is regularly used, while in literary style would is likely to occur (Leech, 1971): (34) a. I was going to say that it looked a bit like a pheasant in flight b. Twenty years later, Dick Whittington would be the richest man in London
To the above-mentioned expressions of futurity in English we can also add the following: to be about to (used to express imminent future situations; it is less colloquial than to be going to), to be ready to, to be near to, to be on the point of/on the verge of/on the brink of: (35) a. He was about to retrace his steps when he was suddenly transfixed to the spot by a sudden appearance b. His finger was upon the trigger and he was on the point of fire c. He has been on the brink of marrying her d. He was just on the point of proposing to her e. I was very nearly offering a large reward
III. Syntax
1. Simple intransitive predications
1. Syntactically Simple versus Syntactically Complex Intransitives Transitivity and intransitivity are properties determined by the presence or absence of a Direct Object in the frame of the verb. The Noun Phrase discharging this function is the obligatory sister of the transitive verb, being placed in Complement position. With intransitives there is no such sister. The V - NP government relation is altogether ruled out. Nevertheless, intransitive predications evince various degrees of semantic and/or syntactic complexity. Thus if the verb only requires the Subject to form a grammatical sentence it is considered to be syntactically simple. These verbs take a single argument which is assigned one role, Agent (36)-a or Patient (36)-b: (36) a. All the spectators are laughing. b. Accidents will happen. The theta-role assigned by each of the verbs that predicate the sentences above are, therefore: a) Agent (Ag) for the Subject of laugh and b) Patient (Pat)/ Theme (T) for the Subject of happen. These are cases of what traditional grammarians used to consider as Verbs of complete predication, intuiting correctly that the respective verbal predicators are self-sufficient. Although these verbs do not take Direct Objects they may be modified by Adjuncts, i.e. optional Adverbial Modifiers realized by Adverb Phrases or Prepositional Phrases, as shown by the following sentences predicated by syntactically simple intransitives, be they activity verbs or verbs denoting state or change of state, e.g.:
(37) a. The baby was crying bitterly. (Manner Adverbial) b. Lilacs blossom in spring. (Time Adverbial) c. The old king died in his bed. (Place Adverbial) The Adjunct may also be a free (optional) Prepositional Object or a Predicative Adjunct reduced from a Small Clause, e.g.; (38) a. He was walking with a stick. (Ag Subject, activity verb,Instrumental PO) b. She died young. (Pat Subject, resulting state verb, Predicative Adjunct/Complement to the Subject)
All the verbs that can take such prepositional completions should be kept distinct from verbs such as abound (in), consist (of), wonder (about) which never occur by themselves. They are considered to be phrasal verbs which take meaningless obligatory prepositions (governors of Ps) as proved by: (43) a. * The treatise consisted. vs. The treatise consisted of 5 sections. b. * I wondered. vs. I wondered about that alternative.
Derived unaccusatives are the intransitive members of verbs with a two-fold regime, which is often called ergative. Basically, ergatives are transitive verbs with a causative meaning which have also developed an intransitive (derived) counterpart expressing a resulting state: (49) a. The wind/ The janitor opened the door. (Cause or Agent as external argument, Patient as internal argument) b. The door opened. (Patient as Subject) The transitive configuration in (49)-a expresses an event in which causation is implied. The intransitive pattern in (49)-b renders a resulting state. The latter predicate is considered to belong to the subcategory of derived unaccusative. Because of the inter-relation between the meaning of causation and the meaning of resulting state, derived unaccusatives can co-occur with resultative phrases expressed by Adjectival Phrases or Prepositional Phrases: (50) a. The door banged shut.( AP functioning as Predicative Adjunct to the Subject) b. The radio broke to pieces. ( PP with the same function) Another test easily passed by unaccusatives is their possible occurrence in the past participle form with the function of Noun Modifiers. The test is also passed by transitive verbs: (51) a. I bought a newly appeared novel. (unaccusative) b. I bought a newly published novel (transitive) c.* The miners were hard worked fellows. (unergative) The past participle used as a Noun Modifier acquires an adjectival value; it can be modified, like any other adjective by an Adverb, as shown by the examples above. Other illustrations include: (52) vanished customs, fallen trees, rotten apples, sunken ship etc.
c. You must wash (yourself) before going to bed. This omission of the Object is considered to be, in Relational Grammar terms, a case of demotion. By this we mean that the respective NP ceases to bear a grammatical relation with the V and no longer takes part in syntactic processes. Notice as well that the activity verbs in our examples have shifted to the class of unergatives, as a result of the absence of their Direct Object from S-structure. Transitives can also shift to intransitives by the promotion of their Direct Objects. This metaphorical linguistic term refers to the movement of a Grammatical Function in a higher position in the relational hierarchy, mainly in the Subject position. This occurs in "activopassives"/ middles and in all passive constructions. The deep Object comes to acquire some of the Subject properties (position, case-marking, agreement). The two examples below illustrate NP movement to Subject position: (55) a. This play acts successfully. (DO Su, V is still active) b. This play has been acted successfully. (Passivization) The verb in the first example preserves its active form, no passive morphology being integrated. It enters the so-called middles, which are agentless verbs, requiring the movement of the Patient/Theme to Subject. The second sentence is a complete Passive. We shall not comment here on the differences of meaning between these quasi-similar configurations. The reverse process will be dealt with at the end of the chapter devoted to transitive predications.
VP Spec NP V
External Argument
Internal Argument
The fusion between the governing verb and its governee is proved by the ban on adverbial insertion in between the two constituents. Consider: (58) a. Kids eat chips daily/ everyday. b.*Kids eat daily/everyday chips. The Frequency Adverbial cannot be placed between the transitive verb and its Direct Object. The greatest majority of transitive verbs in English express human activities, events in which humans play an agentive part, being initiators and controllers of actions or processes which affect or effect (i.e. create) concrete entities ( physical objects, substances etc.).
Notice that verbs of the type "cause" may take a non-clausal or a clausal complement as Direct Object, e.g.: (63) a. The bird flue caused peoples deaths. b. The bird flue caused [people to die] The logical structure of causatives in terms of logical predicates and argument structure may be illustrated by the representation of the lexical causative kill: (64) KILL: [ CAUSE (x, [BECOME (y, [DEAD])])] This structure contains three predicates; CAUSE, BECOME and DEAD, and the elements x and y which represent the arguments of these predicates. We can identify two subevents: a) causation; b) becoming / inchoative. Besides there is a third predication indicating the resulting state (that of being DEAD). The lexical conceptual structure of causative, therefore, mainly contains a causative sub-event, hence a causative meaning and an inchoative one. While it is true that only transitive verb constructions may render causative meanings it is also true that not all causative verbs are inherently transitive. In what follows we shall tackle first the inherently transitive causatives, and afterwards the intransitive verbs that behave contextually like transitive causatives.
(67) a. It rained a November drizzle. b. It rained fire and brimstone. c. It rained blood/frogs/invitations. Incorporation of a causative meaning results in a personal use of these verbs (they take a [+human] Subject). The meaning is always figurative, as in: (68) He rained gifts upon his relatives. The verbs look, gaze, stare, glare, peep, peer, as well as other verbs expressing human features or attitudes: to smile, nod, laugh, breathe, sob, roar, all of which are basically intransitive appear as recategorized when they mean "express by V-ing". The attitude expressed appears as resultative direct object: (69) a. He said nothing but glanced a question. b. Mother nodded approval. c. The gentleman bowed his thanks. d. She was starting her surprise/discontent. e. He smiled appreciation/approval of the hostess' behaviour. The Resultative Object thus obtained is constrained stylistically. The use of Vi NPs thus functioning is almost set or frozen. The stylistic advantage is great concision of the surface configuration, in which two underlying predicates are reduced to one. (cf. Romanian: El mulumi nclinndu-se). Focusing is on the attitude expressed by a human gesture or other. Syntactically, this object is not a term, in the sense that it does not take part in further syntactic processes, mainly in Passivization. The object is totally dependent upon the verbal context, it cannot be fronted: (70) *Daggers were looked by his foe. In Romanian, besides two-verb constructions, speakers most frequently resort to V Manner Adverbial (expressed by an adverb proper or by a PP) - a rsufla uurat, a ofta cu cin etc. 7.2 Recategorization by Cognate Object Formation It is a special type of Resultative Object, which is a perfect lexical copy of the verb or a merely semantic one. The first type is traditionally labelled as object "uniform with the verb" (Poutsma) and includes basically intransitive verbs which recategorize as transitive by means of the copy-object. The peculiarity of the Object NP lies in its consisting of a head-N the nominal (ization) corresponding to the Verb and a Modifier expressed by an adjective which indicates the manner in which the action/process takes place: (71) to dream a wonderful dream, to live a miserable life, to laugh a merry laugh, to dance a slow dance, to frown an angry frown, to snow a heavy snow,
to sing a melancholy song, to sleep a quiet sleep, to smile an adorable smile etc. The simpler synonymous construction, predicated by the respective intransitive verb is of the form: Vi Manner Adverbial: (72) to live miserable, to laugh a merrily, to snow heavily, to sing sadly, to smile adorably, to sleep quietly, a.s.o.Janet smiled a bright smile. Janet smiled brightly. Vt Adj N V1 Adv Manner NP VP
The second subtype of Cognate Object is realized by two distinct lexical items (the object is not uniform with the verb: V N). The phonological difference between the verb and the noun may by negligible, the noun being inter-related derivationally with the verb lexeme, as in: (73) to die a death, to tell a tale, to speak a speech. The second possibility concerns combinations such as: (74) to run a race, to fight a battle, to dance a waltz a.s.o. Some of the Vs that may take a Cognate Object are, nevertheless transitive, e.g. to draw a drawing, to sing a song etc. Because of the fact that these DOs are regarded by speakers as redundant, DO Deletion often applies, yielding an intransitive surface string. 7.3.Recategorization by Annihilation of the Preposition Applieble on some prepositional Vs may also result in surface V NP sequences, thus causing the recategorization of the respective intransitives. In the following VPs the deletable Prep is indicated between brackets: (75) to jump (over) a fence, to pass (by) a building, to skip (over) some pages, to swim (across) a river, to talk (about) business, to turn (round) the corner.
The Prep taken by these basically intransitive Vs is meaningful, it indicating, in most cases, the direction of the motion rendered by the V (except combinations such as talk about smth.). 7.4. Dummy IT Direct Objects Dummy IT Direct Objects attached to basically intransitive V-s also bring about their recategorization. Idiomatic phrases such as the locatives: (76) to pub it, to inn it, the instrumentals: (77) to foot it, to bus it, to taxi it or the behavioural: (78) to lady it ,to lord it contain a V converted from the corresponding N and a pronominal NP which only evinces the position property of the DO. Hence, such IT Objects cannot be considered as genuine terms; they do not participate in syntactic processes like passivization, relativization etc. The combinations being frozen, they cannot, on the other hand, be left out by deletion. This type of IT Object, which also occurs in some idiomatic transitive Vconstructions (e.g. to get it hot/in the neck, to make it, to catch it a.s.o.) may be said to have a vague situational meaning. 7.5. Causative Transitives Derived from Intransitives They are derived from basically intransitive V-s also represent important recategorization instances. Constructions such as: (79) to fly smb., to float smth., to march smb. to stand smb. to walk smb. etc., take as DOs animate or inanimate NPs that commonly occurs as the argument expressed by the Subject of the corresponding Vs. The Subject of the newly formed pattern expressing causation is a Causer of the action or process rendered by the recategorized Vi: (80) a. He walked the horse up and down! b. They used to graze the sheep on the neighbouring meadow. c. He worked his men ruthlessly. d. You may sit down ten people with ease. Although the verbs walk, graze, work, sit are inherently intransitive they may be paraphrased by "cause smth. / smb. to Vi".