ENGLISH LANGUAGE1 (2020-2021- MARIA IVANA LORENZETTI)

WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

-A language is a system of communication.

-consists of a set of sounds and written symbols used by the people of a particular country or
region for communicating.

- It is any act of verbal communication (oral or written)

Jakobson identified six basic elements of communication, creating a sort of diagramme:

CONTEXT

SPEAKER

HEARER

CHANNEL (written oral)

SHARED CODE(english, italian, german)

The basic model: the code model

We have also another model of communication,which, because of its simplification, can be

only used in computer science. (Communication is represented only in an unique role)

There are

-SPEAKER

-LISTENER (and not adresser, it has a passive role)

The first person needs to communicate something,so there are impulses from the brain that through the sensory
and motor nerves are sent to the vocal muscles and sent through sound waves). The sound waves will reach the
ear of the addressee and in this moment the message that has been heard is sent to the brain of the second
person to be decoded . So there is a linguistic and an acoustic level turned into a phsicological level then
understanding and possible response in the second person.

Instead we must say that

● meaning makes great sense in a context of linguistic communication

(communication is about meaning, is a complex phenomena and not just a packet of
information moved from a position to another)
 ● the process begins with the speaker, who has something to communicate, i.e. the
message
● Since messages cannot be transmitted directly in their initiail form (or at least not
reliably), they must be converted into a signal.
● Meaning is encoded in sounds produced by speakers by means of articulatory
organs.
● every mode of communication has a channel, through which the signal travels
● sounds are then transmitted trought the air to the hearer, who perceives them
through auditory process
● once the signal has been received by the hearer, it has to be decoded, in the order
to retrieve the original massage

MEANING AND COMMUNICATION

This model represent an oversimplification, since

● communication is more complex phenomenon than sending a packet of information
to a receiver, who in turn unpacks the content at the other hand of the channel
● communication should be about meaning, but the communicated content seems
irrelevant in this model
● meaning is something equates to content, but there are degrees of divergence
between the intended meaning and the meanings generated by interpreters

Speech acts

The same sentence can

-be used to represent a thought as true,

-suggest that it is not,

-wonder whether it is true

-ask the hearer to make it true

Utterances do not only convey a thought, but express ‘’propositional attitudes’’: perform
speech acts

(They reveal the speaker’s attitude to the tought)

● The speaker and the hearer are left to play a functional and instrumental role for the
transmission of the massage, while they are in fact the “leading actors” of any
communicative situation
 ● decoding is considered something similar to encoding, allowing no rooms for the
hearer’s interpretative frames of reference
● communication is a bi-directional activity (not an unidirectional activity), which is also
deeply related to the social system in which we live

DIFFERENT LEVEL OF LINGUISTIC ORGANIZATION

Level of linguistic analysis are

-subsystems of the system of language

-fields of study

English subfields are:

PHONETICS→ it refers to the sounds of a language, as they are actually realized

1) how they are produced

2) their physical properties

3) how they are perceived

PHONOLOGY→ it refers to the sound system of a language

1) how sounds are organized and differentiated to from an integrated system capable of
expressing meanings

2) basic notions are phonemes, phone, allophone, minimal pairs, phonetic/phonemic

transcription etc

MORPHOLOGY→ (word-formation) it refers to

- the internal structure of words

-and the process where by complex words are constructed

2)sub-branches are inflection, derivation and compounding

3)basin condition are morphemes, affixes, endings, bases

GRAMMAR→ is the study of

- the classes of words,

-their functions

- their syntactical relations

SYNTAX→

- a sub part of grammar

-concerns with how the words of a language can be combined together to make larger
units

(, such as phrases, clauses and sentences.)

SEMANTICS-> The study of

- meaning;

- how words and sentences are related to the concepts/things they stand for

Describe situations

- the relationship between meanings

-the ways meanings of words are combined to give meanings to larger units (phrases,
clauses, sentences, discourse)

PRAGMATICS->studies

-the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction

-the effects of our choice on others

TEXT/DISCOURSE LINGUISTIC
it analyses the way sentences work in a sequence to produce coherent stretches of
language

ENGLISH TODAY

-is currently spoken by around ¼ of the world’s population

-its spread worldwide has been caused by the fact that it was spoken by ordinary people

(opposed to Latin- imposed at school as the langage of the elite)

-is the mother tongue of over 372 million ppl

-nevertheless the number of non-native speakers outnumbers the number of speaker

(which is an unique situation in the history of language)

Languages in the World

-There are currently 7.117 languages in the world

- Only 5 languages are spoken by more than half the world’s population: Chinese, Spanish,
English, Russian and Hindi

-Mandarin Chinese has the highest number of native speakers (around 917 million people),

-English is considered as the language of international communication

KACHRU’S THREE CIRCLE MODEL OF ENGLISH

-It groups English according to its uses around the world

-was developed by the Indian-American scholar Braj Kachru (1985)

-still remains one of the most influential

English is represented in 3 concentric circles :

-The inner Circle, where it is used as a first language

- The Outer Circle, where it is used as a second, or semi-official language

- The Expanding Circle, where it is learned as a foreign language

The Inner Circle (where is used as a 1st language)

· includes 3 geographical areas:

- USA,Canada, the Caribbean

-Great Britain and Ireland (in EU)

- Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (in the Southern Hemisphere)

· In these regions there are over 320.000.000 people speaking English as a first
language ( and two out of three live in North America)

Canada is a bilingual country,

Ireland has 2 official languages (Gaelic and English )
South Africa is a special case with 11 official languages.( English has always been a minority language
there,it is the language of higher education and of the Parliament)

· Inner circle nations

-are very often nations to which very large numbers of people migrated from the
U.K.
-They have greater ownership over the language
- between them, the UK is considered as the main source
as the main authority of the standard
English

The Case of American English

-78% of the 308 million Americans have English as their native language
-Speakers of American English outnumber all native speakers of English
(outside the USA by 2 to 1 and those of British English by 4 to 1)
- around 67 million people had a native language other than English in the USA
(there is not just American English in the USA)
(There are 30 Other Languages Spoken in the USA)

The Outer Circle

· includes countries where English

 - has been ‘institutionalized’
-functions as an official or a major language

· Its countries were former British colonies

- Kenya and Tanzania in Africa, India, Pakistan,
-Malaysia and Singapore in Asia and in many of these countries English is used as
an official language, and widely employed in education, administration and the media
-India is a striking example of the importance of English in the OC.
With one billion inhabitants and 200 languages, English has retained an important role and is still used in government
administration, law courts, education, media, armed forces, commerce and tourism. Being a former British colony,
literary works from widely known writers, such as Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy are also written in English . The
number of speakers of English in India oscillates between 40 million and 200 million 31

The Expanding Circle

· Includes large parts of the world where English is learned as a foreign language for
international contacts and communication

· Hundreds of millions of people who for different reasons came into contact with English
and have a good working knowledge

· They see Inner Circle nations as ‘authentic speakers of English, even if the English
spoken in the inner circle is not homogeneous .

Circles and norms

IC COUNTRIES OC COUNTRIES
are are EC
NORMPROVIDIN NORMDEVELOPIN COUNTRIES
G G are
NORM-DEPE
Norms of They adapt and NDENT
language are develop their own
developed there norms They rely on
and spread standards set
abroad by the native
speakers
Limitations with Kachru’s model

-is based on geography and history-> and not on the speakers’ use of English

-there are ‘’grey area’’ between circles

-doesn’t consider the presence of bilingual/multilingual speakers

-doesn’t consider the linguistic diversity between the countries of the same circle

-cannot define the speaker’s ability in language

-The term ‘’Inner circle’’ could imply a superiority towards the other countries

WORLD ENGLISHES
Aside from AmE and BrE, thanks to the
-increase of global communication
-the spread of English worldwide we have

more linguistic varieties hybrid forms of language

- Australian English ❑ -Japlish
- South African English -Spanglish
-Indian English

Spanglish: A Hybrid «Language»

● is an interlanguage intrinsic to the Hispanic community, esp. in the USA.
-The English speakers are not directly affected by it
-there is only an increasing number of loanwords

● is a blending (Spanish+English)
● refers to the type of language use which can be observed in many U.S. areas, where
large communities of Spanish speakers live (New York area; California, Florida, areas at the
border with Mexico)
● is characterized by 3 phenomena
- Code-switching= moving from one language to another in normal conversation
(it is very important to honor your abuelitas (grandparents)"

- Borrowing= the adaptation of an English word into a Spanish form

("Quiero parquear el coche“ to park->parquear)
-Direct translation = translation of an expression into Spanish using English syntax
("Te llamo para atrás" for "I’ll call you back")

Code-Switching and Code-Mixing in Spanglish

 ● Code-switch is produced, when beginning a new sentence, and usually a new topic
Yo no estoy de acuerdo con eso. But, anyhow, I think I will try again to get it.
● Code-mixture (or code alternating) means that within a single sentence, two
languages are mixed and may alternate.
¿Piensas que mañana we could go to the beach after returning from la casa de mi abuelita?

Lexico-Semantic Phenomena in Spanglish ◼

● Literal translations from English using the wrong meaning.

● Changing the Spanish preposition for the English preposition. ❑ esperar por mi
esposa (SG) ❑ esperar a mi esposa (S) ❑ to wait for my wife

GLOBAL COMMUNICATION

● In the centuries there have been languages that became prevalent

(i.e.Latin during the Roman Empire through military and economic influence, but vast parts of the world were not
reached by its linguistic influence )
●In order to overcome the problems of international communication there have
been attempts to create an artificial language.
Examples were: Esperanto, Interglossa, but they failed

What is a Global Language?

● is a language which develops a special status
- is consequently taken up by every country of the world either as an official
language or as a privileged means of communication (

What Makes a Global Language?

● The political and economic power of its speakers
And not
- the number of its speakers
-some purported ease of learning
-its grammar or structural properties

Why do we need a Global Language?

◼ Growth of international contacts
◼ Greater mobility of the people
◼ Electronic communication

What are the dangers of a Global Language?

◼ Disappearance of minority languages
◼ Creation of a linguistic elite
◼ Excessive uniformation and cultural homogeneization
◼ Loss of creative expressiveness in one’s language (cfr. the widespread adoption of
English words in Italian in politics, economy and tv)

Why English?
◼ 1. Expansion and influence of British colonial power in the 19th century, which covered a
considerable part of the earth’s land surface
◼ 2. The status of the USA as the leading economic, military and scientific power of the
20th century

Main Reasons
◼ International Relations ◼ The media ❑ The press
❑ Advertising ❑ Broadcasting ❑ Motion Pictures ❑ Music ❑ Travel
❑ Education

More Contributing Factors

◼ Increasing need for international communication as a result of modern technology, as
introduced by the massive use of telephone, radio, tv, jetliner transports and computer
◼ In countries, or groups of countries with more than one language, English is usually
adopted as the preferred lingua franca 13 14 ThePeculiar case of the European Union: A
Complex Linguistic Landscape
◼ 27 Countries and 450 million people from diverse ethnic, cultural and linguistic
backgrounds
◼ 24 Official languages and about 60 indigenous and nonindigenous languages are spoken
over the geographical area
◼ Multilingualism is one of the cornerstones of the EU (Art.22 Charter of Fundamental
Rights of the European Union 2001/C 364/01)

Multilingualism in the EU
◼ A social phenomenon and a bridge for mutual understanding
◼ Increased exchanges and mobility question the idea of a truly monolingual linguistic
community
◼ Linguistic communities are nested sets based on common ground (H.H. Clark 1996)
◼ But full multilingualism relies heavily on translation and interpretation: ❑ High financial
costs
❑ Errors and delay Speech Community and "multilingualism"
◼ The English language is a multiplicity of codes, specialized to varying degrees
◼ “There is no limit to the ways in which human beings can league themselves together for
self-identification, security, gain, amusement, worship or any other purposes that are held in
common; consequently there is no limit to the number and varieties of speech communities
that are to be found in society” (Bolinger 1975: 333)

Two Opposing Forces at Work

◼ Efforts to preserve and promote Europe’s cultural and linguistic diversity
◼ The drive to create a unified Europe where exchange of goods, services and money can
be conducted unproblematically

❑ RISE of ENGLISH
◼ English is increasingly gaining ground and is used as the main vehicular language ❑
Multiple role for EU citizens: Native, Foreign and International Language ❑
“Europeanization” of English in Europe
 ❑ Increased exposure to English and interactions with both native and non-native speakers
(Berns 1995)

◼ How big is the lexicon of English? ◼ How many words does it comprise? ◼ What counts as a word? ◼ Where does its
vastness come from? ◼ What are its historical sources? ◼ What are the instruments for the study of the lexicon?

The Study of the Lexicon

● The lexicon is studied by
-Lexicology:
studies the vocabulary and the history of the language
-investigates the lexicon of a language and its entries (lemma, not seen as isolated items)
find generalizations and regularities
- Lexicography:
the art and science of dictionary making
based on the assumption that the lexicon of a language is not homogeneous

● The E. vocabulary consist of

- a common area-> containing the vocabulary shared by all speakers
- a literary area-> contains scientific, foreign and archaic words
- a colloquial area-> contains dialet, vulgar, slang and technical terms
-
The Structure of the English Lexicon
◼ Standard: the kind of vocabulary and usage
-taught in schools
-used in serious writing, although it is by no means the only proper way to express a particular idea.

◼ Nonstandard: words and phrases notably absent from edited Standard English prose.
Ex: Ain’t; y’all

◼ Substandard: usages stigmatized by schoolteachers as hallmark of ignorance and

illiteracy.
Ex: hisn (in place of his); present simple in they be fighting; illogical constructions, such as between you and I, or me and her
went [..]

◼ Colloquialism: It takes in features of standard and nonstandard speech. Informal

character, easygoing naturalness.Ex. Mad as a hornet → shift in focus from codified to uncodified and from
formality to informality

◼ Dialect refers to cohesive, chiefly regional and socioeconomic varieties of a language.

Former dialectal words have made themselves at home at various levels of usage: fun, skirt, spook

◼ Cant: a private language of the underworld,

-the earliest form of nonstandard language to be known and condemned by critics.
It consisted mainly of made-up or altered words, often of Celtic or unknown origin.
Antilanguage or cryptolect
◼ Jargon: sociolect.
Technical terms peculiar to specific occupations and professions.
It is standard language that is unfamiliar beyond the limits of specific fields (linguists;
philosophers; aviators)

◼ Slang
-is nonstandard and typically informal, but all that is informal is not necessarily to be
considered slang. (vs. Standard, Nonstandard, Colloquial)
-makes use of existing words to derive new meanings and connotations
-differs from Jargon for its purpose. Technical language develops among specialists for the
purpose of cooperation.
Slang develops among associates for purpose of expressiveness and companionability

SIZE OF THE ENGLISH LEXICON

◼ E. has an impressively large lexicon
◼ Its vocabulary reflects the political, economic, cultural and social events in the histories of
its speakers
◼ Extensive contacts with other cultures have contributed to the creation of an enormous
word stock (magazzino di parole)
◼The lexicon is very difficult to measure because of constant fluctuations: no dictionary
could record archaism, neologism, colloquial and technical terms at the same time
◼ The vocabulary of a language isdefined as “the total resource of words available to the
users of a language”= all the words, actual and potential of a language
◼ The total vocabulary of English is immense/about half a million items)
◼ Vocabulary is also the range of words a speaker
knows ( passive vocabulary)
uses (active vocabulary)
◼ Counting the words used and known by an average speaker is very difficult since age,
gender, education, occupation, ethnic and geographic factors, personal history are variable.
(However, estimates count that an adult educated speaker uses betqen 10-60 thousand
words)

◼ The passive vocabulary is bigger than the active one (by about 25 %)

CORE AND PERIPHERY

◼ According to frequency, grammatical type, etymology, phonological and syllabic stucture

we can distinguish between:
CORE PERIPHERY
● is composed of the most frequent ● is composed of words of
words (= all the words shared by decreasing frequency and
adult speakers, and without which familiarity
sentence composition and basic
 communication would be ● words are more complex, in terms
unthinkable ) of origins and morphology
● includes indispensable words:
-lexemes fundamental in syntax
(articles, conjunctions, prepositions,
auxiliaries, pronouns..)
-open-class words (say,make, man,
go, do, time year..)
-frequent verbs (get, say, go know
think, want, mean)
● words are usually homogeneous
and morphologically simple
● words are mainly Germanic
etimologically
● Only four of them are loans
● Most of the words have old-english
origins

GENETIC CLASSIFICATION
● E. is a West-Germanic language of the Indo-European family
● 2 languages are genetically related when share
- the same cultural transmission
- the same common source language
(ex: proto-indo European for the Indo-European languages
proto-Germanic for the Germanic languages)

● The relationship between ancestor (mother languages) and offspring language is

represented as a family tree
( Modern English belongs to Proto-Germanic languages, and in partiular to the proto-West
Germanic (comes from Ingvaeonic->Anglo Frisian-> Old Eng-> Middle Eng)

GERMANIC LANGUAGES
We have some correspondences between English and German
Milk Flesh Water Bread Father -> Milch Fleisch Wasser Brot Vater

INDOEUROPEAN LANGUAGES (GREEK,LATIN AND ENGLISH)

● Grimm’s Law highlighted some correlations between German and other
Indo-European languages
ex: the shift of consonant phones:
- voiceless plosives into voiceless fricatives: *p, *t, *K > f, th, h (pater pater father)
-Voiced plosives into voiceless stops ( treis très three)
-All aspirated stops become fricatives( hekaton centum [k] hundred)

MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY
Languages have
GENETIC CLASSIFICATION -> according to their origins and properties
MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY CLASSIFICATION-> according to how they express
grammatical relationships
-distinguished in

ISOLATING (ANALYTIC) (ex. Chinese) SYNTHETIC

- one word one morpheme. ● Agglutinative (ex. turkish)
-Monosyllabic structures. -linear sequences of grammatical
- Words are characterised by their order in categories
a sentence - A word contains several
(not by affixes) morphemes

● Flectional: (Latin,German)
-affixes mark grammatical
properties.
-Free and bound morphemes (ex.
Latin, German)

Eng. is a MIXED TYPE:

-It has a reduced flectional system
-has become increasingly analytical, although words may contain many derivational affixes
◼ Isolating: The boy will ask the girl
◼ Inflecting: The coolest boys will be asking all the girls to the party.
◼ Agglutinating: anti-dis-establish-ment egalit-ar-ian-ism

WORD-ORDER TYPOLOGY
English is a Subject-Verb-Object language (SVO):
❑ Subjects are always required
❑ Prepositions before nouns ❑ Adjectives before nouns
❑ Auxiliaries before verbs

THE BEGINNING
◼ The first Indo-European language spoken in England was Celtic (around 1000BC)
◼ It was not a single linguisti group. It was divided into 2 branches
❑ Gaelic or Goidelic
❑ Cymric or Britannic
◼ The Celtic language influenced Old English hardly at all,(only few words of Old English
that came from Celtic survived into Modern English)

Celtic Influences
◼ Only few Celtic influences survive in the language in place names( ❑ Cardiff ❑ Dover (water)
Carlisle (from caer: fortified place) Glasgow London Eccles (church) Kent (unknown)) or in river names(
Avon Severn Thames )
◼ Celtic languages-> today are spoken by around 1 million people in the world
In the British Isles -> survive as modern Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic
The Roman Invasion
● In 43 AD Emperor Claudius ordered the invasion of Britain
- Romans spoke Latin
-Pushed the Celts to the margin, and the border was Hadrian’s wall
- They spread Christianity to Britain
-The first settlements were built by the army in places like Lancaster, Winchester,
Manchester, Leicester → all derived from the Latin word castra = camp
- They built roads, temples, baths and towns
The latin word for “paved road” was via strata, which we can recognize as an
ancestor of the word street, and of German straße as well as Italian strada

Early Latin Loans

- The Roman army and merchants gave new names to local objects and experiences
and introduced several fresh concepts and words in different fields:
◼Plants, animals, food and drink and household items ❑ pise (pea); plante (plant); win (wine); cyse (cheese);
catte (cat);

◼ Settlements ❑ Tigle (tile); weall (wall); strat (street); ceaster (city)

◼ Military and legal institutions ❑ Wic (camp); scrifan (decree)
◼ Religion ❑ Masse (mass); munuc (monk); mynster (minster)

Angles-Saxons and Jutes

◼ The Roman Empire is threatened by invading Germanic tribes.
◼ 410AD Emperor Honorius summons all Roman troops back to Rome
◼ With the Romans gone, a power vacuum emerges, which is soon filled by
Germanic tribes starting raids
◼ 410-450AD Angles and Saxons invade from Baltic shores of Germany, and Jutes
invade from Jutland peninsula in Denmark, thus driving out the Celts

What happened to the Celts?

❑ Most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders, mainly
into what are now Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
❑ One group migrated to the Brittany Coast of France where their descendants still
speak the Celtic language of Breton today.

THE BEGINNING OF ENGLISH

◼ What we know as English today begins with these Germanic invasions
◼ The word’’ English’’-> comes from Angles
◼ Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is
-an early form of German spoken by those Germanic tribes
◼ Four major dialects of Old English emerged:
- Northumbrian in the north of England,
-Mercian in the Midlands,
-West Saxon in the south and west
-, and Kentish in the Southeast
HISTORY OF ENGLISH
Is divided in periods:
- Old English (about 450-1066)
-Middle English (1066 – about 1500)
-Modern English (1500 – (onward)
- Early Modern English 1500-1700 ❑
-Modern English 1700-onward 20 19 20 Lecture 03

The Germanic Period

The Angles settled in Northumbria (North of the river Humber) and East Anglia
◼ The name England comes from-> Angles Land
◼ Anglo-Saxons were pagan, and worshipped gods
(Days of the Week Name:-Lunae Dies (day of the moon))

OLD ENGLISH
main features
● derived from the gradual fusion of the languages spoken by the Angles, Saxons and
Jutes with Scandinavian influences
● had 4 main dialects
● was a synthetic (with grammatical affixes) language that uses case endings and
other inflections to mark syntax
● Nouns, verbs, adjectives and determiners are heavily inflected
● Weak and strong declensions of nouns and verbs
● The vocabulary was predominantly Germanic (85% of it is no longer in use in
Modern English )
● Words form from compounds and affixes. Borrowings are not so widespread
● Gender was grammatical
● Flexible word order
● Particular spelling and sounds
● Runic alphabet before the adoption of Latin alphabet

(Word order)
● The verb appears before the subject/ at the end of the clause
● The relationship between words in a sentence was signalled by the use of
inflections (native, accusative, genitive,dative)

THE RUNES
● Runic alphabet (= futhark) -> writing system
-of uncertain origin
-used by Germanic people of northern Europe
- from about the 3rd century to the 16th or 17th century ad.

● Seems to be a more ancient system because of

-angular letter forms
- inscriptions written from right to left
● It is supposed to have been developed by the Goths, from the Etruscan alphabet
was perhaps also influenced by the Latin alphabet in the 1st or 2nd century BC
 ● In every Germanic language the word ‘’rune’’ means both “letter” and “mystery”

Anglo-Saxons Futharc (Alphabet)

● Old English was sometimes written with a version of the Runic alphabet
(brought to Britain by the Anglo-Saxons until about the 11th century )
● Runic inscriptions are mostly found on jewellery, weapons, stones and other objects. Very few examples
of Runic writing on manuscripts have survived

● Each rune
-is an ideographic or pictographic symbol
-has a name
-has a meaning
- is associated to a specific phoneme
The Lexicon of Old English:
Self-explaining Compounds
● Compound = word-formation process
● consists in joining two roots together
(ex. from Modern English: armchair; mailbox) (Banhus – bone house > Body )

Kennings
● is a term from Old Norse
● refers to vivid figurative descriptions often found in poetry
The meaning is not self-evident.
● describe things indirectly and allusively, often in compounds
● They have a picturesque and vivid character
Banhus Fiscesedel – fish home > Sea

The return of Latin during the Germanic Period

● Anglo-Saxons were tolerant towards Christianity and monasteries were built in this
period at Jarrow and Whitby
● In 596 Pope Gregory sent a group of missionaries to the former Roman Britannia
with instructions to convert Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. The kingdom of Kent
was swifty converted, and Augustine, the monk heading the expedition became the
first archbishop of Canterbury
● Latin becomes the language of elite and education and this led to a new wave of
Latin loans Evangelium > godspell (good news) > gospel I

The Viking Age (750-1050)

● In 793 AD Vikings started expeditions that plundered and ended in the conquest and
creation of settlements of Britain
● Eventually, Vikings got to control much of England, but retired mostly to the
north-east of the island after an agreement with the Anglo-Saxons (in an area called
‘Danelaw’)
● They were sea-faring explorers, traders and warriors.
● Their language was Old Norse( a parent language of modern Danish, Swedish and
Norwegian )
● They brought considerable linguistic innovations to the language
 Scandinavian Loans
● Sk-words Sky, skin, skill, skirt, scrape, scrub, whisk, kid
● G-words Get, give, gild, egg
● Place names ❑ -by (farm, town): Grimsby, Whitby, Rugby ❑ -thorpe
(village): Althorpe, Linthorpe,Gawthorpe ❑ -thwaite (isolated piece of land):
Applethwaite
● Names ending in –son: Stevenson, Johnson
● Pronouns: they, their, them
● The verb be
● Prepositions: to and fro

MIDDLE ENGLISH (1066-1500)

The Norman Conquest
● William the Conqueror(Duke of Normandy) invaded and conquered England
and the Anglo-Saxons in 1066 AD (Battle of Hastings)

● Before-> Latin only had a minor influence (thanks to Roman occupation and
the Conversion of Britain to Christianity in the 7th c.) Prior to this event Latin
Now -> there was a great influence of Romance (Anglo-Norman) words

The Normans
● The conquering Normans
- descended from Vikings who had settled in northern France about 200 years
before, but had completely replaced Old Norse with French
● spoke a rural dialect of French with considerable Germanic influences,
usually called Anglo-Norman or Norman French
● Anglo-Norman became the verbal language of the court, the administration
and culture
Latin retained its role especially as a written language and in the domain of
the church
●
What about English?
● Lower classes (95% of the population) continued to speak English,
considered by the Normans a low-class, vulgar tongue.
● The two languages
- developed in parallel
-gradually began to intermarry
What is Middle English then?

● is a mixture of Old English and Anglo-Norman

● The English managed to survive because too well established, also thanks to
its establishment in literature and oral tradition

French Words in Middle English

 ● Around 10.000 French lexemes from different domains are introduced into
the English lexicon in various semantic domains
● CROWN AND NOBILITY rown, castle, prince,sir
● ADMINISTRATION parliament, government, governor, city
● LAW court, judge, justice
● AUTHORITY authority, obedience, servant,
● FASHION Boots, button, coa
● FOOD, herb, spice, roast
● ARTS AND LITERATURE Art, chess, dance,r

● SKILLED PROFESSIONS painter merchant

● ANIMALS AS FOOD (eaten by the wealth population-> beef, pork,bacon..)

While
● Humble trades maintained their Anglo-Saxon names ->baker, miller,
shoemaker
● Animals in the field kept their Germanic names (Ang Sax took care of them)

The Development of a New Lexicon

● The introduction of so many words from Norman-French led to different
developments:
- The French word completely replaced the O.E. one
- French and O.E. could unite forming new words
( gentle (from Norman French) + man (from Old English) = gentleman)
- Both English and French words survived but with different senses ➢
House and mansion
-Often different words with roughly the same meaning survived
-A whole host of new, French-based synonyms entered the English
language
-Over time, synonyms acquired little differences in meaning
(often suggesting a more formal register than the Old English)

The Resurgence of English

● During the Norman period, English
- had become the third language in England
-had no official status or regulations
-was subjected to the rise of different dialects (suh variation were so strong that
people had difficulties to understand each other)
Over time,these dialects started to prevail

● London (Westminster in particular) became the Norman capital in the 12th century
-The dialects started to be judged as lacking of prestige and education

◼ When the French power declined-> English re-emerged in its main role
◼ During the Norman period, English had become “normanized”( but the Normans
increasingly anglicized themselves in turn too )
◼ During the Hundred years’ War with France (1336-1453), French was stigmatised as the
language of the enemy
◼ In 1362 English was made the official language in Parliament and soon after that it also
became the official language of education

Middle English: Grammar and Lexicon

◼ Remarkable changes compared to the O.E
◼ Declensions disappear
inflections are reduced
replaced by prepositions (the only surviving case is the genitive ‘s)
◼ Tendency SVO order (and no more flexible order)
◼ The plural of nouns marked by -(e)s ending
◼ The definitive article took the single unified form the
◼ Infinitives develop from the –an form to the to form (bringan > to bring)
◼ Introduction of French words

STANDARD MIDDLE ENGLISH

● Developed out of (sviulppato da ) the East Midland dialect because of
-Geographical reasons: halfway between North and South
- Cultural reasons: the variety used at Oxford and Cambridge University, founded in the 12° century
-Political reasons: London was the capital
-Literary reasons: the language of the Canterbury Tales

Chaucer and the Birth of English Literature

◼ Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is
-the most famous example of Middle English in literature
-the first masterpiece in English literature
◼ Chaucer (?1345-1400) was a learned man, a diplomat
- had been in service at court
- he must have known French, but decided to write in English
◼ wrote in a language which ranges from a rhetoric of high level to a simple domestic chat

◼ In the Prologue there are almost 500 different French loanwords

and a lot of words he uses are French in origin
◼ Howeverthis work contains overall a reformed English (a complete, flexible and confident
language, adequate to produce literature )
◼ contains many variations in word order-> dictated by the demand of prosody
◼ He introduced many new words (around 2000)
his poetical style is called the “poetry of the ear”

MODERN ENGLISH
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH
◼ 1476 Advent of printing (William Caxton)
◼ 1492 the Discovery of America: settlements, colonies
◼ By 1600 about 20.000 books were printed
◼ 1500-1650 the Renaissance brought
-the revival of learning
- the introduction of many classical Latin and Greek words to the language
◼ 1611 The King James Bible (authorised version)
◼ Intellectual support to English against Latin

English The Great Vowel Shift

◼ A radical change in the pronunciation of vowels during the 15th , 16th and 17th
centuries separating Middle English from Modern English
◼ Long vowel sounds began to be made higher and further forward in the mouth
◼ An important factor for this change may have been the large intake of French words that
require a different pronunciation
◼ The Shift causes connected changes: one vowel pushes another to change in order to
"keep its distance"
◼ In Chaucer’s English a word like lyf ( life in Modern English) was pronounced /li:f/, while five was /fi:f/, as opposed to modern
pronounciation /fv/
◼ The change
gave rise to the many oddities in English pronunciation
-obscures the relationships between many English words and their foreign counterparts.
The spellings of some words changed to reflect the change in pronunciation (e.g. stone from
stan, rope from rap, dark from derk, barn from bern, heart from herte, etc), but most did not.
In some cases, two separate forms with different meaning continued

William Caxton and the Advent of the Printing Press

◼ The final major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of the
printing press-> introduced in England by William Caxton in 1476
(after J. Gutenberg had originally invented it in Germany around 1450)
◼ Caxton
- printed Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Malory, translated bestsellers from France and Burgundy
-had to take important decisions regarding the spelling of words
◼ At that time->, there were 5 major dialect divisions within England
- Northern, West Midlands, East Midlands (a region which extended down to include
London), Southern and Kentish
- and even within these demarcations, there was a huge variety of different spellings
◼ The Chancery of Westminster from the 1430s
-set standard spellings for official documents
- contributed to the creation of a standard English
But the real responsible for the standardization process were
-the printing press
-the political commercial and cultural dominance of the ‘’East Midlands triangle’(Lond-Oxf-
Camb)

◼ Caxton and his successors modernized orthography: eliminated ʒ, þ, ð

◼ but did not revise the English spelling so much (had/hadd/hadde )

The Effect of the Printing Press

◼ Printing
- made books available at a relatively low price
-so the demand for books and literacy (especially among middle and lower classes)
increased
◼ The middle classes did not have a classical education - wanted books in English rather
than Latin or French
◼ To make Greek and Latin classics available to people who only knew English, they were
translated into English
◼ Translations led to the introduction of thousands of loanwords from Latin and Greek
into English

Elizabethan Age (Reinassance)

◼ The Renaissance (=the revival of classical scholarship)
- led to lexical innovations
-covers the 16th and 17th centuries and is also known as the Elizabethan Age
◼ Additions to the vocabulary in this period are
-deliberated borrowings
-and not the result of invasions of different people or nationalities as in earlier periods
◼ Latin was still the language of education and scholarship at this time
◼ A huge number of classical works were being translated into English during the 16th
Century
- new terms were introduced, where a satisfactory English equivalent did not exist

A New Wave of Borrowings

◼ Words from Latin (or Greek via Latin) were imported
-either intact (genius, species, militia
)-Or slightly altered in spelling (explain, meditate, adapt)
◼ Sometimes latin-based adjectives filled a lexical gap in the English lexicon,
-when a Germanic term did not exist (pedestrian for walk; marine for sea)
-when An adjective had acquired negative connotations (equine, or equestrian for horsey)

The Inkhorn Controversy

◼ The negative term inkhorn was coined to describe pedantic writers
- who extensively borrowed from the classics
- to create obscure and pompous terms,

The Role of Shakespeare (1564-1616)

● made a significant extent of the E. language in the late 16th and early 17th Century
● took advantage of the relative freedom and flexibility of English at the time, and
played with grammatical rules,
(an example is the ‘’verbification’’ of nouns-> dog them at the heels”) Shakespeare’s
Coinages
● had a vast vocabulary (34,000 words)
● personally coined
- an estimated 2,000 neologisms in his many works
- phrases still in use today r ❑ Love is blind - (The Merchant of Venice)

i Spelling and Grammar in Shakespeare’s Works

 ● Word order was becoming more fixed by Shakespeare’s time, but some words
were still used differently
● Be was still used as the auxiliary rather than the more modern have (e.g. I am come
rather than I have come)
● Do was sometimes used as an auxiliary verb and sometimes not (e.g. say you so?
or do you say so?)
● The verb ending “-en” and the 3rd person ‘’s’’ had been gradually replaced by “-eth”
(e.g. loveth, doth, hath),(e.g. loves and loveth, but not the old loven)

● Some word spellings differ from modern-day spellings

(transposition of "u" and "v" in loue and vnable,
final silent "e" in lesse, Childe and poore

● Thee, thou and thy versus you and your-ambiguities in usage

- In O.E. thou was singular and you was plural.
-in the 13th century, you began to be used as a polite form in the singular
(imitating French-> had 2 possible forms in the singular -> formal vous+more
colloquial tu)
-You was used from people of lower class to those above them
was the standard way of people from upper classes to talk to each other
- Thou/Thee was used from people of higher classes to those of lower rank,
by the lower classes to talk to each other,
as an expression of intimacy in poetic style to address God,
witches and supernatural being

The search for a language stability

◼ Between 1530 and the Restoration (1660)there was the fastest lexical growth in
the history of the language, thanks to
- words imported from the many cultures English was coming into contact with
- semantic changes (words acquiring new senses)
◼ The authors of a revised edition of The Book of Common Prayers (1662)
commented that most of the alterations to the 1552 version were made for "the
more proper expressing of some words or phrases, in terms more suitable to the
language of the present time"

◼Growth of lexicon-> caused uncertainty

scholars lamented-> lack of consistency in spelling or punctuation
others-> looked at neologisms and foreign words into the language with suspicion

◼ Literary figures,(Dryden, Addison, Defo) complained about

-the English idiom being corrupted by being too mixed up with French
-the use of contracted forms or abbreviations.
◼ Defoe
-complained about "the inundation of swearwords"
-hoped that the creation of an Academy would stop what he called "a frenzy of the tongue
and a vomit of the brain"
◼ Satirist Swift in 1712
- proposed a creation of an Academy->on the model of the Académie Française
 This project was not realised though
-wrote "our Language is extremely imperfect; that its daily Improvements are by no means in
proportion to its daily Corruptions; and the Pretenders to polish and refine it, have chiefly
multiplied Abuses and Absurdities; and, that in many Instances, it offends against every Part
of Grammar’’

The Cornerstones of English Lexicography

1) R. Cawdrey (1604): A Table alphabeticall -> explains “hard words”
2) S. Johnson (1755): Dictionary -> Citations from literature. Full vocabulary coverage.
3) N. Webster (1828): American Dictionary of the English Language
- A nationalistic adventure.
-Webster’s debt to Johnson.
- ❑ “consulting the opinions of some gentlemen in whose judgment I had trust” (seeking
agreement on definitions – convention)

The Age of Dictionaries and Grammars

1) “A Table Alphabeticall”,
-is the first english vocabulary
- was published by an English schoolteacher Robert Cawdrey in 1604
-contained 2,543 of what he called “hard words”= borrowed from Hebrew, Greek, Latin and
French
◼ was defined ‘’A Table Alphabeticall … of hard usuall English wordes, borrowed from the
Hebrew, Greeke, Latin, or French, etc. … gathered for the benefit and help of Ladies,
Gentlewomen, or any other unskillful persons
◼ The English language was “softened up” by the Norman invasion (1066). [Contrast
German]
◼ Norman French: the language of the law.
◼ Medieval Latin: the language of the Church and of scholarship.
◼ Early Modern English: the vernacular of the peasantry (but also Chaucer)
◼ Not much literary writing between Chaucer (died 1400) and Shakespeare (born 1564).
◼ Renaissance vocabulary: thousands of learned words (‘inkhorn terms’) were imported into
English from Latin.
◼ Establishment of Protestantism under Edward VI
◼ King Edward VI Grammar Schools; other traditional boys’ public schools (e.g. Eton).
◼ No education for the lowest classes and for women in particular.

Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary

◼ is the first recognized dictionary
was published in 1755
contained about 40.000 words
◼ Had a PRESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERISTIC:It was designed to confer stability to the
lexicon and codify what is right or wrong
◼ Literary style of definition writing
◼ Citations from literature, especially earlier poets (mainly Shakespeare, Milton, Pope,
Dryden etc.) ◼ Reliance on scientific and technical authority
◼ Very full coverage of the vocabulary
◼ Few concessions to make things easier for the reader, i.e. definitions were not always
easy to understand

Dr. Johnson's Method

"When I took the first survey of my undertaking, I found our speech copious without order,
and energetick without rules: wherever I turned my view, there was perplexity to be
disentangled, and confusion to be regulated [...] Having therefore no assistance but from
general grammar, I applied myself to the perusal of our writers; and noting whatever might
be of use to ascertain or illustrate any word or phrase, accumulated in time the materials of a
dictionary, which, by degrees, I reduced to method […]" (Preface, Johnson's Dictionary)

Dr Johnson's Definitions
-ATTENTION TO DIFFERENT SENSES
- LITERARY QUOTATIONS

Dr. Johnson and Language Change

◼ "When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to
prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that
has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption
and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation".
◼ He was aware that language is not a static entity

What is Standard Language?

◼ =variety of a language which is considered to be the norm
◼= A prestige variety spoken by a minority of those occupying positions of power in a
society
◼ =Yardstick against which other varieties of the language are measured
◼ It is usually employed as a model for educational purposes

Standard Language and Language Standards

◼ Language Standards=prescriptive language rules
determine the standard to which all members of a language community
-are exposed
-urge to conform during education
◼ Since languages are dynamic entities, these rules are anyway subject to change over
time
◼ During earlier and transitional stages, language change is regarded as error by promoters
of standard language ideology

◼ ‘[…] standard languages are the result of a direct and deliberate intervention by society’
(Hudson 1996: 32)
There are 4 stages in the process of intervention an a standard language:
1)Selection
2) Codification
3) Elaboration of function
4) Acceptance

Standard English
◼ =the dialect of educated people throughout the British Isles.
-normally used in writing, for teaching in schools and universities
- heard on radio and television.
◼ = variety of the English language
-normally employed in writing
-spoken by ‘educated’ speakers of the language.
-that students of English as a Foreign or Second Language (EFL/ESL) are taught

. The term Standard English refers to

- grammar and vocabulary (dialect)
- not to pronunciation (accent). (

Standard English:the Definition

◼ Since the 1980s, the notion of ‘standard’ was at the centre of public debate about the
English language
◼ We may define the Standard English of an Englishspeaking country as a minority variety
(identified by its vocabulary, grammar and orthography) which
- carries most prestige
- is most widely understood.

What Standard English is not

◼ It is not a language: it is only one variety of a given English
◼ It is not an accent: in Britain it is spoken by 12–15% of the population, of whom 9–12%
speak it with a regional accent
◼ It is not a style: it can be spoken in formal, neutral and informal styles, respectively
◼ It is not a register: (register is a matter of lexis in relation to subject matter-> ex. the
register of medicine), so there’s no connection between the 2 t
◼ It is not a set of prescriptive rules: it can tolerate certain features
while prescreptive grammarians do not (sine their rules are based on Latin)

Standard BrEnglish:
◼ A dialect
◼ It differs from other dialects, in that it has greater prestige
◼ It does not have an associated accent
◼ It does not form part of a geographical continuum
◼ It is a purely social dialect, i.e. adopted for social purposes English
◼ It has been associated
- with the accent that , has been called Received Pronunciation (RP),
- with the phrases used by the Queen, the King, Oxford English, and BBC English

Received Pronunciation (RP) in GB

◼ The predominant prestige accent in GB.
It is a class accent, rather than a geographical one,
but is mainly associated with Southern England
“The educated pronunciation of the metropolis, of the court, the pulpit and the bar” (Ellis 1889)

◼ It is spoken only by a declining portion of the population,

but it is an important point of reference-> for the comparison between different varieties of
pronunciation
◼ It is generally used- as reference accent in dictionaries
- in EFL teaching, because it is considered more pleasing, prestigious and articulate

◼ Codified by phonetician Daniel Jones and later by A.C. Gimson

● Can be distinguished into:

-Upper Crust RP: spoken by the aristocracy, dons of public school and colleges
-Mainstream RP: the most widespread, used by BBC speakers and taught to foreign
students (BBC English)
- Adopted RP: spoken by people who have adopted it for reasons of social prestige
- Near RP: an accent with no marked regional pronunciation (bourgeois, learned)

Rhotic/Non Rhotic
RHOTIC NON RHOTIC
◼ “r” is always pronounced in ◼ “r” is pronounced only in
- Initial position (red) -initial position (red)
-between vowels (very) - between vowels (very)
-before consonants (part) -linking ‘’r’’ (four and five)
-final position (four) -intrusive ‘’r’’ (law ( r) and order)

◼ It is never pronounced
- before consonants (part) ❑
-final position (four)

Main Features of RP
◼ R-dropping (car, work)
◼ A set of diphtongs
-ending in the central vowel schwa
-where rhotic accents have an r-sound following a simple vowel.
(pure, here, where)

◼ long back vowel ɑ:

-in RP-> is used in words like dance or glass
- General American uses æ.

◼ In words like bus, cup or run, the more open vowel ʌ in RP contrasts with the
closer vowel ʊin Northern English.
◼ The short o vowel in not, dog is pronounced ɒ, whereas in GA it is pronounced /a:/.
◼ In RP the long o vowel in note, so or both is pronounced as a diphtong beginning
with a schwa əʊ/, while in many other accents it is pronounced with rounded lips as
/o:/ or /o/.
An Example of RP: Queen Elisabeth II

COCKNEY ENGLISH
•The broadest form of London local accent
•Etymology of cockney: cock’s egg, weak townsman (Londoner) as opposed to tough
countryman
•It s a basilect(=socially connoted accent) ->, the accent associated with working
class Londoners, particularly from the East End
(Nevertheless nowadays man London areas are significantly influenced by other
linguistic communities and accents are not always so clear )
•In literature and movies it is the accent used by the characters in ‘’The Pickwick
Papers ‘’ and Oliver Twist by C. Dickens , and by Doolittle in Pigmalyon by Shaw and
the movie My Fair Lady

Features of cockney
•H-dropping : house is pronounced without aspiring the aitch
•Glottal stop (=) : a catch in the throat
-found in many other British varieties
-corresponds to a pause, a stop in the pronunciation of a word, pressing the vocal
chords tightly together and then realizing the air suddenly
-particularly when consonant (?) is found between vowels
(city=ci’y) (a drink of water= a dri’nk a wa’er) also in ‘’what’’ ‘’get’’

•Vowel and diphtong shift (compared to RP): Rp is more open.

•Some of the dipthongs are wider than in RP

(usually considered one of Cockney’s most distinctive features.)

•Th fronting/stopping: (dental symbols)(vedi slide)

•J (Yod)-dropping: a phenomenon also common in AmE, as in ‘’news’’
•Dark I (?)
The I tends to be vocalized at the end of syllables, and a vowel sounding like
•Yod Coalescence
•The usage of rhyming slangs: word plays where the intended word is replaced by a
phrase that rhymes with it
(Appleas and pears= stair, Bacon and eggs=legs)
ESTUARY ENGLISH (estuary-> spread around the are of London, where the
estuary of the Thames is)

•Since mid 90s dialect levelling, by which

-significant differences between local accents are reduced
- new features are adopted and taken over by speakers over a wider area.

Estuary English is a regional levelling process that received attention

•A new English due to take over as the new standard BRE to replace fuddy-duddy
old Received Pronunciation--????
•Some people see it as a ‘’bastardized’’ cockney
•This term
- was actually coined in 1984
- refers to a mixture of non-regional and local southEastern English
pronunciation and intonation
•It is in the middle of a continuum with RP at one end and Cockney on the other and
•is the result of greater mobility
•It is characterized by young speakers as having ‘’street credibility’’
-used to avoid the stigma of RP as posh

Features associated with estuary English

Is associated with standard grammar and usage, but it shares some features with it:
• L-vocalization/Dark I (milk->miwk)
• Use of glottal stop instead of ‘’t’’
• Happ-Y-tensing
• Yod coalescence

PHONETIC CHARACTERISTICS OF ESTUARY ENGLISH

◼ Unlike Cockney, it does not have:
❑ H-dropping: omission of the H so that in Cockney ‘hand on heart’ is
rendered as ‘and on ‘eart’
❑ Th-fronting: the use of labiodental fricatives (f,v) instead of dental
fricatives (t,d), so that I think is rendered as ‘I fink’

GENERAL AMERICAN (GA)/ STANDARD AMERICAN ENGLISH (SAE)

•Is a major accent of American English.
•The accent is not restricted to the USA
(main accent of AmE, but not associated to a particular area)
•Within the AE, GA and accent approximating it are contrasted with
- Southern American English ,
- several Northeastern accents,
- and other distinct regional accents
- social groups accents like African American Vernacular English
 Main features
•GA,like British received Pronunciation (Rp) and most standard language varieties
has never been the accent of an entire nation
•However it has become spoken in many American film,tv series, news.
•Although the majority of linguistic forms are common and shared between BrE and
AmE, there are still some major points of divergence
•The aspects of the language pervaded by variation are
-Pronunciation, in terms of accent, affixes and stress
- Spelling
- Grammar
- Vocabulary

AmE Pronunciation
•American English has fewer vowel distinction before intervocalic ‘’R’’ sounds.
This means that, in AE ‘’merry, marry and Mary’’ often sound the same, ‘’mirror’’
rhymes with nearer and ‘’furry’’ rhymes with ‘’hurry’’
• BrE has three open back vowels while American E has only two (or even
one):
-Most american English speakers use the same vowel for ‘’short O’’ as for ‘’broad A’’
(father and bother ofter rhyme)
• Other vowel pronunciation differences for /a/, in most words when the
grapheme A is followed by N+ another consonant, or S, F or TH- l ike plant, pass, laugh
British English= long A
American Eng= /ae/
• British English has a distinct length difference between short and long vowels
, th long vowels begin diphthongs
• American English often loses the distinction between unstressed (I) and (?)
• Experiences a yod-droping after alveolar consonants
◼ British English speakers always retain /j/ after /n/
-new in British English is pronounced /njuː/
while in American English, it is often pronounced as /nuː/
◼ Similarly the /j/ is retained or coalesced after /t/ and /d/
- due in British English is /dju:/
while in American English is /du:/
◼ The most noticeable difference is that AmE is a rhotic accent and pronounces the r
sound as a retroflex (the tongue curls and bunches somewhat upward and backward
in the mouth in every position)

Stress
◼ Adverbs ending in -arily, -erily or –orily
-American speakers shift the stress to the antepenultimate syllable i.e. militarily is
/ˌmɪl'trɪliː/,
while in BrE it is /'mɪlɪtrɪliː/
◼ Nouns ending in -ile: when words end in an unstressed -ile,
- British English speakers pronounce them with a full vowel: /aɪl/
-while American speakers pronounce them with either a reduced vowel /ɪl/ or a
syllabic /l/ ,
◼ Nouns ending in -ine
❑ When unstressed, this affix can be pronounced as /aɪn/ (like feline), /iːn/ (like
morphine), or /ɪn/ (like medicine).

Stress in Loanwords
▪ In the case of French loanwords,
American English has final syllable stress
British English has penultimate or antepenultimate stress
▪ British English first-syllable stress: BrE 'adult/ AmE a'dult, '
◼ There are also other words borrowed from French that feature stress differences
❑ American first-syllable; British last-syllable: BrE ad'dress/ AmE 'address;
◼ Most two syllable verbs that end in –ate have
first syllable stress in American English
second-syllable stress in British English (i.e. BrE/ AmE cas'trate/ 'castrate, lo'cate /
'locate)
◼ Derived adjectives with the ending -atory differ in both dialects;
for British English, the stress shifts to –at
American English will stress the same syllable as the corresponding –ate verb
❑ BrE/AmE regul'atory /'regulatory, celebr'atory 'celebratory, labor'atory/ 'laboratory)

NOAH WEBSTER AND STANDARD AMERICAN

◼ “A national language is a band of national union. Every engine should be employed to render the people of this
country national; to call their attachments home to their own country; and to inspire them with the pride of national
character”
◼ “It is not only important, but in a degree necessary, that the people of this country should have an American
Dictionary of the English Language for, although the body of the language is the same as in England, and. it is
desirable to perpetuate that sameness, yet some differences must exist” Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of
(1828)
the English Language
Spelling Reform
- He changed the –ce in words like defence, offence, and pretence to –se ( ex.
Defense)
❑ removed the second silent "l" in verbs, such as travel and cancel when forming the
past tense (ex. Traveled)
❑ dropped the "u" from words such as humour and colour (ex. color)
❑ dropped the "k" from words such as publick and musick, heritage of the Early
Modern English period and later abandoned in BrE too (ex. music; public)
•

PHONETICS
-is the study of the sounds of speech
-is concerned with physical properties of sounds

ARTICULATORY PHONETICS AUDITORY PHONETIC

-How we perceive them.
-How they are produced (how our brains form perceptual
representations of speech
sounds )
 ( how the different structures of the
vocal tract-> articulators) interact to
produce sounds

PHONOLOGY
● deals with the sounds systems of natural languages
-how sounds are organized and used in natural languages
-how individual sounds combine to form syllable and words
-how they are interpreted by native speakers
● In phonetic transcription we use the stant brackets (/ /)
DISTRIBUTION
SOUNDS DISTINTICTIV
SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY SUPRASEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY
has to do with the ● aspects of ‘’connected
PROD OF speech’’
INDIVIDUAL SOUNDS
● distribution and organization that
of the sounds system of a given - go beyond the production of
individual sounds
language
-affect the way sounds, syllables
(-which sounds are distinctive and words are uttered.
units in a language ● Prosodic features such as
-how they vary in different stress, pitch and intonation
environments,
- how they combine to form
syllables and words

Phone (belongs to phonetic)

-Each time a speech sound is produced it is different
- is the physical realisation of a speech sound -in phonetic transcription we use
square brackets [ ]

Phoneme
(important for both, differently from phone, it doesn’ t refer to a physical realisation, but to the inventory of the speech sound of
a particular language)
-is the smallest speech sound with distinctive value.
- It is an abstract phonological unit.

-It creates pairs of words called ‘’minimal pairs’’= 2 words that

-differ only in one phoneme
- have different meanings
(ex. sun and pun are differentiated by their initial phoneme )

-Phonemes are the sounds as they are stored in the mind of speakers

Allophone
 -each phoneme may have different actual realisations (outputs), depending on the
context in which it is produced.
( Consider the different articulations of /s/ in ‘’seen and ‘’soon’’. In the first the phoneme is produced with
spread lips , in the second is realised with rounded lips , to prepare for the following rounded vowel)

-This second rounded s is a variation, or allophone of the phoneme. It is indicated

with a special symbol called diacritic (/s’’/)

Phoneme and allophone

PHONEME ALLOPHONE
● 2 different phonemes lead to the ● 2 different allophones lead to the
production of production of
-2 different words - 2 different pronunciations
-with a different meaning - of the same phoneme

If one phoneme is swapped with another the meaning If one allophone is exchanged with another, the
of the word is changed (seen-been) word, while perhaps sounding a bit different, is
still comprehensible

IRREGULARITY IN SPELLING

-Phonetics is of particular importance for learners of English as a Second Language and its practical application
-English has a far larger repertory of phonemes than languages like standard italian.
-English is not a phonographic language (spelling generally does not give a clear
indication of pronunciation)

(ex-> Sound symbol correspondence in English

enough-through-thorough-thought-bough (the spelling does not give an explanation)

English is phonetically irregular

-Perfect regularity would suggest the equation 1 letter=1 phoneme
-However English has 26 letters and 40 phonemes, with multiple possible realisations
(allophones)
-Many sounds have different spellings
-Many spellings have different sounds

Source of phonetic irregularity (English is irregular because)

-not enough vowel letters for vowel sounds
-does not use additional symbols (like accents, umlauts..)
-its spelling reflects many archaic forms of pronunciation (reasons connected to the history)
-has always resisted spelling reforms and does not have academies setting standards
-spelling became fixed in the 17th with the invention of printing. Many of the printers were
Flemish and had a little knowledge of the language.
- has borrowed extensively from the other languages and
has a tendence to maintain original spelling, while changing the pronunciation

The international Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

● Is a special alphabet
-in which one symbol is always represented by the same sound
-created from a group of linguistics
-because of the lack of a fixed correspondence
.
● is a set of internationally agreed symbols for representing speech sounds.
Such representations are called phonetic transcriptions.
(ex. Phonetic transcriptions in dictionary entries)

The production of speech sounds

1) The muscles in the chest that we use for breathing produce the flow of air that is
needed for almost all speech sounds
2) Air flow
-up the trachea (windpipe)
-out of the body through the mouth or nose).
On its way, it has to pass through the larynx, containing the vocal folds.
3) The organs that control the production of speech are contained in the vocal tract,
beginning at the larynx and ending at the lips

The vocal folds

If the vocal folds are
WIDE APART TIGHTLY CLOSED TOUCHING/NEARLY
↓ ↓ TOUCHING
the glottis is open air cannot pass between ↓
them. they vibrate when subjected
.This is what happens to air pressure from the
-in normal breathing -In speech is called ‘’glottal lungs
-in the case of voiceless stop’’ - Vibration gives rise to
sounds. -we use the symbol ? voiced sounds.

Articulators
-The pharynx connects the larynx with the oral cavity
-The oral cavity is the most important component of the vocal tract
-because its size and shape can be varied by adjusting the relative position of the palate, the
tongue the lips and the teeth.

The oral tract

-are the air passages above the larynx
-The shape of the vocal tract is very important in the production of speech.
-Made up of
oral cavity (mouth and pharynx)
nasal cavity
the parts of the vocal tracts that are used to form sounds are called articulators.
-Upper and lower surface

The velum
-Velum (soft palate) a muscular flap at the back of the roof of the mouth
-When raised-> the air flows into the oral tract -> resulting in oral sounds.
-When the velum is lowered-> the air flow into both mouth and nose-> resulting in nasal
sounds (m,n )

Types of english sounds

They are classified according to
-nature of the air stream
-action of the vocal folds
-position of the soft palate
-disposition of the movable organs in the mouth

CONSONANTS VOWELS
-are continuant , no obstruction in the flow
-are produced with an obstruction in the of air
flow of air from the lungs. -they are all voiced sounds.

-They can either be voiceless or voiced

VOWELS-> PARAMETERS
1) TONGUE ELEVATION/OPENNESS OF THE MOUTH
(open, half-open,half-closed,closed)
-are 2 correlated features
-a close vowel-> is produced when thetongue is high (near to the hard palate) and
the mouth is close

2) SHAPE OF THE LIPS (spread, rounded, neutral)

3) POSITION OF THE TONGUE ELEVATION (front, entre, back of the mouth)

4) LENGTH OF VOCALIZATION (short and long vowels)

CARDINAL VOWELS
● a system of reference for all vowel sounds produced in every language, introduced
by English Phonetician Jones (not only for the English language)
● Cardinal vowels are language- and accent- independent:
-they represent vowel sounds that anyone can produce
- do not necessarily correspond exactly to the vowel sounds of any particular
language or accent.
 -are peripheral and occur on the edge of the vowel space, being maximally
front/back and high/low
● VERTICAL AXIS-> openness of the mouth, elevation of the tongue
HORIZONTAL ASSEX-> th part of the mouth in which the sound is produced

In the inner part the diagramme is absent. These are a specific kind of vowels that do not belong to any specific language, they
are put in an exaggerated position. They are peripheral and independent (there is nothing inside in the inner part)

ENGLISH SHORT AND LONG VOWELS

-6 short vowels
-5 long vowels
-1 central vowel

THE SHORT VOWEL

-The short RP vowel is pronounced with a part of the tongue nearer to the centre than to
front, raised just above the close-mid position
-the lips are loosely spread and the tongue is lax, with the side rims making a contact with
the upper molars
Some examples are

1) fifth, sit,with
2) 2) city, rythm, symbol
pretty, needed
3) ladies,cities
4) village, private
5) will hill milk film
6) Sunday, business, women, minute

THE VOWEL /e/

-The front of the tongue is raised between half-open and half-closed positions
-the lips are loosely spread and are slightly wider ,apart than for ?
-the tongue is a bit more tense than for ?, while the side rims make a little contact with the
upper molars

Examples are
bet, set, hell,
breath,dead, head
many Thames
well sell,else, health
say, said bbury Leicester, friend, ate, again

THE VOWEL /ae/

-The mouth is slightly more open than for /e/
-The front of the tongue is raised to a position just below the half-open position, with the
side rims making a slight contact with the upper molars
-The lips are neutrally open

Examples are
-hand,lamp,macho, marry
-alphabet,shall,balcony,scalp
-cab,cap,bad,bat,badge,batch

Compare /e/ and /ae/ (pet/pat) (said/sad)

THE VOWEL
-It is articulated with a considerable separation of the jaws and with the lips neutrally open
-The centre of the tongue is raised just above the fully open position
-There is no contact between the tongue and the upper molars
-It never occurs in final open syllables (syllables ending with a vowel)

Some examples are:

-cut,drug,dull,sun
-son,come,among,colour
-country,southern,couple
-blood,flood
-does
-dull,esult,pulse

Compare cat/cut

VOWEL
-It is articulated with wide open jaws and slight open lip-rounding.
The back of the tongue is in the fully open position
-No contact is made between the tongue and the upper molars
-It never occurs in final open syllables

Examples are
-dok,dog,holiday
-was ,wat,what,swan
-cough,trough,knowledge
-because,sausage, lauel
revolver,solve,involve
(Many spellings have changed and in some words after’’u,m,n,v, both options are acceptable)

THE VOWEL /
-It is pronounced with a part of the tongue nearer to the centre than to the back,just above
the close-mid position
-The tongue is laxly held
-No contact with the upper molars
-Lips are losely rounded

Some examples are

-butcher,cellular,cuschion,full,put
book,good,wood,wool
bosom,wolf,woman
could,should
full,pull,wool,wolf
THE LONG VOWEL
-The front of the tongue is raised to a height slightly below and behind the close front
position
-The lips are spread
-The tongue is tense,with the side rims making a firm contact with the upper molars

Examples are
-tree,cheese,anteen
-complete,be,these
-leaf,reason,sea
-piece,field,siege
-key-receive
-prestige,police,machin
-feel,meal,field
-Variation between ? and ? (finally,happy,people)

THE LONG VOWEL

-it is articulated with the centre of the tongue raised between half-open and half-closed
position
-no firm contact between the tongue and upper molars
-the lips are neutrally spread

Examples are
-perfect, her ,serve
-turn, churh,nurse,cursor
-sir,bird,first,girl
-word,world,work,worse
-earth ,heard
-journey,courtesy,scourge
-curl,world,girls

THE LONG VOWEL

-is articulated with a considerable separation of jaws
The lips are neutrally open
A part of the tongue is between the centre and back of the mouth in fully open position
No contact between the rims of th tongue and upper molars

examples are

-bach,pass,bath,tomato
-part,car,march
-heart
-calm,palm,half
-unt-lugh
-In French words ending in ‘’oir’’ is ealized in English like ‘’memoire’’

THE LONG VOWEL

-is a relatively long vowel articulated with medium lip rounding
-the back of the tongue is raised between the half-open and half-close position
-No contact is made between the tongue and the upper molars
Examples are
-war,cord,horse,sord
-before,more
-court,four
-oar,board
-fault,ause,daughter
-talk,water
-saw,lawn,yawn
-bought,ought
-dark,false

U
THE LONG VOWEL
-RP is a close back vowel,but the tongue raising is somehow centralized from true back
-lips are loosely rounded
-no contact is made between the tongue and the upper molars
Some examples are
-June, Susan, rucial
-food,moon,spoon
-do,who,move,lose
-group,soup,wound
chew flw,askew
-blue,juice,shoe

THE CENTRAL VOWEL SCHWA

-is a very frequent sound In English in unaccented (weak) syllables (non strssed part of the
word)
-its quality is that of a central vowel, with neutral lip position
-The tongue is between open-mid and close-mid position
As in ‘ahead,confess’
Examples:
-possible
-gentlemen,postmen
-oblige
suppose
particular, mother,doctor
-famous,colour,figure
-is normal in weak forms of function words (gramatically important words that have variants when pronounced
quickly , such as ‘’as’’ ‘’the’’ ‘’to’’ ‘’for’’ ‘’but’’ ‘’and’’

DIPHTHONGS
-consist of sequences of vowels pronounced together in the same syllable (that is why
they are also called glides)
-The first part of a diphthong is usually much longer and stronger than the second part
(ex. inlatin diphthong, as in the word eye, most of the diphthong consist of an /a/, while only
in the last quarter of the diphthong does the /?/ become noticeable.

ENGLISH DIPHTONGS
-E. has 8 diphthongs. Technically they can be divided in 2 groups:
 CLOUSING DIPHTHONGS CENTRAL DIPHTHONGS
-tend to move from an open to a close -tend towards a central position
position
◼ // as in material, brilliant, year, career, period
◼ // as in care, square, bear, pear, despair, prayer
◼ // as in late, raid, ape, blame, case, maid ◼ // as in poor, tour, endure, cruel, actual, armour
◼ /a/ as in time, write, bite, cry, light, sight
◼ // as in boil, point, voice, boy, voyage, toy
◼ // as in home,open, road, soap, shoulder,know
◼ /a/ as in house, sound, ground, allow, crowd,
powder

TIPS TO RECOGNIZE DIPHTHONGS

◼ The realisation of long and short vowels depends on their context, this is called Clipping
◼ long vowels and diphthongs tend to be shortened before voiceless consonants
ex. . /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/ etc.

◼ Mispronunciation of vowels can lead to misinterpretation

(especially in the case of minimal pairs -> where substituting one vowel sound for another
leads to semantic changes)
◼ This can be due to the irregular orthography of English or interference from L1.
(Mispronunciation examples:
-sheep vs. ship. Italian speakers often use one vowel sound, the Italian /i/ for both. In the case of
sheep the vowel length is too short, in that of ship the quality does not exclude ambiguity
- /{/ and /V/, e.g. ban and bun – here the problem is one of vowel quality
- /@U/ and /O:/, e.g. coat and court – the Italian /o/ is often used for both
- Italian speakers often produce a very short /u:/.
This is not very important as there are very few minimal pairs /u:/ v. /U/

THE CONSONANTS OF ENGLISH

They are classified according to
-manner of articulation
-place of articulation
-vibration of the vocal folds

MANNER OF ARTICULATION
● It refers to the kind of constriction or movement that takes place at any point of
the vocal tract.
● On the basis of this parameter, consonants can be distinguished in
-plosives
-fricatives
-affricatives
-nasals
-laterals
-approximants

PLACE OF ARTICULATION
Is the part of the vocal tract where the closure( the point of closest constriction,necessary
for the consonant sound production) is made
VIBRATION OF THE VOCAL FOLDS
The vocal folds have different positions. It distinguishes between:
-Voiceless sounds ->when the vocal folds are apart, the air can pass quite freely into the
vocal tract without producing any vibration
-Voiced sounds-> When the vocal fold come together to close the space between them, the
airstream from the lungs forces them to open. Being elastic, they bounce back to their
original position repeatedly producing a vibration

Positions of the Vocal Folds: Recap

There are 4 cases:

1.) 2. 3. 4. Vocal folds

- Vocal folds are - Narrow glottis. - Vocal folds are tightly closed. The
wide apart - It the air passes vibrating vocal folds can be
- the glottis is open through the glottis ↓ firmly pressed
↓ when it is narrowed together, so that air
normal breathing ↓ production of cannot pass
or production of voiced sounds between them.
voiceless sounds fricative sound like ↓
h, not very different glottal stop or glottal
from a whispered plosive, for which
vowel we use the symbol

Plosives
● 1 or 2 articulators move against each other->
- so that there is a complete complete closure at some point of the vocal tract
-behind which air pressure builds up and is released explosively
◼ Their articulation is in 3 phases: a closure phase, a hold phase and a release phase

Plosives-Examples
◼ //, //, //, //, //, //
◼ Initial position ❑ Pet // ; bet // ❑ To // ; do // ❑ Cut // ; gut //
◼ Medial position ❑ Roped // ; robbed // ❑ Written // ; ridden // ❑ Lacked // ; lagged //
◼ Final position ❑ Lap // ; lab // ❑ Heart // ; hard // ❑ Back // ; bag //

Fricatives
▪ They are produced with a very narrow opening between the active and passive
articulators.
The air is forced through a narrow gap, causing friction.

Fricatives-Examples
◼ //, //, //, //, /s/, //,
◼ Initial position ❑ Fail // ; veil // ❑ Thumb // ; this // ❑ Seal // ; zeal //
◼ Medial position ❑ Offer // ; cover // ❑ Earthy // ; worthy // ❑ Assess // ; possess //
◼ Final position ❑ Safe //; save // ❑ Bath // ; bathe // ❑ Price // ; prize //
◼ //, //, /h/
◼ Initial position ❑ Sheep // ; sugar // gigolo (in French words) // or /g/; genre // ❑ Head //
hate //
◼ Medial position ❑ Mention // ; leisure // ❑ Behave //; perhaps /h/ *
◼ Final position ❑ Rush // ; garage //
◼ /h/ is not pronounced initially in hour, honest, honour, heir/ess, medially in exhaust,
exhilarate, exhibit, vehicle and in some final suffixes, such as Durham, Clapham, shepherd

Affricates
◼ First a complete obstruction, then a narrowing of the mouth passage. They begin with a
plosive and end with a fricative
◼//, //

Affricatives examples
◼ //, // ◼ Initial position ❑ Choose // ; Jews // ❑ Choke // ; joke //
◼ Medial position ❑ Nature // ; region // ❑ Catches // ; urgent //
◼ Final position ❑ Perch // ; purge // ❑ Lunch // ; large //

Nasals
◼ Complete obstruction of the mouth passage, while the air can pass out through the nose.
◼ //, //, //
Nasals-Examples
◼ //, //, //
◼ Initial position (// never occurs in initial position) ❑ Meal // ❑ Neat //
◼ Medial position ❑ Demon // ❑ Dinner // ❑ Singer //
◼ Final position ❑ Harm // ❑ Pen // ❑ Wrong //

Lateral Approximants and Approximants

◼ Partial clousure at some point in the mouth, air stream allowed to escape on one or both
sides of contact.
◼ Articulators approach each other without anyway causing a strong constriction in the vocal
tract

Approximants
◼ Three subclasses:
LATERAL (LIQUID)
The tip of the tongue
touches the alveolar ridge,
so that
- the air cannot escape
centrally
-but can still flow around the
sides of the tongue
CENTRAL
- If you let loose the tip of
your togue and close off the
sides of your mouth, you
end up producing aN
GLIDES
(SEMICONSONANT/SEMIV
OELS)
-Phonologically they behave
like consonants
- but their articulation is
similar to that of vowels.
For this reason they’re also
called semivowels
Lateral Examples ◼
◼ Initial position-clear l ❑ Leave //
◼ Medial position ❑ Yellow //
◼ Final position-intervocalic context ❑ feel it //
◼ Final position-dark ❑ After vowel Feel //
❑ After vowel before consonant -> Milk //
❑ Syllabic -> Quarrel //

Approximants-Examples
◼ //, /w/, // -> Initial position ❑ Road // ❑ Wood // ❑ Yield //
Medial position ❑ Mirror // ❑ Awake // ❑ Refuse //
Final position ❑ Linking r ◼ far away // ◼ fear of the dark /

Place of Articulation
◼ Bilabial: lower lip, upper lip ❑ //, //, //
◼ Labiodental: lower lip, upper teeth ❑ //, //
◼ Dental: tongue tip, upper teeth ❑ //, //

Bilabials-Examples
◼ plosives(//, //) ❑ Pain // beer // ❑ Upper //; label // ❑ Happen // ❑ ribbon // ❑ Cap // ; cab
◼ nasal(//) ❑ move // ❑ summer //
Labiodentals-Examples
◼ Fricatives //, // ❑ Feet // ; ❑ vein // ❑ Affair // ; ❑ cover // ❑ Triumph /r/ ; ❑ give //
Dentals-Examples
◼ Fricatives //, // ❑ Thief // ; ❑ there // ❑ Method // , ❑ father // ❑ breath (n.) /r/ ❑ breathe
(v.) //
◼ Alveolar: tongue tip or blade, alveolar ridge ❑ //, //, //, //, //, //
◼ Post-alveolar (palato alveolar): tongue tip, rear of alveolar ridge, hard palate ❑ //, //, //, //,
/Alveolar-Example
◼ Fricatives //, // ❑ Tone // ; dog // ❑ Butter // ; leader // ❑ Boat // ; mad //
◼ Nasal // ❑ Knot //, sneeze //; dinner //; learn //
◼ Lateral // ❑ Leave //, glad // ❑ island //
◼ Fricatives /s/, // ❑ Cease // ; zoo // ❑ Pieces // ; easy // ❑ Loose // ; lose //

Post-alveolar-Examples
◼ Approximant // ❑ Raw // ❑ Arrive // ❑ Price // ❑ here and there //
Post-alveolars-Examples
◼ Fricatives //, // ❑ Shop //; genre // ❑ Mission //; pleasure // ❑ Wash //; prestige //
◼ Affricates //, // ❑ Cheese // ; gin // ❑ Feature // ; fragile // ❑ Mischief // ; danger // ❑
Porch // ; edge //
PLACE OF ARTICULATION
◼ Palatal: front of body of tongue, hard palate ❑ //
◼ Velar: back of tongue, soft of palate ❑ //, //, //
◼ Labial-velar: back of tongue, soft palate; lips rounded ❑ //
◼ Glottal: glottis (vocal folds) ❑ //, //

Palatal examples
◼ Approximant // ❑ Yawn // ❑ Pure // ❑ Enthusiasm // ❑ Duty //
◼ Plosives //, // ❑ Chemist // /ghost // ❑ Decree // /degree // ❑ Acknowledge // /ignore //
❑ Peak // /pig //
◼ Nasal // ❑ Anger // , longing // ❑ Rank //, chunk //

Velar-Examples
◼ Plosives //, // ❑ Chemist // /ghost // ❑ Decree // /degree // ❑ Acknowledge // /ignore // ❑
Peak // /pig //
◼ Nasal // ❑ Anger // , longing // ❑ Rank //, chunk //

Labial-velar-Examples
◼ Approximant /w/ ❑ One // , wave // ❑ Twelve // ❑ Square // ❑ Away //

Glottal-Examples
◼ Plosive //, Fricative // ❑ that table /t/ ❑ get down // ❑ Football // ❑ Scotland // ❑
back-garden // ❑ ham // horse // honest // ❑ ahead // perhaps /p/ exhaust // ❑ I hate him / /
(Cockney speech) /

BUILDING BLOCK STRUCTURE

1) Phonemes (which build syllables)
2) Syllables (which build words)
3) Words (which build phrases)
4) Phrases (which build sentences)
5) Sentences

SYLLABLES
=phonemes that have no meaning
-their function-> is that to combine together
to form high-level meaningful units (ex. word)

=an intermediate level of phonological organization between phonemes and words

-segment the streams of speech

-give it a rhythm of strong and weak beats
- make speech processing easier the brain

-(Like phonemes) are in principle meaningless

do not have any meaning-signalling function in language
but sometimes they coincide with meaningful units ( as in ‘’the’’, ‘’hot’,
‘’un-do’’ ‘’hard-ship’’)

-are usually described in terms of prominence.

(Counting the syllables of a word is almost always the same as counting the number of
vowels.-> because vowels are the most prominent sound in the speech)
(As in car-> 1 syllable, thunder-> 2 syllables, banana->3)

-an obligatory element in the syllable-> is a vowel/other element that has an high
degree of sonority

SYLLABIC STRUCTURE
1)One syllable words -> have no consonants, consisting of only one vowel or diphthong
(are, or, owe)
2) Syllables can have an ONSET (one/more consonants before the vowel ,as in’’far’’
‘’star’’)
3) They can also have a CODA (one or more consonants after the vowel, as in ‘’art’’
‘’ask’’
4) Some syllables can have BOTH onset and coda (‘’farm; mask’’)

Basic Syllabic Structure

◼ The basic internal structure of a syllable can be indicated as made of 3 parts:
- a centre
-two peripheral parts-> before (ONSET)
after the centre (CODA)
(C) – V – ©

◼ Phonetically the centre (or nucleus) is described as having little or no obstruction in the
airflow and sounds comparatively louder than peripheries

TYPES OF SYLLABLES

(c)VC CV(C) CVC

ZERO ONSET ZERO CODA
Consonant can occur in
No consonant occurs in the No consonant occurs after both onset and coda
onset the nucleus (strain; packed; strand)
(The syllable begins with a
vowel) (Toe; tea; so)
(art; on: all; ill )
Any consonant phoneme
may occur in the onset
except ? ? is rare
(so; go; car; tree)

Another classification:

CLOSED SYLLABLES OPEN SYLLABLES

 (CVC , VC) (CV, V)

syllables ending with a consonant syllables ending with a vowel

-Syllables can have multiple consonants in the onset or in the coda :

up to 3 consonant in the onset-> strong
up to 4 consonant in the coda-> texts

CCC-V-CCCC
Those groups of consonants in a syllable are called CONSONANT CLUSTERS

CONSONANT CLUSTERS (DA RIVEDERE)

Two types of clusters:

INITIAL
/s/ followed by a small set of consonants (p;
t;k;f;m;n )
/s/-> is called ‘’pre initial consonant’’
other consonants-> ‘’initial)

s + ptkfmn
pre initial initial

(smoke, school, sphere)

STRESS AND RYTHM

- In every word of two or more syllables, one syllable is stressed.
-Stress, rhythm and intonation are all concerned with the perception of relative
prominence:
1) stress-> when prominence affects one part of a word, or longer utterance
2) rhythm-> when we consider patterns formed by the stresses perceived as peaks of
prominence (or beats)

- English is usually classified as having stress-timed rhythm (=equal intervals between

each stressed syllable)

STRESS IN WORDS
-In every word of 2/ more syllables->one syllable is stressed
(the stressed syllable is the one that will be accented if the word is pronounced on its own)

-Stress is shown by the stress mark= a raised vertical mark in front of the whole stressed
syllable (primary stress)
(as in ‘’pillow’’ and ‘’below’-> ? ? )

STRONG SYLLABLES AND WEAK SYLLABLES

 STRONG SYLLABLES WEAK SYLLABLES
have as a peak have as a peak

-one of the vowel phonemes -a close front vowel

- a close back vowel
- a diphthong -a syllabic consonant

Vowels tend to be
-shorter
-of lower intensity
-of different quality

WEAK FORMS
(in the phonetics)= a series of words, which have
-a strong pronunciation-> when isolated
a weak pronunciation-> when not stressed in a phrase

(ex. a car =/ I bought a car)

-are words pronounced in an unstressed manner.

(Many words in English can be pronounced in a strong or a weak form.)
- are usually distinguished by a change in vowel quality from a border position to a more
central one

(=i the vowel in a weak form is usually the schwa /ə/. They are pronounced more quickly and
at lower volume in comparison to the stressed syllables and are not particular relevant to
changes in intonation.)

- The strong forms -> are used when they are being directly quoted, contrasted or
pronounced in isolation.
of // and have // are neutralised in /v/
(as in Some of a pair and Some have a pair : // (This might lead to misunderstanding, and it is only the context
which make these weak forms understandable sometimes)

● There is a logical explanation in the occurrence of weak forms:

-they are present in words which are necessary to construct a clause
-but do not communicate a large quantity of information
-in other words, they are not content words

IDENTIFYING CONTENT WORDS

I went to the hotel and booked a room for two nights for my father and his best friend.
went hotel booked room two nights father best friend

If we eliminate words not emphasized in a phrase

- the words emphasized would maintain the stress
- many of the eliminated words would become weak forms ( they are less important
in the comunication of the message )
WEAK FORMS OF SOME FUNCTION WORDS
◼ Articles
◼ The
❑ weak forms:
❑ +consonant the man did it
❑ //+ vowel / / the orange

◼ A, An
weak forms:
❑ before consonant ride a bike
❑ before vowel pick an apple

◼ Conjunctions
● And /
or come and see ❑ / / fish and chips

● But / ❑ // / / it’s cheap but reliable

● Than // ❑ / / better than expected

◼ Pronouns
● He will he go?
● His take his coat
● She
● Her // before consonants take her home
before vowels take her out

Prepositions
● To to Mexico
● At at home

Modals
◼ Can I can go
◼ Must I must sell

EMPHASIS
I do like chocolate
She drove to Las Vegas, not from LA
We were surprised when she told us her secret

SPECIAL CASES: SYLLABIC CONSONANTS

A vowel is usually at the centre of a syllable and it is an obligatory element
-but there is a special case:
‘’students’’ is not considered as a monosyllabic word, with 3-consonant-cluster, but as
two-syllable word with the cluster /nts/ (we treat the word as though there was a vowel
beteen /d/ and /n/
-In words with 2 /more syllables, when a nasal (m/n) or an approximant (l/r) functions as the
peak of a syllable in place of a vowel, the vowel becomes phonetically optional
-It happens when an unstressed vowel in the syllable becomes so reduced that it effectively
disappears, leaving the coda function as the peak

SYLLABIC CONSONANT TYPES

SYLLABIC /l/ SYLLABIC /n/ SYLLABIC /m/ SYLLABIC /r/

happens when l is is common more common in
preceded by AmE
-after alveolar (particular, history )
-an alveolar plosives (t,d)
consonant (t, d ) (s,
z) -after fricatives (s, Some minimal pairs
-non alveolar z) ar distinguished only
consonant ( b,p, g, -after bilabial uppermost for the presence of
k) plosives the syllabic
consonant
bottle, couple, cattle, eaten, threaten, (hungry and
panel, pedal seven, often, hungary)
happen

STRESS
-STRESSED SYLLABLE= the one that will be accented if the word is pronounced on its own
(water-> the first syllable is accented
tomorrow-> the second syllable is stressed)
-in E. the position is not automatically fixed:
-E has stress contrasts=identical sequences of segments carrying different meanings
according to stress
(import-> verb/noun)

STRESS MISMATCHES
family-> 1st syllable
familiar->2nd syllable
(stress accent in polysillabic words have to be learned, but some generalizations are
possible)

STRESS TYPES

1) polysillabic words can have 2/ more syllables stressed

Thus, the first classification is between

PRIMARY STRESS SECONDARY STRESS

The stress more prominent The stress less prominent

2) Stress can also be

FUNCTIONAL SYNTACTIC SEMANTIC

distinguishes couples of
apparently identical
words as dramatically
different
(word class pairs of
homographs)
Abstract (noun vs verb)
brings changes in
depends on the meaning
syntactic function of the
part of speech
(the syntactic function of blackbird- black bird
an adjective) greenhouse- green house
There are students
overseas- There are
overseas students

PRIM STRESS ROOOT

STRESS IN WORDS AFFIXIATION
FIXED STRESS MOVABLE STRESS
German words and early French -with more recent adoptions and
adoptions with derivations based on foreign or
- tend to have the primary stress classical elements,
on the root syllable - the place of the stress varies
- to keep it there,regardless of any depending on affixation
affixes added (affixes/suffixes)

-’stand-> under’stand -Telegraph-> telegraphic

->misunde’rstand -Argument-> Argumentative ->
‘-passion-> ‘passionate-> argumentation
dis’passionate

● STRESS DIFFERENCE IN VERB/NOUN FUNCTIONS

A set of words that can operate without affixal change as nouns (or adjectives) and
as verbs have a stress difference in the two functions
Generally 2nd syllable on the verb, 1 st syllable on nouns

-abstract (V-> ‘abstract/N-> ab’stract)

-desert (V->de’sert /N-> ‘desert)
-present (V-> pre’sent/N-> ‘present)

STRESS PLACEMENT
Depends on
 ● wheter the word is morphologically simple or not (a compound with affixes
or not)
● -the grammatical category to which the word belongs to (noun, verb, adj)
● the number of syllables in the word
● the phonological structure of those syllables

STRESS IN 2-SYLLBLE WORDS

Two syllable VERBS
● Stress on the 2nd syllable (when)
The second syllable contains a long vowel/diphthong
The second syllable contains more than one consonant
ex. Apply -> a’play
Attract-> A’tract

● Stress on the 1st syllable

The final syllable contains a short vowel and on or no final consonant
Enter-> ‘enter
Envy-> ‘Envy

Two syllable ADJ

● Same rule
Lovely-> ‘lovely
Correct-> Co’rect
Exceptions: Honest-> ‘Honest ; Perfect-> ‘Perfect

Two syllable NOUNS

● Stress on the 1st syllable if-> the seond syllable has a short vowel
● Stress on the 2nd syllable-> if not
Money-> ‘money
product-> ‘product
-balloon-> ba’loon

STRESS IN 3-SYLLABLE WORD

● Stress tends to go on syllable
-containing a long vowel or a diphthong
-and/or ending with more than one consonant
potato-> po’tato
disaster-> di’saster
Exception: infleted-> ‘inflected; opportune-> ‘opportune

● The tendency is for words of 3 syllables to have a primary stress on the first/second
syllable
Difficult-> ‘difficult
Narrator-> na’rrator

● But it can happen that the last syllable bears primary stress. In that case, it is likely
that the first syllable will be given a secondary stress
Contradict-> Contra’dict
 COMPLEX WORD STRESS
◼ Stress on the syllable preceding the suffix
◼ Nominal suffix – ity ❑ Curious > curiosity //
◼ Adjective suffix –ic ❑ Economy > economic /iːkənɒmɪk /
◼ Nominal suffix–ion ❑ Introduction /ɪntrədʌkʃən / ❑ Translation /trænsleɪʃən / ❑
Suspicion /səspɪʃən /
◼ Nominal and adjectival suffix–ian ❑ Grammarian /grəmeərɪən / ❑ librarian
/laɪbreərɪən /
◼ Adjectival suffix – ive ❑ Interactive /ɪntəræktɪv/; ❑ reflexive /rɪflksɪv /

Suffixes carrying primary stress

◼ -ain ❑ // entertain
◼ -ee ❑ // refugee
◼ -eer ❑ // volunteer
◼ -ese ❑ // Portuguese
◼ -ette ❑ // cigarette
◼ -esque ❑ // picturesque
Suffixes not affecting stress placement
◼ -able ❑ // comfort → // comfortable
◼ -age ❑ // anchor → // anchorage
◼ -al ❑ // refuse → // refusal
◼ -ful ◼ // wonder → // wonderful
◼ -ing ◼ // amaze → // amazing
◼ -ish ◼ // devil → // devilish

More suffixes: -er (reader); -ess (lioness); -hood (childhood); -ism (nationalism); -less
(powerless); -ly (officially); -man (gentleman); -ment (development); -ness (happiness); -or
(director); -some (handsome); -ship (scholarship)

STRESS IN COMPOUNDS
● Compound nouns generally have
- a primary stress -> on the first element
-a secondary stress-> on the second element

sunrise-> ‘sunrise

● Compounds with an adjectival first element

-ed morpheme at the end -> have this pattern
bad-tempered-> bad’tempered

● Compounds with an adjectival first element -> have the stress on the second
element
loudspeaker->loud’ speaker
Exceptions-> gentlemen-> ‘gentlemen

● Compounds functioning as adverbs -> are usually final-stressed

 down-stream -> down’stream

● Compounds which function as verbs

have an adverbial first element take final stress
downgrade-> down’grade

CONNECTED SPEECH
-Different pronunciation of the same word sometimes display a different choice of
internal phonemes depending on the assimilatory pressure of the word environment ,
that is on more phonemes influencing each other
-Many phonemic changes occur in connected speech =utterances consisting of
more than one word produced in a sequence in the conversation flow

The syllable in English is given particular importance and

- prominent (stressed)-> syllables are pronounced strongly,
-unstressed syllables-> are frequently neglected (in conversation)

-Some features of connected speech

1) Weak forms (Lezione 11)
2) Assimilations
3) Elision
4) Liaison

2) ASSIMILATION
● Is a process by which 2 adiacent sounds influence the articulation of one
another, so that they become more alike or identical
● It involves the final consonant (CF) and the initial consonant (CI) of 2 adjacent words
● The consonants influence each other in different ways, so we can have different type
of assimilation:

2.1 ASSIMILATION OF PLACE OF ARTICULATION

FINAL CONSONANT changes to become like the INITIAL CONSONANT

ALVEOLAR TO VELAR
It involves the contact of TO BILABIAL It involves the contact between
-alveolar consonants (t) and /d/ and /n/ -alveolar /s/ and /z/
with velar consonants /k/ and /g/ with palatal //
with palato-alveolar //,//,//
with bilabials /b/ /p/ /m/

/n/+ /k/ or / g/ =n -> from alveolar to ◼ // +// // // //=//

velar ❑// this shop > from alveolar to
ten girls palato-alveolar
❑ / / this year
/n/+ /p/, /b/,/m/ = /m/ -> from alveolar to
◼ //+// // // //=// > from alveolar to
bilabial
palato-alveolar
ten players
 t+k or g = k -> from alveolar to velar ❑ / / or / / has she?
that cup

❑ / / those churches
t+b p or m =p-> from alveolar to bilabial
light blue

d*K or g =g -> from alveolar to velar

good concert

d+b p or m =b-> from alveolar to bilabial

good boy

2.2 ASSIMILATION OF VOICING

The vibration of the vocal fold is not something that can be switched on and off, as a result of groups of consonants tend to be
either all voiced or all voiceless
Consider the difference endings of ‘’dogs’’ and ‘’cats’’ of ‘’Kissed’’ ‘’sneezed’’

When voiced fricatives

-appear word finally
-are followed by a voiceless consonant (in the word-initial position of an immediately
following word)
⇓
become fully voiceless

◼ /v/ > /f/ ❑ I have to go ❑ / / > / / > /v/ is influenced by voiceless /t/

◼ /z/ > /s/ ❑ I used to live near you ❑ / // /❑//→/ /

◼ // >// ❑ With thanks ❑ / / > / /
◼ // > // ❑ Beige cardigan ❑ / / > / /
◼ // > // ❑ Madge Smith ❑ / / / /

2.3 YOD COALESCENCE

it’s a special type of assimilation.
It takes place when t, d , s , z are followed by j
-t+ j=
what you want
Tuesday

d+j
Would you?

s+j
In case you need it

z+j
Has your letter come?

3. ELISION
-refers to the omission of certain sounds in particular contexts
-is typical of informal discourse
It affects

t/d in consonant clusters between two other consonants

The next day The last car Hold the dog

Loss of vowels after p/t/k

Potato , Tomato

Weak vowel+ n /l / r can become a syllabic consonant

Tonight, police

SYLLABIC CONSONANTS
◼ In a syllable a vowel is an obligatory element
◼ In words with 2 or more syllables
-when a nasal, i.e. /m/ or /n/
-an approximant /l/, or /r/ ⇒functions as the peak of a syllable in place of a vowel
↓
the vowel becomes phonetically optional

◼ It happens when an unstressed vowel in the syllable becomes so reduced that it

effectively disappears, leaving the coda to function as the peak
❑ Button // → //
) ❑ Syllabic /l/: bottle //
❑ Also in cattle, trouble, couple, pedal, panel
❑ Syllabic /m/: uppermost //
❑ Syllabic /n/: eaten //
❑ Also threaten, seven, heaven, often
❑ Syllabic /r/: history //

ELISION
◼ Loss of final /v/ before consonants, (particularly in preposition of)
❑ Lots of them / /
❑ Waste of money / /

ELISION OF NOT
The phoneme t is a fundamental part of the negative particle not , poses several difficulties
Consider the negative of can- if followed b a onsonant, the t may diappear and the only difference
between in the positive and negative is a different, longer vowel sound in the second
-I can speak - I can’t speak
When can’t is followed by a vowel the t is not elided, as in I can’t eat

LINKING R
RP introduces word-final post vocalic r as a linking form-> when the following word begins
with a vowel
-One example of linking is to re-activate an r sound
for better and worse
-Another example is to insert an ‘r’’ between 2 vowels (intrusive r)
the idea of

MORPHONOLOGY
A branch of phonology which deals with morphemes.
It studies the phonological aspects of morphemes
Assimilation is very important-> since provides us with rules for regular inflections in the case
of
- Plural/possessive/ contracted (‘)s
◼ // after voiceless sounds ❑ As in lips //, laughs //, carrots //, cat’s //
◼ // after voiced sounds ❑ As in things //, loves //, goes //, dog’s //
◼ // after sibilants // // // // or affricates// // ❑ As in horses //, wishes //, causes //

- past tense/past participle -(e)d

◼ // after voiceless sounds (apart from /t/)
As in missed //, laughed //, finished //
◼ // after voiced sounds, i.e. vowels and voiced consonants apart from /d/
As in planned //, rubbed //, carried //
◼ // after // and //
As in waited //, graded //, painted //

MORPHOLOGY
-is the study of the internal structure of words
-The assumption that languages contain words is taken for granted,
however sometimes there are differences of opinion as to what units are to be considered as
words
(‘’ a’’, ‘’two’’,’’single-mother’’-> are words?)

WORDS
-Words are the building blocks,the material from which the vocabulary of a language is built
-Intuitively speaking, words can be defined as the minimal meaningful units in language
-Instinctively we even include in the term ‘’word’’ sounds such as ‘’wow’’ ‘’be’’( even though
they are devoid of propositional content and carry only expressively messages)
LEXEMES
Consider the word ‘’staggered’,’’staggers’’ ‘’staggering’’-> are different form words of the
lexeme ‘’Stagger’’.
-are the units conventionally listed in the dictionaries as separate entries
(‘’staggers,staggered staggering and stagger ‘’ are different realizations, with different spelling and
pronunciation of the same lexeme STAGGER, with which they share a common meaning )
(ex. big-> bigger, biggest; kick the bucket…)

WORD FORM
-is a particular realisation of the lexeme
(ex. see,seeing,seem are word forms of the lexeme ‘’see’’)

GRAMMATICAL WORD
- is a word which represents a lexeme associated with certain morphosyntactic
properties, such as noun, verb, tense,gender, number
(The word form ‘’cut’’can represent 2 grammatical word in:
-Usually I cut the bread
-Ysterday I cut my finger
but->Jane had a cut on her finger.

KIND OF WORD IN LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION

From- the point of view of linguistic description, word is a rather vogue term
- more technical terms have been suggested for the various levels of analysis
-ORTOGRAPHIC WORDS-> in writing, untis separate by white spaces
-PHONOLOGICAL WORDS-> strings of sounds having internal structuring
-GRAMMATICAL WORDS-> word forms
-SEMANTIC WORDS-> lexemes

Many words
- are morphologically simple (The, elephant,boat)
and cannot be segmentated (divided into smaller bits: we cannot say what the -ierce part of
fierce means)
If we tried to divide this word up , we would only obtain a series of sounds that do not have
any meaning in themselves

-are morphologically complex

(Player- play+er, mis- understand; desk+s, bubble+guns)

MORPHEME
Desks (5 letters, 5 phonemes, 1 syllable,2 morphemes= desk+s)
-is the smallest meaningful unit of a language
-is the smallest invisible unit of semantic content or grammatical function
(e. fly-> 1 morpheme, reuse->2 syllable, 2 morphemes, optionality-> 3 morphemes,
option,ality)

WORDS AND MORPHEMES

-Word can be made by 1 morpheme (cat) /by more morphemes
(usually longer words can be divided in smaller units)
Morphemes have main characteristics:
-cannot be subdivided
-add meaning to a word
-can appear in many different words
-can have any number of syllables

1) CANNOT BE SUBDIVIDED
M. are the smallest meaningful units of language. If you try to divide a morpheme
into a smaller piece, you will only get sounds
(But sounds do not have any meaning in themselves. they have to be put together in the correct order
,before a listener will be able to understand)

2) ADD MEANING TO A WORD

Each M. contributes to the overall meaning of a word.
(Yet some morphemes may affect the overall meaning more than others.)

( If we add the morpheme ‘’cat’’ to ‘’bird’’ , we create a new word with a radically different meaning
‘’catbird’’ a species of songbird sounding more like a cat
But we could add the morpheme -s to cat, the changing from ‘’one cat’’ to ‘’more cats’’
In this case we do not have a shift of meaning, but a shift of number)

3) CAN APPEAR IN MANY DIFFERENT WORDS

The same morpheme can show up in many different words.
Learning the meaning of a morpheme and recognizing it in different forms tell us
something About the words that use it
(The Latin morpheme duc ‘’lead, draw pull’’
Reduce-> put back, deduce> draw away from)

4) CAN HAVE ANY NUMBER OF SYLLABLES

Differently from syllables
Syllables-> are groupings together of sounds for purpose of articulation
morphemes ->are smallest units of meaning or grammatical function
(Dogs-> 1 syllable because there is one vowel, 2 morphemes dog+s)

SOME PROBLEMS
● In some cases: ONE FORM->2/MORE MEANINGS
Two meanings can be expressed using the same arrangement of sounds:2 different
morphemes
(e. ‘’IN’’ =NOT-> incapable, insufficient ; IN= INTO-> inside ,include)

● TWO/MORE FORMS-> ONE MEANING

When 2 different forms have the same meaning , they could be different morphemes, or a
single morpheme

1) 2 FORMS,ONE MEANING-> 2 MORPHEMES

Rather different forms referring to the same thing, completely different origin
(Andr-> MALE androgyene, vir-MALE virgin)
 2) 2/MORE FORMS=ONE MEANING
A.) 2 FORMS, ONE MEANING=2 MORPHEMES
2 similiar words which came into Eng. throught different sources
(vedi slide

B) 2/MORE FORMS, ONE MEANING=ONE MORPHEME

Sometimes 2 word with the same meaning may be alternate forms of the same morphemes
(vedi slide)

ALLOMORPHS=different forms of the same morpheme

MORPHS
◼ The analysis of words into morphemes begins with the isolation of MORPHS: physical
forms representing some morpheme in a language
◼ In the sentence I parked the car ❑ // // // // // represent morphs
◼ Sometimes different morphs may be represented by the same morphemes, i.e. the past tense of
regular verbs in English, which is spelled –ed and is represented by //, // or // (see lecture 12)
❑ The difference in form is not associated to a difference in meaning. So //, // or // are grouped
together as allomorphs of the same morpheme

FREE MOPRHS AND BOUND MORPHS

FREE MORPH BOUND MORPH

-A morpheme that can stand alone as an -a morpheme that cannot stand alone as an
independent word independent word , but must be attached to
(man, book,tea,bet-> are free morphs) another important morpheme
(er, s -> in ‘’drivers are bound morphs)

ROOT
-is the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else attached to it.
- It is the part that must be always be present, possibly with some modifications, in the
different manifestations of a lexeme
(Brother in brotherhood, possible is the root of impossibility)

-Many words are composed by a root standing on its own as free morphs (Man, cat, do, and)
-Only roots can be free morphs (and be found as words on their own language)
-But not all roots are free: they can be also bound morphs
they cannot occur in isolation, but only with other elements
attached to them
(mit in ‘’permit,admit,commit’’
ceive in ‘’receive, conceive,deceive)

STEM AND BASE

STEM BASE
 That part of word in existence before
any inflectional affixes
(those affixes whose presence is required
by the syntax, such as markers of singular
or plural in nouns,tense in verbs..) have
been added
❑ Cats > cat is the stem
❑ Workers > worker is the stem; work is the
root
a unit to which other affixes are attached
to create new words.
-All roots are bases
Touchable acts as a base for
‘’untouchable’->TOUCH=root, ABLE=
suffix,derivational,UN=prefix,derivational)

AFFIXES
are bound morphemes that are attached to a root, stem or base to form new words.
They can be of 3 different types:

PREFIXES SUFFIXES INFIXES

occur before a root/a base
Re-make; un-kind; in-accurate
occur after a root/stem/base
Kind-ly; wait-er; book-s; walk-ed;
inserted inside the root (rare
in Eng)
-usually represented by an
expletive word
-used to convey emphasis in
informal contexts

Abso-fuckin-lutely;
fan-fuckin-tastic; fan-bloody-tastic

DIFFERENT TYPES OF MORPHOLOGY

Morphology is divided into subbranches:

INFLECTION
deals with forms of WORD FORMATION
individual lexemes deals with the creation of new lexemes

DERIVATION CONVERSION COMPOUNDING

Class changing Zero-derivation To roots joined
Class-maintaining (no affixation) together

MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESS
The study of morphology can be divided into
INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY LEXICAL MORPHOLOGY
The study of grammatically-determined (word formation)
affixation processes The study of how new words are formed.

(Walk-walks 3rd p. s )
(Car-> Cars noun plural) Is divided into
 DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
formation of new words by affiation
(Dram-Dreamer)

CONVERSION
A word changing word-class, without adding
affixes
(A bottle- to bottle)

COMPOUNDING
The formation of new words by joining two
roots
(hair+dresser)

INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY
-The study of grammatically-determined affixation which produces new word-forms of
a given lexeme
(Walk-Walks-Walked-Walking)
-English has only 7 inflectional suffixes (no inflectional prefixes) which are assigned
by the grammar:
s (3rd person present tnse)
ed (past tense past partciple )
ing (present progessive, present participle
s (plural)
‘s (saxon genitive)
er (comparative)
est (superlative)

Inflectional suffixes
- are a closed system (like function words)

-do not change the word class of the root

(High =adj, Higher= comparative adj)

-do not create new lexemes, but only mark grammatical relationships
-encode grammar categories (plural, person,tense case)

-Only one inflectional suffix can be added to a stem

always follows derivational affixes (is always the last element)
(workers-> work= root, er= derivational suffix, s= inflectional suffix)

In inflection:
-(unlike derivation) it is displayed automatic productivity= entire sets of word-forms or
paradigms are affected)
-A stem belonging to a given word class will normally take all the affixes applying to that
class
(A verb stem such as walk will take the verbal affixes -s;-ed;-ing)
DERIVATION
is the creation of new lexemes by affixation (=adding suffixes/prefixes)

-Suffixes are largely class-changing and may change the meaning of the base (prefixes do
not)
(Rewrite;Prepay-> Same class; Madness,Toothless,Shortage-> different class)

-Derivational processes are free and unpredictable (not determined by grammar)

Derivational affixes
-constitute an open system

-more than one may attach to a base

(De+nation+al+ise+ation-> Denationalisation)

-have a fixed position

(inflectional suffixes are always in final position)
(Players restarted the match)

-can change the word class/ the base meaning

(affect the underlying meaning or syntactic category of the base.)
(Ex.-> unhappy-> un changes the meaning of the base morpheme ->meaning negative,
terrorise-> ise changes the lexical category of the noun ->to verb)

Prefixes
-are fewer and less frequent than suffixes
-do not generally carry stress
-are largely class maintaining
expections are-> a (asleep-> V-A);Be (Becalm->A-V) (befriend->N-V), E (Enslave-> N-V
,Enlarge-> A-V)

Suffixes
-occur after the base
-are more numerous and more frequent
-may affect stress shift in base or carry main stress
-most of them are class changing (Nature-> Naturalise; teach-> teacher; usual-> Usually)
-exceptions are -hood
-dom
-age
-sim
-scape
-ship (class mantaining suffixes)

-The most frequent changes that they cause are:

V-N ; V Adj
N Adj Adj verb
N-V ; Adj-N Adj-Adj

-can also be lexicalized

take inflectional suffixes
(ISM-> we’re always dealing with isms)

Derivation
-primarily affects nouns, verbs, adjectives
-with exception-> grammatical words become lexicalized
serve as basis for derivation
(-If-> iffy (N)
-Up-> Uppity (A)
-Down-> Downer (N) )

The meaning of affixes

(aggiungi tabella)

CONVERSION (ZERO DERIVATION)

-is a process in which the word changes word class, but
no affix is added
there is no clear change in the word form

-Typically takes place from ->

N-> V; V->N;A->N;A->V;A->ADv;N->A)
-Sometimes includes minor word classes
Prep-> V; Prep-> N; Conj-<N; Conj->A

-May involve a change in subcategory within the same word class

Uncountable to countable nouns (I’ll have two less)
Non-gradableto gradable adj (Her clothes are very French)
Transitive to intransitive (The manuscript reads well)
Intransitive to transitive verb (They flew him for the party)
(Ex-> I’ll give him a call- I’ll call him . The door is open-> I’m going to open the door)

-The conversion can be

TOTAL PARTIAL
-a complete shift takes place -a lexeme
-newly formed lexeme can take inflectional acts like a different word-class
affixes of the new word class but doesn’t take new morphological
characteristics
(Call V-N-> I had three calls)
(Young A-N-> The young are sometimes
foolish)

Main conversions:
-Noun->verb (bottle-to bottle)
-Verb-noun (to call-call)
-Adj-> verb (Empty->to empty)
-Adk->Noun (Rich->the rich)

COMPOUNDING
is the creation of a lexeme through two/more free forms joining together
(Greenhouse->Green House)

Can be
TRANSPARENT OPAQUE
The meaning of the whole can be The meaning cannot be reconstructed
reconstructed from the meaning of the roots
(ex Greenhouse)
(ex. blackboard= a board which is black)

How to recognize a compound

In a compound:
-the stress pattern is different from the one of the words composing it (‘blckbird-black bird)
-the meaning is usually different from that of the corresponding phrase (blackbird is not a
bird which is black)
-the order of the words is different from the usual (Sawmill- mill for sawing)
-there is no modification of the first element (A really blackbird*- a really black bird)

Compound and modifications

-Any external modifier must relate to the head element
(fast taxi driver- *yellow taxi driver , Green orange juice carton- *Rotten orange juice carton

Compounds and Lexical Phrases

In order to distinguish between a compound and a lexical phrase
❑ For Adj+N compounds, we can apply the following tests
Can A be preceded by an adverb?
Can A take –er –est?
Can A occupy predicative positions?
( *very fast food *faster food *the food is fast)

Compound Borderline Cases

Certain types of compounds
- do not follow the rule given
-are classified as hybrids, or borderline cases (between derivation and compounding)

A) Compounds formed with ‘man’ as the second element

◼ Insurance man
◼ Gas man In these examples the second base is /maen/
◼ Black man
◼ Madman
 ◼ Chairman
◼ Postman the phonological realization is /man/ with a reduced vowel.
◼ Milkman ‘man’ morph may no longer represent the morpheme ‘adult human male’
◼ Fireman is a lexical formative (like -er)

B) Compounds formed with 2 free roots seems to behave somehow like derivatives
The second element (native compound element)
-is productive in creating new lexemes, (like derivation suffixes)
-even though they exist as free morphs

(Sit-in,rad-in,Fire-proof, Child-proof,Scissor-happy)

◼We might hypothesise a diachronic evolution such as the following:

❑ Stage 1: a lexical item (free root) is used to create new compounds (slap-happy, sit-in,
postman etc.)
❑ Stage 2: this free root begins to function as a formative element in many new lexemes
❑ Stage 3: as a lexical formative it undergoes a change in meaning and/or a phonological
change and may even lose its status as a free root, as in clockwise, playwright

C) Another anomalous groups are the -berry compounds

-berry is clearly a recognizable root, as it is currently used a a simple lexeme
-the initial morphs in the left column do not exist as free roots (or they do, as straw, or goose
but with unrelated meanings )
-Their origins are obscure, and these compounds may have been created by analogy with
other existing compounds such as those in the right column

D) Neo-classical compounds
are composed of 2 bound morphs, which are different from derivational affixes, in that they
are all of Greek/Latin origin
- have a greater semantic content (tha derivational affixes)
-Since these morphs combine to form new lexemes, we shall call them
Initail combining form (Astro Bio Homo Socio Biblio)
Final combining form (crat,gamy,logy,graph,naut,phobe,lyte,phile)

◼ ICFs end either in a vowel or a vowel is added before attaching the FCFs
◼ Some of the morphs mentioned can appear in both word-initial and word-final position:
( Morph- morph-o-logy ; Morph allo-morph ; Graph- graph-o-logy ;Graph Tele-graph )
◼ Many ICFs may attach to simplex lexemes as well
(Megacity, Amphitheatre, Photofinish, Bioscience)
◼ Or to derived lexemes ❑ Hypersensitive, pseudointellectual, biomedical
◼ Some iCFs and FCFs have entered the lexicon as simplex lexemes: ❑ Morph, auto,
hyper, audio, photo, graph, phone

E) Rhyming compounds (identical vocal phoneme)

Ablaut compound (Identical consonants, but different vowels
-break the rule, since either one or both roots do not occur in isolation
◼ Rhyming Compounds (identical vowel phoneme)
Helter-skelter: quick and confused ;Nitty gritty: the basic facts of a situation
◼ Ablaut Compounds
( Mish mash: mess ; Dilly dally: waste time ❑;Wishy washy: someone superficial with no firm
ideas ) Zig zag

Compound Structure and Syntactic Head

Compound nouns
◼The majority of English compounds are nouns
- composed by modifier+head
-right-headed
-fall into the following categories:
❑ N+N (head) handkerchief, ink bottle, moonlight
❑ A+N (head) small talk, fast food, mobile phone
❑ V+N (head) pickpocket,,, crybaby, watchdog

◼ Less frequently we can find noun compounds with other patterns:

❑ N+V (head) > N Sunshine
❑ Prep+ N (head) > N Underdog
❑ V+Prep (head) > N Push over(nominalizations of a phrasal
verb→compound+conversion)
◼ A small group of compounds are syntactically left-headed
❑ N (head) +Prep > N Passer by, runner up
❑ N (head) +PP > N Lily of the valley, mother-in-law
❑ N (head) +A > N Heir apparent, attorney general

Compound Adjectives
❑ N+A War-torn
❑ V+Adv/Prep ◼ Ready-cooked
❑ Adj+N ◼ Long-life
❑ Phrase ◼ Ready-to-wear
❑ N+N ◼ Child-proof
❑ A+A ◼ Open-ended

Compound verbs
❑ Baby-sit (from babysitter – backformation) ❑ Mastermind (V; also N) ❑ Make do (V+V)
❑ Sky-dive (N+V)
❑ Water-proof (N+N) > I waterproofed the boat
❑ Sound-proof (N+N) > I sound-proofed the room
❑ Test-drive (N+V) > I want to test-drive that car (Semantic)

Head in Compounds
 Endocentric compounds
-are hyponyms of the
grammatical head
( An armchair is a kind of
chair
a schoolbus is a kind of bus)
Exocentric compounds
-are not hyponyms of the
semantic head
(a redskin is NOT a kind of
skin
pickpocket is NOT a kind of
pocket
-the semantic head is
outside the compound
structure (exo)
Appositional or copulative
-the syntactic head is the
right-most element
-the various elements are
semantically of equal status
-the compound is a
hyponym of both roots
(Boyfriend Worker priest)

-the compound is hyponym

of some unexpressed
semantic head (usually
person) by virtue or
processes or
metaphorization

A compound
- can function as a modifier in an extended compound
❑ [orange juice] carton ❑ [red light] district

-can be pre-modified to create an extended compound

❑ Student [common room]

Compounds and Interpretation

Compounds may be classified

SEMANTICALLY TRANSPRENT SEMANTICALLY OPAQUE

-the syntactic head is also the semantic
head.
- the entire compound is a member of the
class expressed by the head.
-The meaning of the compound in this case
can be predicted from the meaning of the
constituents
(A madman is a member of ‘men’)
-do not contain a semantic head.
-the compound is a hyponym of some
unexpressed class
-the meaning cannot be understood
( Greenhouse is NOT a type of house, even
if it is a building )
-Many refer to people and they have an
implicit head “person” → these are
exocentric
(Soft touch: a person who is easily
influenced
Yellow belly: a coward
Spoil sport: someone selfish who spoils
other people’s pleasure)
 ◼ Some types of compounds allow a consistent reading of the relationship between the
constituents
(School teacher; housekeeper; fire fighter ->AGENTIVE
Vacuum cleaner; can opener; screw driver -> INSTRUMENT

◼ In others it is not easy to find the existing relationship between the members
( Wind mill ->A mill powered by the wind
Flour mill a mill which grinds flour)

◼ Opacity may be determined by different factors, only one of which is the semantic head,
such as:
- The logical relationship between the members (safety pin)
-Literal versus Figurative meaning (watch dog)
- Idiomaticity (sugar daddy)

Transparent Opaque
ENDOCENTRIC
Transparent-> Car key Madman Rose bush Beehive Watch dog (lit.)
Opaque-> Fast food Small talk
EXOCENTRIC
Transparent-> Pick pocket Watch dog (fig.) Killjoy
Opaque-> Blue stocking High brow Yellow belly Sugar daddy

BACK FORMATION
This process is the opposite of derivation. New words are formed by removing a presumed
suffix by analogy with an already existing set of lexemes

-Editor (Edit) (Television->televise)(PProof reader-proof read)

MINOR WORD-FORMING PROCESSES

New lexemes can be formed by
SHORTENING an existing expression
(A daily-from ‘’daily newspaper’’
CLIPPING an existing word: it involves missing a part of the word to create a word with th
same meaning. We can remove:
the beginning (fore-cllipping)
ending (back clipping)
both ends of the original word may be removed
(jumbo-> humbo-jet; narc-> narcotic agent)

Back clipping is more fequent. Most clippings are monosyllabic and refer to everyday
objects.
FRONT CLIPPING (telphone-phone)
BACK CLIPPING (SIT-uation; COM-edi;SCI-ence, SCIENCE FICTION-SCI FI)
Altought not very frequent, there are also cases of mixed and middle clippings
(FRIDGE->reFRIDGErator; VEGAN->VEGetariAN; FLU->inFLUenza)

BLENDING
is a process of word formation in which
- at least two base words are combined together to form a new lexeme.
This usually implies truncation of some parts of the words
loss of phonetic or orthographic material
SMOG (smoke+fog; BRUNCH->breakfast+lunch)
-They are hybrid words, similar to compounds, but in this case only part of the word has
been used

The blend denotes entities that share properties of the referents of both elements.
For example, a brunch is both breakfast and lunch

Both base words must somehow be semantically related to form a blend, otherwise the
combination of properties wouldn’t be possible
The 2 words are the same syntactic category, usually nouns
Blending rule: it is always the first part of the first element that is combined with the second
part of the second element
(AD= AB+CD)
-Are very popular in journalism (Spanglish; Webinar,Emoticon)

ACRONYMS
Lexicalising an acronym
Abbreviation is another productive way of forming new words in English and similarly to
blends
. It has to do with the amalgamation of parts of different words. It involves loss of material

Abbreviation mainly consist of initial ltters of multi-word sequences to form new words
(NATO,RAM;LOL)

RECAP
◼ Inflection
❑ Produces new word-forms of the same words
❑ It is a class-maintaining process
❑ Only 7 inflectional affixes (suffixes) in English
❑ It marks grammatical relations
❑ The inflectional affix is the last element that is attached to a stem (ex. Reproduced)

◼ Derivation
❑ Creates new words by affixation
❑ It can be class-maintaining or class-changing
❑ More affixes can occur together attached to the same base
❑ The number of affixes in English is open

◼ Compounding
❑ Two roots are joined together (juxtaposed) to form a new lexeme
❑ They can be endocentric or exocentric
◼ Conversion
❑ A new word is created which is homograph of the original word
❑ The new word is produced by zero-affixation and no change in its morphological structure
(hammer (n) – to hammer (v))
❑ It’s a class-changing process and the new word behaves like a word belonging to its new
word class (it takes all the inflections of its class)
❑ Sometimes the only difference between the two words is represented by the stress
position
❑ The word obtained through conversion presupposes reference to the original word, in
order to be understood and it’s semantically more complex

◼ Backformation
❑ A new word is produced by removing a final part of the original word, usually a suffix
❑ The new word is created by analogy with another pair of words (exhibitor > exhibit)
❑ It’s a class-changing process

◼ Clipping
❑ Involves the truncation of the original word and the loss of orthographic and phonic
materia
l ❑ It’s a class-maintaining process
❑ It can be distinguished into: front clipping (ex. [tele]phone) and back clipping
(glam[orous]), but there are mixed cases (refrigerator > fridge)
◼ Blending
❑ It involves the combination of two words together to create a new lexeme by
amalgamation of part of their orthographic and phonic structure
❑ It’s a class-maintaning process (N+N mainly)
❑ The first part of the first word is usually attached to the second part of the second word
(brunch: breakfast + lunch
) ◼ Acronym ❑ It involves the creation of a new word by abbreviation and joining together
the initials of some other words
❑ It can be class-maintaining (NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization) or class-changing
and the words composing the acronym do no need to belong to the same word class (ASAP:
as soon as possible)