Lezione 09 novembre 2021

Morphology = The study of word-formation processes. This term literally means “the study of forms”,
has been used to describe the type of investigation that analyses all those basic “elements” used in a
language. What we have been describing as “elements” in the form of a linguistic message are technically
known as “morphemes”.

Morpheme = minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function

Ex: read- + -s -able -ing -er, un- () -able elements meaningful morphemes
We can recognize that English word forms such as talks, talker, talked and talking must consist of one
element talk, and several other elements such as -s, -er, -ed and -ing.
Reopened =One minimal unit of meaning is open; another minimal unit of meaning is re- (meaning “again”)
and a minimal unit of grammatical function is -ed (indicating past tense).
There are two types:

 Free: they can stand for themselves as single words

 Lexical: nouns, verbs, and adjectives
These morphemes have their own meaning, carry the content of the word/message
Ex: read, open, yellow, dog
 Functional: conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns
These morphemes have a functional role between the words
Ex: and, but, in, of, what, it
 Bound: they need to be combined with other elements to have a meaning
 Derivational: affixes which can be prefix, suffix, or infix, generally at the end or at the
beginning of the word. We use these bound morphemes to make new words or to make
words of a different grammatical category from the stem. A list of derivational
morphemes will include suffixes such as the -ish in foolish, -ly in quickly, and the -ment in
payment. The list will also include prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, unand many
more.
Ex: -ness good/goodness
-ful joy/joyful
-ish, -ly, -less, dis-, pre-, un-
An infix is inside the word
 Inflectional: are the affixes that don’t change meaning and have just a grammatical
function. Are used to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word and to show if
a word is plural or singular or the form of the verb.
Ex: -s possessive, -s plural, -s third person present singular, -ing present participle, -en past
participle, -ed past tense

When a free morpheme is used with a bound morpheme is called STEM

Jim’s sister liked to study and has always taken things seriously
Jim (lexical)’s (inflectional) sister(lexical) like(lexical) ed(inflectional) to (functional) study (lexical) and
(functional) ha- (variation of the lexical morpheme) -s(inflectional) always (functional) take-(lexical) -
en(inflectional)things(inflectional) seriously(derivational)
Affixes are divided into two groups:

 Prefixes (meaning)
 negative: dis- (disobey), in-(intolerant), un- (unfaithful), -non (nonverbal)
 opposition : de- (decentralize), dis- (disconnect), un- (unsaid)
 deprivation: a- (amoral), de-(defrost), dis- (dishearten), un-(unmask)
 denigration: mal- (malfunction), mis-(misfire), pseudo-(pseudo-intellectual)
 Dimension and range: co- (cohabit), mega- (megabyte), mini- (miniskirt)
 Direction: anti- (anticlockwise), contra- (contraflow)
 distance: tele- (telephone, television)
 time and sequence: ex- (ex-husband), pre- (prepaid),
 number: uni- (unilateral), mono- (monolingual)
 Suffixes (grammatical class):
 nouns deriving from: nouns (history> historian); verbs (work>worker); adjective (national>
nationalist).
 verbs deriving from: noun like computer and computerize noun (computer>to computerize),
adjective (dark> darken), verb (spark> sparkle)
 adjective deriving from: noun (care>careless)
 Infixes: It is possible to see the general principle at work in certain expressions, occasionally used
in fortuitous or aggravating circumstances by emotionally aroused English speakers
 Ex: Hallebloodylujah! Absogoddamlutely!
Lezione 10 novembre 2021

How new words are structured

-ish = negative, used also to show disapprovement, something approximate

-ity =
-ize(ise) =

How new words are structured? Using LOANWORDS and METAPHORICAL EXTENSION
  New words can be borrowed from existing word stock (already existing words) by semantic shifts
(change of meaning), which create a new unit of meaning within the word reference.
Ex: mouse meant as the pointer (object) [new things that need to be named]
mouse meant as animal, the real first meaning
Analogy movement of the pointer is similar as the tale of the mouse and the movement of
it.
 The shifts in meaning are often metaphoric (metaphorical extension)
The pointer is like the animal
 Word origins can reveal the significant underlying powers in a culture. Many terms borrowed for
example from Latin because of colonization, strong impact on Anglo-Saxon, legal and medical
language full of Greek and Latin terms because of political power
 Some linguists have raised concerns about new technology leading to a cultural imperialism which
privileges English and especially American English over other languages
Word formation or MORPHOLOGY:
There are several common processes for word formation and their classification system is commonly based
on four factors:

 For an abbreviation so we omit a part of the etymon

 Whether the word has an etymon (word element) based on earlier words (a shift from a verb to a
noun)
 Whether a word combines two etyma (compound = compost)
 Whether any of the etyma are from another language
Compounding: two words already existing and with their own meaning put together in a compound
word

Combination of words: when two or more words or morphemes are put together to make a
compound word

Affixation or Derivation: when to a word it is added a morpheme and so the meaning is altered

Functional shift or Conversion: when a word changes its word class, for example from a verb to
an adjective (vacation > to vacation)

Backformation: a word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of another type
(usually a verb) (worker > work)

Acronyms and Initialism: e new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words. Such
as CD (“compact disk”) or VCR (“video cassette recorder”) where the pronunciation consists of saying each
separate letter, while the examples for initialism may be W.W.W (World Wide Web). Both acronyms and
initialism are associated with formal technological processes and jargon.

Clipping: The process of reducing a word of more than one syllable to a shorter form (ad >
advertisement), so clipping because words are clipped down to a shorter form (gas > gasoline)

Blending: The combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term (smoke + fog > smog)

Borrowing: the taking over of words from other languages.

Lezione 11 novembre 2021

How new words enter the language

When new objects, theories, things in general are created, people need to attribute to it a meaning and a
name. Usually, communities borrow words from something already existing in another field. The potential:
a community identifies the need of creating a new term and then they try to identify what kind of label
they have to assign to the new “discovery”. The second phase of introducing a new word to a language is
the implementation: when, after naming something, the community also start using the term and tries to
see if it works, is accepted, and then can be diffused. Last phase is codification, which means that the word
finally enters the official dictionary of the language.
To resume the phases:

 Potential
 Implementation
 Diffusion
 Codification

All this process needs specialised domains, mostly scientific because novelties come mainly from scientific
fields.

Coinage: is a process of word formation i.e., the invention of totally new terms. Commonly, are
invented trade names for commercial products that become general terms for any version of that product.
When needing new terms, very often we use terms already existing:

Linguistic recycling: reusing already existing terms, we take those language “fossils” (words that we
no longer use) and we give them a new meaning and sense. In this case, ambiguity must be avoided at all
costs, the concept and ideas must be clear.

Re-lexicalisation: the invention of new terms or re-using words for new meanings

Over-lexicalisation: a process in which there are a lot more than needed to express the same thing
that have a slight difference
ICT = Information and Communications Technology, the infrastructure and components that enable
modern computing. It creates new words and not fossils for the sake of being specific.

Jargons and subcultures: specialised activity inevitably creates the need for an associated
specialised language to refer to it. Both jargons and subcultures are strictly related, as a matter of fact the
jargon occurs in a subculture.
Jargons can be divided into two groups:
- For instrumental technical purposes for specialised communities
- For social purposes used to speak
There is also a difference between:
- Hacker slang: not only used for the pirate of the web, to hack is to cut in small pieces.
Metaphorically a hacker cuts in small pieces the information.
- Hacker jargon: slang language, specialised/peculiar to hackers
- Techspeak: the formal technical vocabulary of computer science as found in textbooks etc.

Grammar and Syntax

How speakers arrange words, that is the combination of words within a sentence and how sentences are
arranged in a proposition. Words can only be combined in a limited number of patterns. The right
sequence of words that a phrase must have to be grammatically correct is article + adjective + noun
according to the traditional grammar.

The parts of speech:

 Nouns: are words used to refer to people (boy), objects (backpack), creatures (dog), places
(school), qualities (roughness), phenomena (earthquake) and abstract ideas (love) as if they were all
“things.”
 Articles: are words (a, an, the) used with nouns to form noun phrases classifying those “things”
(You can have a banana or an apple) or identifying them as already known (I’ll take the apple)
 Adjectives: are words used, typically with nouns, to provide more information about the things
referred to (happy people, large objects, a strange experience)
 Verbs: are words used to refer to various kinds of actions (go, talk) and states (be, have) involving
people and things in events (Jessica is ill and has a sore throat so she can’t talk or go anywhere)
 Adverbs: are words used, typically with verbs, to provide more information about actions, states,
and events (slowly, yesterday). Some adverbs (really, very) are also used with adjectives to modify
information about things (Really large objects move slowly. I had a very strange experience
yesterday).
 Prepositions: are words (at, in, on, near, with, without) used with nouns in phrases providing
information about time (at five o’clock, in the morning), 82 The Study of Language place (on the
table, near the window) and other connections (with a knife, without a thought) involving actions
and things
 Pronouns: are words (she, herself, they, it, you) used in place of noun phrases, typically referring
to people and things already known (She talks to herself. They said it belonged to you)
 Conjunctions: are words (and, but, because, when) used to make connections and indicate
relationships between events (Chantel’s husband was so sweet and he helped her a lot because she
couldn’t do much when she was pregnant)

The agreement among categories:

 Number
 Person
 Tense
 Voice
 Gender

These categories must be considered and discussed not just in isolation but also in agreement. For
example, for the verbs on the third person singular is added an “s” on the end: Marty likes partying.

Descriptive approach:

 Structural analysis
 Constituent analysis: The technique employed in this approach is designed to show how
small constituents (or components) in sentences go together to form larger constituents.
Syntax: The structure and ordering of components within a sentence

Generative Grammar: a set of rules defining the possible sentences in a language, it can be used to
“generate” or produce sentence structures and not just describe them.
The structure can be a
 Surface structure: the structure of individual sentences after the application of movement rules to
deep structure
 Deep structure: the underlying structure of sentences as represented by phrase structure rules
Semantics: is the study of meaning in language, focusing on words, phrases, and sentences. When
studying the use of a word, semantics doesn’t center the attention on what the speaker wants to say with
the word but concentrates on what the word conventionally means.
In semantics there are two categories of meaning:
 Conceptual or denotative: covers those basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed
by the literal use of a word. It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are designed to describe.
Some of the basic components of a word like needle in English might include “thin, sharp, steel
instrument.” These components would be part of the conceptual meaning of needle.
 Associative or connotative: When the real meaning of a word is associated to the context, and to
social or cultural behaviour. Needle for example can be also associated with “pain,” or “illness,” or
“blood,” or “drugs,” or “thread,” or “knitting,” or “hard to find” (especially in a haystack), and these
associations may differ from one person to the next.
A sentence could be syntactically good but semantically incorrect.
The hamburger ate the boy it is grammatically and syntactically correct but not semantically. The noun
hamburger must be significantly different from those of the noun boy, thereby preventing one, and not the
other, from being used as the subject of the verb ate. The kind of noun that can be the subject of the verb
ate must denote an entity that is capable of “eating.” The noun hamburger does not have this property
and the noun boy does. These entities are called semantic features or 'semantemes' (semi) and each of
these fulfil a semantic role according to the situations described by the sentence.

Semantic features: They are the intrinsic components of meaning which determine the use of a
word in combination with other words.
 +animate Vs -animate
 +human Vs – human
 + male Vs – male
 + adult Vs - adult

Semantic roles:

 Agent: the entity that performs the action

 Theme: the entity that is involved in or affected by the action

Ex: The boy kicked the ball

boy= agent ball= theme

 Instrument: the vehicle used by the agent to make something happen.

Ex: The boy cut the rope with an old razor

boy= agent rope= theme old razor= instrument

 Experiencer: is like an agent, but instead of making something happen, feels something (see,
know, or enjoy)
Ex: the boy feels sad
Boy= experiencer of pain and sadness

 Location: where an entity is in the description of an event

Ex: the pen is on the table

Pen= agent on the table= location

 Source: where the entity moves from

 Goal: where the entity is moving to
The meaning of the words derives not only from their components and the roles they fulfill but also by the
relationships they establish with other words according to lexical relations:

 Synonymy: Two or more words with very closely related meanings ex: couch/sofa
 Antonymy: Two forms with opposite meanings ex: fast/slow
 Hyponymy: When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another ex:
flower/rose
 Homophony: When two or more different (written) forms have the same pronunciation ex:
meet/meat
 Homonymy: When one form (written or spoken) has two or more unrelated meanings ex: race
(contest of speed) – race (ethnic group)
 Polysemy: When we encounter two or more words with the same form and related meanings.
can be defined as one form (written or spoken) having multiple meanings that are all related by
extension. Ex: head, used to refer to the object on top of your body, froth on top of a glass of beer,
person at the top of a company or department, and many other things.
 Metonymy: the name of an objects or concept replaced with a word closely related to or
suggested by the original ex: crown/king and queen
 Collocation: a relationship between words that frequently occur together ex: salt and pepper
o Fixed collocations: idioms, proverbs, or ways of saying
o Strong collocations: specific combinations, associations between a word and a strict
number of words
o Weak collocations: associations between a word and a wide range of words

Pragmatics: is the study of “invisible” or “unsaid” meaning, or how we recognize what is meant even
when it isn’t said or written. To comprehend the “intended meaning” individuals must depend on
assumptions and expectations. All this is influenced by a context that can be:

 Linguistic (co-text): The co-text of a word is the set of other words used in the same phrase
or sentence. The surrounding co-text has a strong effect on what we think the word probably
means.
Ex: 'bank', surrounded by cash, money, check, refers to the financial institution
 Physical: The 'physical', social, and cultural situation where/when we encounter linguistic
expressions. For example, if we see the word BANK on the wall of a building in a city, the physical
location will influence our interpretation.

Deixis instead are common words that can’t be interpreted, in which the assumption doesn’t help the
interpretation. All these deictic expressions must be interpreted in terms of which person, place, or time
the speaker has in mind. We make a broad distinction between what is marked as close to the speaker
(this, here, now) and what is distant (that, there, then). We can 130 The Study of Language also indicate
whether movement is away from the speaker’s location (go) or toward the speaker’s location (come).

 Person deixis: I, you, him, it, them

 Time deixis: now, then, tomorrow, last week
 Place deixis: here, there, beyond
 Other deixis: that, this, those, these

In discussing deixis, we also must define:

 Reference: an act by which a speaker (or writer) uses language to enable a listener (or reader)
to identify something. To perform an act of reference, we can use proper nouns (Chomsky, Jennifer,
Whiskas), other nouns in phrases (a writer, my friend, the cat) or pronouns (he, she, it). It is more
accurate to say that, for each word or phrase, there is a “range of reference” for example: she or
friend can be used to refer to many entities in the world.
 Inference: It is an additional information used by the listener/reader to connect what is said to
what must be meant.
 Anaphora: Anaphora can be defined as subsequent reference to an already introduced entity.
The first mention is called the antecedent. So, in our example, a boy, a puppy and a small bath are
antecedents and the puppy, the boy, he, it and the bath are anaphoric expressions.

The connection between an antecedent and an anaphoric expression is created by use of a pronoun
(it), or a phrase with the plus the antecedent noun (the puppy), or another noun that is related to
the antecedent in some way (The little dog ran out of the room). The connection between
antecedents and anaphoric expressions is often based on inference
 Presupposition: What a speaker (or writer) assumes is true or known by a listener (or reader).
If someone tells you Your brother is waiting outside, there is an obvious presupposition that you
have a brother.
 Speech acts: to describe actions such as “requesting,” “commanding,” “questioning” or
“informing.” We can define a speech act as the action performed by a speaker with an expression.
For example, if you say I’ll be there at six, you are not just speaking, you seem to be performing the
speech act of “promising”

o Indirect: an action in which the form used (e.g., interrogative) does not directly match the function
(e.g., request) performed by a speaker with an expression
o Direct: an action in which the form used (e.g., interrogative) directly matches the function (e.g.,
question) performed by a speaker with an expression
Different conversation style and different strategies of participation in
conversation.

It’s important to take and respect turns while talking to others (turn-taking)

There are principles of conversations, precise regulation behind conversation which is a king of negotiation.
There is for example the co-operative principle which states: “Make your conversational contribution such
as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in
which you are engaged” Speak and say only things that are required.

Follow the 4 maxims:

 Quantity: avoid coerciveness and being redundant. Make your contribution as informative as is
required, but not more or less than needed, to according to the situation.
 Quality: Do not say that which you believe false or for which you lack adequate evidence. Do not
use fake news, do not manipulate the conversation. The quality of the information used in the
conversation should be truthful, reliable, also to appear yourself as a reliable person. You are
showing and presenting yourself during the conversation
  Relation: Be relevant, be efficient and effective for the situation. Try to be effective in what you
have to say, if you want to receive a reaction. (Example: publicity)
 Manner: Be clear, be brief, be neat ad orderly. You must write and talk clearly. Clear writing for
example in which you are told how to write in a simple way and make use of visual instead of
verbal, if visual provide neatness in the conversation.

Critical Discourse Analysis

(How we interpret meaning)

Social and political context influences how we interpret discussions. Critical discourse analysis explores the
connections between the use of language and the social and political contexts in which it occurs. It
explores issues such as gender, ethnicity, cultural difference, ideology, and identity and how these are both
constructed and reflected in texts It also investigates ways in which language constructs and is constructed
by social relationship. Some thins cannot remain unbiased.

Importance of context can have three levels:

- Macro: the analysis of context assesses the relationship between the text and broader social
processes and ideologies, for example what social issues are of particular importance at the time
the text was created.
- Meso: analysis focuses on the context of production and reception of the text, who wrote it, what is
the type of perspective that is promoted through the text, for who is the text meant for etc…
- Micro: discourse context simply looks at what is being said in the text, what are the linguistic
choices, the words, verbal tenses, or structure is used.

A lot can be inferred from the lexical and grammatical choices made by the author of a text. These
linguistic choices are not ideological