HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Overview of English Influences, Pre-History 1066 A.D.:

● Celts (Brythons and Gaels); up to 55 B.C.
● Roman Conques; 55 B.C. – 407 A.D.
● Anglo-Saxon Period; 407 A.D. – 787 A.D.
● Viking Invasions; 787 A.D. – 1066 A.D.
● Norman Conquest begins in 1066 A.D.

England was invaded by the Celts (known as Brythons/Britons) and the Gaels (who settled in
Ireland). The Celts were Pagans and their religion was known as “animism” (which means “spirit”
in Latin). Druids were their priests and when clans had disputes, they intervened to settle them.

Important events during Roman Occupation:

● Julius Caesar begins occupation in 55 B.C.
● Occupation completed by Claudius in 1st Century A.D.
● Romans leave in 407 A.D. because Visigoths attack Rome
● St. Augustine lands in Kent in 567 and converts King Aethelbert to Christianity; becomes
first Archbishop of Canterbury.

Important events in the first Anglo-Saxon period:

● 410-450; Angles and Saxons invade from Baltic shores of Germany, and Jutes invade from
Jutland peninsula in Denmark, thus driving out the Celts
● Nine Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms eventually become the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy or “Seven
Sovereign Kingdoms”
● King Alfred the Great managed peace against the Danes for about a generation, until
William of Normandy defeated them in 1066

Anglo-Saxon literature:
● Germanic ethos that celebrated the warrior and his exploits
● Most storytelling was oral
● Poetry: alliteration, kenning, caesura.
● Runes: Anglo-Saxon alphabet. Runes were probably brought to Britain in the 5th century
by the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians, and were used until the 11th century. Runic
inscriptions are mostly found on jewelry, weapons, stones and other objects. Very few
examples of Runic writing on manuscripts have survived.

Anglo-Saxon poetry and Riddles, The Book of Exeter:

● Contains more than 30 poems and 90 riddles
● Written down by monks in about 975
● Our primary source of Anglo-Saxon poetry
● Dominant mood in poetry is elegiac or mournful
● Dominant tone of riddles is light and somewhat bawdy (for entertainment purposes)
Beowulf
The major text we will read from this period is the EPIC Beowulf. It’s the story of a Scandinavian
warrior or knight in the 6th century, who comes to help a neighboring tribe, the Danes, who are
being attacked by a monster.
It’s the oldest known English poem and it is notable for its length (3183 lines). It was written in
Britain more than one thousand years ago. The name of the person who wrote it is unknown.

Viking invasion:
● The Vikings were sea-faring, explorers, traders and warriors, Scandinavians during the
8th-11th centuries
● Expeditions that plundered and ended in conquest and settlements of Britain
● King Alfred the Great in 871 was able to use the language to appeal the English and his
efforts saved the language

Importance of the Viking invasions:

● Politically and culturally: there was no central government or church, but the Anglo-Saxon
Code is evident in Beowulf
● Linguistically: old English is born; lots of dialects of old English were born because there
were several separate kingdoms (Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Jutes, Danes and Swedes); King
Alfred the Great was one of the first Anglo-Saxon kings to push Vikings back

Norman Invasion:
● In 1066 at the Battle of Hastings, the Normans defeat the English and start a century-long
conquest of England
● William (Duke of Normandy) crowns himself the ruler of England and establishes a social
system: Feudalism
● Cultural/political/literature influence: French becomes official language of politics and
power and exerts enormous influence on old English; William maintains efficient system of
government of Anglo-Saxons, but replaces the English nobility with Normans, and creates a
great class division that oppressed the Anglo-Saxons

History of the English language

The history of the English language has traditionally been divided into three main periods: Old
English (450-1100 A.D.), Middle English (1100-1500 A.D.) and Modern English (since 1500). Over
the centuries, the English language has been influenced by a number of other languages.

Old English
During the 5th century A.D., three Germanic tribes (Saxons, Angles and Jutes) came to the British
Isles from various parts of northwest Germany as well as Denmark. These tribes pushed out most
of the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants from England into Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. One
group migrated to the Brittany Coast of France.
Through the years, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes mixed their different Germanic dialects and this
group of dialects formed Old English or Anglo-Saxon.
The word “English” was “Englisc” in Old English and that comes from the name of the Angles, who
were named from Engle, their land of origin.
Before the Saxons, the language spoken in what is now England was a mixture of Latin and various
Celtic languages which were spoken before the Romans came to Britain. The Romans brought Latin
to Britain, which was part of the Roman Empire for over 400 years. Many of the words passed on
from this era are those coined by Roman merchants and soldiers, for example: win (wine), candel
(candle), belt (belt), weall (wall).
The influence of Celtic upon Old English was slight, very few Celtic words have lived in the English
language but many of place and river names have Celtic origins (Kent, York, Dover, Cumberland,
Thames, Avon, Trent, Severn).
The arrival of St. Augustine in 597 and the introduction of Christianity into Saxon England brought
more Latin words into the English language. They were mostly concerned with the naming of
Church dignitaries, ceremonies, etc.
Around 878 A.D., Danes and Norsemen, also called Vikings, invaded the country and English got
many Norse words into the language, particularly in the north of England. The Vikings, being
Scandinavian, spoke a language (Old Norse) which, in origin at least, was just as Germanic as Old
English. Words derived from Norse include: sky, egg, cake, skin, leg, window, husband, fellow, skill,
anger, flat, odd, ugly, get, give, take, raise, call, die, they, their, them.

Middle English
After the Duke of Normandy invaded and conquered England in 1066 A.D. with his armies and
became king, he brought his nobles, who spoke French, to be the new government. The Old French
took over as the language of the court, administration and culture. Latin was mostly used for
written language, especially that of the Church. Meanwhile, the English language was considered a
vulgar tongue.
Because the English underclass cooked for the Norman upper class, the words for most domestic
animals are English while the words for meats derived from them are French.
The most famous example of Middle English is “The Canterbury Tales” by Chaucer, a collection of
stories about a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury, England.

Modern English
Modern English developed after William Caxton established his printing press at Westminster
Abbey in 1476. Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in Germany around 1450, but Caxton
set up England’s first press. The Bible and some valuable manuscripts were printed.
The invention of the printing press made books available to more people. The books became
cheaper and more people learned to read. Printing also brought standardization to English.
There were three big developments in the world at the beginning of Modern English period: the
Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution and the British Colonialism.
English Renaissance
During the English Renaissance most of the words from Greek and Latin entered English. This
period in English cultural history (early 16th century to early 17th century) is sometimes referred to
as “the age of Shakespeare” or “the Elizabethan era”.

The Industrial Revolution

England began the Industrial Revolution (18th century) and this had also an effect on the
development of the language as new words had to be invented or existing ones modified to cope
with the rapid changes in technology. New technological words were added to the vocabulary as
inventors designed various products and machinery. These words were named after the inventor
or given the name of their choice (trains, engine, pulleys, combustion, electricity, telephone,
telegraph, camera, etc.)

British colonialism
Britain was an Empire for 200 years between the 18th and 20th centuries and English language
continued to change as the British Empire moved across the world. They sent people to settle and
live in their conquered places and as settlers interacted with natives, new words were added to the
English vocabulary (“kangaroo” and “boomerang” are native Australian Aborigine words,
“juggernaut” and “turban” came from India).

American English and other varieties

Some pronunciations and usages froze when they reached the American shore. In certain respects,
some varieties of American English are closer to the English of Shakespeare than modern standard
English is.
Some “Americanisms” are actually originally English: some English expressions were preserved in
the colonies but “got lost” at home (example: fall as a synonym for autumn, trash for rubbish, loan
as a verb instead of lend).
The American dialect also served as the route of introduction for many native American words into
the English language. Most often, these were place names like Mississippi and Iowa.
Spanish has also been great influence on American English (“mustang”, “canyon”, “ranch”,
“stampede” and “vigilante” are all examples of Spanish words that are now used in American
English).
Likewise, dialects of English have developed in many of the former colonies of the British Empire.

HOW DOES A LANGUAGE CHANGE

David Graddol (1953-2019) was a British linguist who worked in applied linguistics, discourse
analysis, sociolinguistic and history of linguistic. He was known for his 1997 book “The future of
English?”, in which he offers scenarios for how English as a world language may develop. He
pointed out that native speakers of English were or would soon be outnumbered by those who
speak English as a second or foreign language.
Futurology: mix of empirical evidence together with the insight and judgement borne of practical
experience. Futurologists inhabit a frontierland between historical facts and guesses about the
future.

Three types of change

1. There will be changes to the language itself. Certainly in pronunciation, vocabulary and
grammar, but also in the range of text types and genres which employ English.
2. There will be changes in status. English may acquire a different meaning and pattern of use
among non-native speakers, or be used for a wider range of social functions.
3. English will be affected by quantitative changes, such as number of speakers, the
proportion of the world’s scientific journals published in English or the extent to which the
English language is used for computer-based communication.

How does a language change?

Some kinds of change occur quickly, others slowly. Fashions in slang usage among native speakers,
the borrowing of words into another language can develop in months. But the shift which occurs
when a community or family abandons one language and begins to use another as first language is
usually intergenerational. Language shift often needs three generations to take full effect.
Individual act as agents of change as do governments and institutions. Successful learning of
English is known to be closely associated with personal ambition and attributes such as personality
type. But language change may also be imposed from outside or it may result from a rational
response to a change in circumstances. A government policy decision, for example, might change
the status of English as the first foreign language taught in schools, or may encourage English as a
medium of university education or the establishment of joint-venture companies paying high
salaries but requiring English-language skills in their workforce.
Innovation in language shifts tends to diffuse through social networks. People who interact on a
regular basis, who have common loyalties and identity and who like each other, tend to use
language in similar ways. Any change in the patterns of communication or in the structure of social
relationships in such networks is likely to lead to a change in language use. New communications
technology, such as the Internet, may be encouraging the formation of new kinds of social
affiliation and new ‘discourse communities’.
Language change does not move across geographical territories in a linear fashion. Linguistic
innovations, such as new pronunciations, tend to jump from one urban area to another, across
rural areas and across national borders. In this respect, they are similar to other changes brought
about by social contact through urban settings, or the adoption of some new kind of consumer
hardware. The growth of large cities in Asia will lead to many kinds of social change, including new
patterns of language use.
Young people are important leaders of change. Adolescence is perhaps an even more important
stage, where young people make the transition to a social life which is largely directed by
themselves, when they acquire new social networks and identities and feel the requirement for
appropriate language styles. They may take aspects of these identities through to adulthood.
An understanding of which languages the next generation of teenagers will be speaking and
learning is an important step in identifying future trends.
Language change may follow change in material circumstances. Language is often linked to
particular social and cultural practices. Rehousing schemes, shifts in employment and increased
wealth may all contribute to rapid linguistic change. This particularly contributes to “language loss”
such as the disuse of Gaelic in north-eastern Scottish fishing communities, or of Aboriginal
languages in Australia, in favour of English.
Social and geographical mobility cause language change. People moving, whether as migrant
labour to another country, or even within the same country (especially from rural areas to urban
ones), take their language with them, but also learn the language used in new home area.
The more mobile a society, the more open it will be to change.

The arrival of Hip Hop onto the music scene in Hong Kong
The music scene in Hong Kong has been dominated by Cantopop. Sam Hui is a Cantopop lyricist
and singer, he’s legendary for laying the foundation of the genre: easy-listening melody, simple
lyrics about the working class.

Crazy English
Crazy English is a brand name related to a non-traditional method of learning English in China
conceived by Li Yang. Li believes that the traditional way of learning English in China is ineffective.
Li Yang's method places heavy emphasis on practicing English orally. His method can be described
with the slogan “By shouting out loud, you learn”.
Students practise his technique by going behind buildings or on rooftops and shouting English.
They also go to his rallies and shout together; this helps them overcome their shyness (everybody
is doing it, so nobody is embarrassed).
In many ways it remains similar to the traditional pedagogic practices of Chinese education in that
it still relies on repetition and recitation.
Members of the school administration in China often disapprove of the method because they
believe it goes against the traditional Chinese values of modesty and restraint.

WE = WORLD ENGLISHES
World Englishes is a term for emerging localized or indigenized varieties of English, especially
varieties that have developed in territories influenced by the UK or the US.
The study of the World Englishes consists of: identifying varieties of English used in diverse
sociolinguistic contexts globally; analyzing how sociolinguistic histories, multicultural backgrounds
and contexts of function influence the use of English in different regions of the world.

Currently there are 75 territories where English is spoken either as a first language or as an
unofficial or institutionalized second language in fields such as government, law and education.
It’s difficult to establish the total number of Englishes in the world, as new varieties of English are
constantly being developed and discovered.
World English VS. World Englishes VS. Global Englishes
World English refers to the English language as “lingua franca” used in business, trade, diplomacy
and other spheres of global activity.
World Englishes refers to the different varieties of English and English-based creoles developed in
different regions of the world.
Global Englishes has been used by scholars in the field to emphasise the more recent spread of
English due to globalization, which has resulted in increased usage of English as a lingua franca
(ELF).

Global spread of English

The first diaspora involved relatively large-scale migration of mother-tongue English speakers from
England, Scotland and Ireland predominantly to North America and the Caribbean, Australia, South
Africa and New Zealand. Over time, their own English dialects developed into modern American,
Canadian, West Indian, South African, Australian and New Zealand Englishes. In contrast to the
English of Great Britain, the varieties spoken in modern North America and Caribbean, South
Africa, Australia and New Zealand have been modified in response to the changed and changing
sociolinguistic contexts of the migrants.
The second diaspora was the result of the colonization of Asia and Africa, which led to the
development of New Englishes, the second-language varieties of English. In colonial Africa, the
history of English is distinct between West and East Africa. English in West Africa began with trade,
particularly the slave trade. English soon gained official status in what are today Gambia, Sierra
Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon.
As for East Africa, extensive British settlements were established in what are now Kenya, Uganda,
Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, where English became a crucial language of the
government, education and the law. From the early 1960s, the six countries achieved
independence in succession; but English remained the official language and had large numbers of
second language speakers in Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi (along with Chewa).
English was formally introduced to the sub-continent of South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri
Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan) during the second half of the eighteenth century.
In India, English was given status through the implementation of Macaulay 'Minute' of 1835, which
proposed the introduction of an English educational system in India.
Over time, the process of “Indianisation” led to the development of a distinctive national character
of English in the Indian sub-continent.
British influence in South-East Asia and the South Pacific began in the late 18th century, involving
primarily the territories now known as Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
Papua New Guinea, also a British protectorate, exemplified the English-based pidgin: Tok Pisin.

Pidgin
A pidgin is a language that comes about as a result of contact between at least two groups who
speak different languages and who do not understand each other. Often the reason for this is trade
where there is a need for a simplified language.
Creole
Creoles are nativized pidgins, which means they are mother tongues. Children grow up as native
speakers of them. Creolization happens when people from different language groups live together,
necessitating a stable lingua franca. It is difficult to separate pidgins and creoles in actual use.

English as the language of others

If English is, numerically speaking, the language of 'others', then the center of gravity of the
language is almost certain to shift in the direction of the 'others'.
In the words of H. Widdowson, there is likely to be a paradigm shift from one of language
distribution to one of language spread.
The difference between Native and Non-Native speakers is not in terms of language knowledge but
cultural scenario.
If English is genuinely to become the language of 'others', then the 'others' have to be accorded –
or perhaps more likely, accord themselves – at least the same English language rights as those
claimed by mother-tongue speakers.

ELF as a Lingua Franca

ELF = contact language between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a
common (national) culture, and for whom English is the chosen Foreign language of
communication.
ELF users are now the ones shaping the language, rather than those for whom it is an L1.

Translinguals: speakers who demonstrate the ability to use their language(s) successfully across
diverse norms and codes in response to specific contexts and purposes.

LINGUISTICS
Linguistics is the science that studies language. Someone who studies linguistics is a linguist.
A linguist is not “someone who knows many languages”, that is being a POLYGLOT (not a
requirement for being a linguist).

Language principles
All languages of the world share some design features. Languages share some general
organizational mechanisms that distinguish them from other forms of communication.
While many animal communication systems may share some of these features, none has them all.
1. Double articulation: language uses a small number of sounds that are combined to
produce a large, but finite, number of words, which can be combined in an infinite number
of sentences.
2. Productivity: language can produce novel sentences that have never been uttered before.
3. Arbitrariness: there is no necessary connection between sound and meaning: the meaning
dog and the English word dog are connected arbitrarily as proven by the existence of the
word chien in French, which expresses roughly the same meaning.
4. Interchangeability: an individual can both be a speaker and a hearer.
 5. Displacement: language can be used to talk about things that are not present or do not
exist. Language can also be used to lie.

The subfields of Linguistics

• Phonetics
• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Pragmatics
• Text linguistics

Other fields within Linguistics

• Sociolinguistics (language in society)
• Psycholinguistics (psychology of language)
• Anthropological linguistics (anthropology of language, ethnolinguistics, etc.)
• Historical linguistics (the history of languages)
• Neurolinguistics (language and the brain)
• Language pedagogy (how to teach languages)
• Computational linguistics (computers and language)
• Many others, such as forensic linguistics (language and the law) and translation.

Combining dichotomies
• Prescriptive vs. Descriptive
• Diachronic vs. Synchronic
• Competence vs. Performance

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive

Prescriptive grammar: it refers to the popular view of grammar as a set of rules concerning what is
regarded as “correct” language to use.
Descriptive grammar: by contrast, it is one which is used to describe (and to a certain extent,
explain) the rules which have a bearing on how words are combined into sentences, meaning
attributed, how sound systems work, and so on.

Diachronic vs. Synchronic

Diachronic:
• How language changes through time
• Traces a word back to its origins
• Reconstructs languages that are no longer spoken
Synchronic:
• How language functions at any given moment in time
• Not concerned with the origin of words or languages.
Competence vs. Performance
Competence: the ability to produce a word (or sentence) and what you know about a word (or
sentence).
• What speakers know
• Internalized language: i-language
Performance: actually saying the word (or sentences) and the sounds you articulate and make.
• What speakers do
• Externalized language: e-language

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF LANGUAGE

Morpheme = any unit of meaning that cannot be broken down any further.
Lexeme = any entry in the lexicon of a speaker/language. Lexemes can be plurimorphemic.

Morphemes: Free and Bound

Free morphemes can appear alone and occur alone in discourse.
Consider the word “cats”. It contains two morphemes: the free morpheme (or “root” morpheme,
or “stem”) “cat” and the bound morpheme “-s” (marking the plural of a noun).
Bound morphemes are also called “affixes”. Affixes can be divided into: prefixes and suffixes.

Inflectional vs. Derivational morphemes

Some morphemes can be used to create new words from old ones; they are called derivational
morphemes. For example, the name for a person who performs and action (agent) is often formed
with the “agentive” derivational morpheme -er (buyer, seller, singer, etc.).
Inflectional morphemes simply mark grammatical categories: plurality (“cat-s”), tense (past,
continuous present), comparatives (“tall-er”), superlatives (“tall-est”), and 3rd pers. singular
(“eat-s”).

Post-truth
A post-truth situation is one in which people are less influenced by factual information than by
their emotions or by beliefs they already hold.
Post-truth (adjective): relating to a culture in which appeals to the emotions tend
to prevail over facts and logical arguments.

Where do new words come from?

The English language has roughly 500.000 words, but new words are being invented every day to
match the ever-changing needs of the speakers.
Derivational morphemes are only one way to get new words from old ones. There are also other
sources and processes.
The English language never sleeps, and neither does the dictionary. The work of revising a
dictionary is constant, and it mirrors the culture’s need to make sense of the world with words.
There are always new things to be named and new uses for existing words to be explained.
A release of new words is also a map of the workings of a dictionary, you get to see what we’ve
been up to and of how words from different contexts come to reside in the same place.
It all begins, in each case, with evidence of words in use. Each word follows its own path at its own
pace before its use is widespread enough to be included in a dictionary. We watch as words move
from specialized contexts to more general use and we make citations for each word in order to
draft our definitions.
“Whatevs”, “simples”, “chillax” (to calm down and relax, to take it easy), “sumfin” (something),
“Jafaican”, “Jedi”, “nomophobia” (anxiety about not having access to a mobile phone or mobile
phone services) and “easy-breezy” (informal, casual) have been added to the Oxford English
Dictionary.
Other words that have been added to the dictionary are “bioabsorbable” (bioassorbibile) and
“bottle episode” (in episodic television, a bottle episode is produced cheaply and restricted in
scope to use as few non-regular cast members, effects and sets as possible).

How to create a new word

• Derivation: using derivational morphemes (faxing)
• Compounding: putting two old words together (railway)
• Clipping: shortening a longer word (prof, auto, tele)
• Acronyms: using the initial letters of a set of words (NASA, REM); acronyms are different
from abbreviations in that acronyms use initial letters of words or of parts of words, and
sometimes are pronounced as if they are a new word. Abbreviations shorten the word, as
in tbsp. for tablespoon.
• Blends: new words can also be created by the blending of two existing words (“motel” =
“motor” + “hotel”; “brunch” = “breakfast” + “lunch”).
• Backformation: new words are (unconsciously) created by speakers when they no longer
analyze a word in its constituent morphemes. From “inflammable” derived “flammable”,
when the “in-” was perceived as the negation morpheme of “flammable”; from “burglar”
came “burgle”; “workaholic”, “edutainment”, etc. This phenomenon is also known as
“reanalysis” or “folk etymology”.
• Invention: speakers can also invent new words from scratch. This is often done in
advertising: “Kleenex”, “Xerox”, “Kodak”. Sometimes words start out as proper nouns and
end up being used as common nouns.

Borrowing
Languages in contact borrow words from each other as a result of linguistic interference processes.
Important factors of interlingual influence are geographical proximity, cultural exchanges and
national policies (direct intervention of academies may encourage the adoption of translation
equivalents rather than direct borrowing). Germanic languages have much shared lexis and syntax.
In other non-Germanic languages, English words may be imported as non-adapted borrowings
(ex. mouse in Italian) or else only the meaning may be taken by an already existing word in the
recipient language. Almost all European languages and, to lesser extent, non-European languages
are equipped with a number of Anglicisms.
A classification of borrowings:
1. Direct borrowings from a source language (SL) to a recipient language (RL) take shape in
different forms
● Non-adapted loanwords: a word or multi-word unit borrowed from English without
or with minor formal and semantic integration, so that it remains recognizably
English in the RL (ex. airbag, fitness, weekend, trend).
● Adapted loanword: a word or multi-word unit borrowed from the English language
with orthographic, phonological and/or morphological integration into the
structures of the RL. Semantically, RL meaning is close to SL meaning (ex. IT
monitoraggio = EN monitoring; IT standardizzare = EN to standard).
● False borrowing: a word or multi-word unit in the RL made up of English lexical
elements but unknown or used with a totally different meaning in English (ex. IT
smoking = British EN dinner jacket/American EN tuxedo; IT beauty case = EN vanity
case)
● Hybrid: a multi-word unit which freely combines an English element with a recipient
language element (ex. IT zanzara killer = EN killer mosquito)
2. Indirect borrowings are not immediately evident, because the SL model is reproduced in
the RL through native elements
● Calque: a word or a multi-word unit which translates an English item into the
recipient language (ex. IT carta di credito = EN credit card; IT marchio di fabbrica =
EN trademark)

Idioms and phraseology

Some units of language span more than one word. For example: “kick the bucket” means “die” but
consists of three words, none of which has much to do with death.
Idioms are quite frequent (especially if we count phrasal verbs as idioms: “deal with”, “start up”,
“put up”= tolerate, etc.). See also the case of “stock phrases” (How are you?) and “proverbs”. An
idiom is an expression whose meaning has little, often nothing, to do with the meanings of the
words in the expression itself. You have to know its “hidden” meaning. Used correctly, they can
amplify messages in a way that draws readers in and helps awaken their senses.
The main features of idioms:
● Syntactically restricted: idioms don’t permit the syntactic variability displayed in
other contexts
● Lack of substitutability: they are characterized by lexical integrity, synonymous
lexical items cannot be substituted in an idiom and the elements of the idiom can’t
be deleted or reversed
● Idioms are frequent in spoken language
● They belong to an informal register
● Idioms are figurative or metaphorical in meaning
● Idioms have an affective quality implying a certain affective stance
● They add colour and texture to language
 ● They create images that convey meanings beyond those of the individual words that
make them up
● They are culturally bound providing insight into the history, culture and outlook of
their users (most idioms have developed overtime from practices, beliefs and other
aspects of different cultures)
● The appropriate use of idioms makes language learners sound fluent
● Teaching and using idioms offers learner the opportunity to raise students’
awareness about the target culture and compare the cultural notions and values
expressed in the second language

Examples of idioms:
A bad apple/egg = a bad influence/someone who brings trouble
A couch potato = an idle person
A hard nut to crack = a difficult person to understand/a difficult problem to solve
A piece of cake = easy
A smart cookie = a clever person
Big cheese = an important person
Bread and butter = the necessities
Doesn’t cut the mustard = doesn’t meet the required standard
Food for thought = worth considering
Gone pear-shaped = gone unexpectedly wrong
In a nutshell = simply put
In a pickle = in trouble/mess
Like chalk and cheese = opposites
Like two peas in a pod = very similar
Not my cup of tea = not the type of thing I usually enjoy
Selling like hot cakes = selling quickly and in large quantities
The apple of my eye = the person I adore
The cream of the crop = the best
The icing on the cake = something positive that happens in an already very good situation but
sometimes something quite bad that happens in an already very bad situation
To be handed on a (silver) platter = to acquire something easily, without any effort on the
receiver’s part
To bring home the bacon = to earn the income
To butter someone up = to flatter someone in the hopes of receiving special treatment
To cry over spilt milk = to get upset over something that has already happened and cannot be
changed
To eat humble pie = to apologise and accept humiliation
To egg someone on = to urge someone to do something foolish
To go bananas/to go nuts = to lose control as a result of being extremely excited/annoyed
To spill the beans = to reveal (secret) information
To take something with a pinch of salt = to accept that a piece of information is probably
exaggerated
You can’t have your cake and eat it too = you can’t have the best of both worlds/you can’t have the
two mutually exclusive things you desire at once
The straw that broke the camel's back = seemingly minor or routine action which causes an
unpredictably large and sudden reaction, because of the cumulative effect of small actions
The last/final straw = the last in a line of unacceptable occurrences, provoking a seemingly sudden
strong reaction
Let sleeping dogs lie = do not investigate trouble/leave something alone if it might cause trouble

Collocation refers to the likelihood of co-occurrence of two or more lexical items. It involves words
that usually tend to co-occur together showing a frequency higher than chance and it concerns
syntagmatic attraction (ex. heavy rain. Heavy = collocate; rain = node word, the word that occurs
near a given word).
Collocations are a type of syntagmatic lexical relation (a relation at the level of surface structure),
they can’t be substituted with other linguistic units in a specific context. They are formal
statements of co-occurrence (ex. green collocates with jealousy as opposed to red or blue even
though there is no semantic reason for this association). The potential of items to collocate is
known as their collocability or collocational range.
Collocations are predictable to a greater or lesser degree: with some words they have a very narrow
collocational range, ex. spick and span (spick may only occur in this case); with some other words
they have very wide collocational range, ex. clean can occur in a wide variety of structures and
phrases: extremely clean, be clean, stay clean.

Idioms and their role in spoken English as a Lingua Franca

In L1 contexts, idioms serve as “territorial markers of social identity and group membership”.
In ELF contexts, there is no speech community in the traditional sense, since ELF happens primarily among
people speaking different L1s.
Multilingual ELF users begin a process of establishing and negotiating shared linguistic and transcultural
territory which they create through interaction.
ELF interactions in relation to idioms:
• are characterized by a cooperative atmosphere
• purpose: achieve mutual understanding
• ELF idioms
⮚ can enter ELF discourse without speakers’ and listeners’ awareness

⮚ may be signalled as instances of linguistic creativity brought about by speakers’ multilingual

repertoires.

Examples of ELF idioms Corresponding conventional idiom

Keep in the head Bear/keep sb/sth in mind
Turn a blank eye Turn a blind eye
Two different sides of the same coin Two sides of the same coin
Lexicography/Lexicographer
Lexicography is a branch of linguistics having to do with “lexicon”. It’s divided into two separate
groups:
● Practical lexicography = the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.
● Theoretical lexicography = the scholarly discipline of analyzing and describing the semantic,
syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships within the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language,
developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in
dictionaries, the needs for information by users in specific types of situations and how
users may best access the data incorporated in printed and electronic dictionaries (this is
sometimes referred to as “metalexicography”).
Lexicographer = a person devoted to research in the field of lexicography.

Dr. Johnson
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English
literature as a poet, playwright. Essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and
lexicographer. He published “A Dictionary of the English language” in 1755.

VOICE Corpus
VOICE Online is available as a free-of-charge resource for non-commercial research purposes.
VOICE 1.0 Online was published in May 2009 and is now being used by registered users all around
the globe. A revised version was released on 5 May 2011. As of January 2013, registered users will
be accessing VOICE 2.0 Online, a further updated version of the corpus that includes minor
revisions in some of the corpus texts.

THE WAY SENTENCES ARE PUT TOGETHER

Syntax = putting together morphemes/words to form sentences.
Syntax is based on the idea of grammaticality.
• The book is on the table
• Table the on is book*
The goal of syntax is to describe all the grammatical sentences in English, or any other language,
and show why the ungrammatical sentences aren’t acceptable.
When words are put together, they form larger grammatical units (language is not simply an
inventory of words). Words combine into larger units called PHRASES; phrases combine to form
SENTENCES.
SYNTAX establishes the set of rules that specify which combinations of words constitute
grammatical strings.

Phrase = any group of words that function as a constituent, either immediate or not.
Clause = a full sentence that has a subject and a verb.
It is traditional to represent the structure of a sentence with a TREE DIAGRAM that shows with
branches and nodes the process of breaking down the sentence.
Transformational grammar
Transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is, in the study
of linguistics, part of the theory of generative grammar that considers grammar to be a system of
rules that generate exactly those combinations of words which form grammatical sentences in a
given language.
TG involves the use of defined operations called transformations to produce new sentences from
existing ones.

Types of sentences
Verbs that do not take a direct object are intransitive (Mary sleeps, Mary laughs).
Verbs that have a direct object are called transitive (Mary kissed John).
Verbs that have two objects, a direct and an indirect object, are called ditransitive (Mary gave John
a book).

Sentences do not occur in isolation but in paragraphs (text linguistics/discourse analysis) or as

parts of conversation (conversational analysis).

Subordination and coordination

A clause is called a subordinate if it is placed “inside” another clause: Mary believes that John is an
ideal husband.
Another way to join sentences is coordination: Mary left and John went to bed.

Noam Chomsky
Chomsky deeply influenced the work on syntax by linguists, he is one of the geniuses of the 20th
century. He claims that the rules of grammar are governed by principles that are universal, in the
sense that all languages in the world obey them. He calls these principles universal grammar (UG).

THE MEANING OF WORDS

Words have meanings. The mental representation of the dog is the meaning of the word dog.
The word dog is a sign that allows us to connect the meaning and the referent.
The sign (=word) dog is made of a signifier (the sequence of sounds that make up the word) and a
signified (the meaning of the sign).

A language is much more than a set of structural parameters

It is the entirety of how speakers choose:
● to express themselves
● to package their ideas into words, sentences, and discourse to meet their communicative
and social needs.

The production of discourse is an interactive process that requires speakers:

 ● to draw upon several different types of communicative knowledge
● grammatical knowledge of sound, form, and meaning.
Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis is a research area and method for studying written or spoken language in
relation to its social context. It aims to understand how language is used in real life situations.
When you do discourse analysis, you might focus on:
• The purposes and effects of different types of language
• Cultural rules and conventions in communication
• How values, beliefs and assumptions are communicated
• How language use relates to its social, political and historical context
It can be applied to any instance of written or oral language, as well as non-verbal aspects of
communication such as tone and gestures.
Unlike linguistic approaches that focus only on the rules of language use, discourse analysis
emphasizes the contextual meaning of language.
It focuses on the social aspects of communication and the ways people use language to achieve
specific effects (e.g. to build trust, to create doubt, to evoke emotions or to manage conflict).
Instead of focusing on smaller units of language, such as sounds, words or phrases, discourse
analysis is used to study larger chunks of language, such as entire conversations, texts or
collections of texts.

Different aspects of communicative knowledge:

• the ability to use language to display personal and social identities
• to convey attitudes and perform actions
• to negotiate relationships between self and other
• the cognitive ability to represent concepts and ideas through language
• a textual ability to organize forms, and convey meanings, within units of language longer
than a single sentence

Two important factors in the analysis and articulation of discourse:

● Cohesion: happens at the level of the surface of the text
● Coherence: happens at the level of the meaning of the text

Cohesion
It refers to the syntactic or semantic connectivity of linguistic forms at the surface-structure level
of analysis.
There are certain features which are characteristic of texts and it is important to identify them in
order to establish what the properties of texts are and what it is that distinguishes a text from a
disconnected sequence of sentences.
A text can be: spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue or monologue, a single sentence, a
whole book.
The relation between any anaphoric item and its antecedent is a cohesive relationship: The boy
came in the room. He was wearing a red coat.
The anaphoric function of the pronoun gives cohesion to the two sentences so that we interpret
them as a whole.
The texture is provided by the cohesive relation that exists between he and the boy.
The items he and the boy have the same reference, they are called coreferential.
Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse is
dependent on that of another: The boy came in the room. He was wearing a red coat.
• The one presupposes the other.
• The one cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it.
• When this happens, a relation of cohesion between the two sentences is set up.

Halliday & Hasan (1976) identify five types of linguistic mechanisms in order for texts to have
cohesion:
1. Reference = a cohesive relation involving the identity of reference and consists in the
anaphoric relation of “the” to “the boy”
2. Substitution = a cohesive relation involving the replacement of one item by another
3. Ellipsis = a cohesive relation involving the omission of an item
4. Conjunction = makes explicit the casual relationship between the first and the second
sentence
5. Lexical cohesion

Some of the most common cohesive devices:

● Personal pronouns
● Determiners (the, such, the same, the other, both, etc.)
● Adverbials (they help to make discourse cohesive by showing how ideas are connected)
● Discourse markers (a set of linguistic expressions that function in cognitive, expressive,
social and textual domains)
● Parallelisms
● Explicit markers such as chapter and section titles
● Tables of content
● NPs

Coherence
Coherence in linguistics is what makes a text semantically meaningful. It is especially dealt with
in text linguistics. It refers to the functional connectedness or identity of a piece of spoken or
written language with other factors like language users’ knowledge of the world and the
interference they make, their assumptions in communication.
Coherence is achieved through syntactical features such as the use of deictic (relating to or
denoting a word or expression whose meaning is dependent on the context in which it is used such
as here, you, me, that one there, or next Tuesday), anaphoric (relating to an anaphoric usage
especially being a word or phrase that takes its reference from another word or phrase especially
from a preceding word or phrase) and cataphoric (being a word or phrase, such as a pronoun, that
takes its reference from a following word) or phrase elements or a logical tense structure, as well
as presuppositions and implications (areas of Pragmatics) connected to general world knowledge.
Coherence describes the way anything, such as an argument (or part of an argument) “hangs
together”. If something has coherence, its parts are well-connected and all heading in the same
direction. Without coherence, a discussion may not make sense or may be difficult for the
audience to follow. It’s an extremely important quality of formal writing and its essential for
argumentative texts.

Political discourse
Political discourse analysis is a field of discourse analysis which focuses on discourse in political
forums (such as debates, speeches, and hearings) as the phenomenon of interest. Political
discourse is also the informal exchange of reasoned views as to which alternative courses of action
should be taken to solve a societal problem.

Chilton
Chilton summarizes his view of political discourse with twelve propositions.
He also addresses the double value of politics: conflict and collaboration.
Politics as struggle for power, but also politics as cooperation to resolve clashes of interest.
Chilton links this distinction (conflict/cooperation) to pragmatics issues: non-cooperation (lying,
deceiving, dominating, etc.) in communication is possible only because there is a tacit
presupposition of cooperativeness in communication.

Wodak
Another influential political discourse analyst is Ruth Wodak (2009), exponent of the
discourse-historical approach.
In this approach the field of politics is viewed as segmented into a number of fields of action:
● law-making procedures;
● formation of public attitudes, opinion and will;
● inter-party formation of attitudes;
● organization of international relations;
● political advertising;
● political administration;
● political control.
Each field is associated with a distinct set of political sub-genres, giving persuasive pictures of the
sheer diversity of political discourse.
In her approach she combines:
• Rhetoric
• Text linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Applied linguistics
• Pragmatics
Her focus: relating language to society (in opposition to Chomsky and other grammar linguists),
maintaining that the study of language, isolated from any context, “would not give any insight into
social processes”.
Wodak identifies six dimensions of politics:
1. the staging/performance of politics (the front stage);
2. the everyday life of politics and politicians (the back stage);
3. the impact of politicians’ personality (charisma, credibility) on performance;
4. the mass-production of politics (media, advisors, spin-doctors) [= a spokesperson employed to
give a favourable interpretation of events to the media, especially on behalf of a political party];
5. the recontextualization of politics in the media;
6. participation in politics (power, ideology, gate-keeping, legitimacy, and representation).
For Wodak, argumentation is a strategy, more precisely a discursive strategy.
She lists five strategies:
1. Nomination (reference);
2. Predication;
3. Argumentation;
4. Perspectivation (involvement);
5. Intensification (mitigation).

I. and N. Fairclough
In I. and N. Fairclough’s approach, argumentation is viewed as verbal, social activity, in which
people attempt to criticize or justify claims; it is a complex speech act whose intended
perlocutionary effect is convincing an interlocutor to accept a standpoint.

Cognitive Linguistics
Cognitive linguistics is relatively a modern branch of linguistics. It was founded by George Lakoff
and Ronald Langacker. Lakoff coined the term "cognitive linguistics" in 1987 in his book "Women,
Fire, and Dangerous Things", one of his most famous writings. In addition to that, Lakoff had many
previous publications, discussing the role of various cognitive processes in the use of language.
Some of those previous publications include "The Role of Deduction in Grammar” and "Linguistics
and Natural Logic”.
Not soon after the field has emerged it was criticized by many prominent linguists. However, by the
end of the 1980s, the field of cognitive linguistics has attracted the attention of many people and
started to grow.
The journal of Cognitive linguistics was established in 1990 as the first journal specialized for
research in that field.

Conversation Analysis
A term used in linguistics to refer to a method of studying the sequential structure and coherence
of conversations when people linguistically interact.

Adjacency Pair
A term used in sociolinguistic analyses of conversational interaction to refer to the succession of
two linked turns, by different speakers, which make sense only taken together.
Adjacency pairs have a major role in:
1. initiating conversations
2. maintaining conversations
3. closing conversations

Sometimes a speaker may choose not to complete the adjacency pair immediately, but instead
delay it by introducing another adjacency pair.

Turn taking
One of the central issues in the analysis of conversation: how to regulate turn taking (who is to
speak).
Conversation = a sequence of conversational turns in which the contribution of each participant is
seen as a part of a co-ordinated and rule-governed behavioural interaction.

The rules governing turn-taking are:

• only one person should talk at a time (obvious)
• the rules which decide who should speak next in a group discussion (less easy to discover)

Overlapping of turns = competition for the floor.

Generally people tend to avoid overlaps because it is complex to follow what someone is saying
while someone else is speaking too. People have developed strategies to ensure that speakers who
have the floor or are speaking will not be interrupted.

Transition Relevance Place (TRP)

The place where the transition to a next speaker becomes possible. When a current turn ends and
the speaker signals its upcoming completion using prosodic means like accents, peaks, intonation,
etc.
Transition is not always automatic: co-participants might not take a next turn and current speakers
can extend their turns after the possible completion.
After a TRP the speaker has some options:
● To signal with appropriate means that the floor is available, (i.e. by making a hesitating
sound);
● To select the next speaker, (i.e. by asking a question).

This does not mean that speakers never interrupt. Some interruptions do not follow the
conventions of proper behaviour and are disruptive, other interruptions are intended to express
agreement or interest in what the speaker is saying. This is called “back channel”, it refers to the
listener’s behavior in an interaction and the reactions given to a speaker by way of feedback.
The feedback given by the listener may include:
• Monosyllabic responses, i.e. mhm
 • Short phrases, i.e. I guess so
• Utterance repetitions
• Sentence completions
• Non-verbal cues, i.e. nodding, gaze variation
Cooperation and Implicatures
One precondition to all sentences of all languages is that we assume that the other speakers are
telling the truth. Naturally, we know that this is not always the case and that speakers lie on
occasion but, as a general rule, we assume that speakers are telling the truth and are not trying to
deceive us.
Another assumption is that speakers are sticking to the point.
This led Paul Grice to formulate the principle of cooperation.

Grice’s Principle of Cooperation roughly states that a speaker’s conversation should be as effective
and cooperative as possible.
Listeners and speakers must speak cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be
understood in a particular way. The cooperative principle describes how effective communication
in conversation is achieved in common social situations. In social science generally
and linguistics specifically, the cooperative principle describes how people interact with one
another.
The cooperative principle can be divided into four maxims, called the Gricean Maxims, describing
specific rational principles observed by people who obey the cooperative principle; these
principles enable effective communication. Applying the Gricean Maxims is a way to explain the
link between utterances and what is understood from them.

Grice’s 4 Maxims
• Maxim of Quality: do not say what you believe to be false; do not say that for which you
lack adequate evidence.
• Maxim of Quantity: make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current
purposes of the exchange); do not make your contribution more informative than is
required.
• Maxim of Relation: be relevant.
• Maxim of Manner: avoid obscurity of expression; avoid ambiguity; be brief (avoid
unnecessary prolixity); be orderly.

Those who obey the cooperative principle in their language use will make sure that what they say
in a conversation furthers the purpose of that conversation. Obviously, the requirements of
different types of conversations will be different.
The cooperative principle goes both ways: speakers (generally) observe the cooperative principle,
and listeners (generally) assume that speakers are observing it.
This allows for the possibility of implicatures, which are meanings that are not explicitly conveyed
in what is said, but that can nonetheless be inferred.
When we do not follow the principle of cooperation (CP), we either lie, joke, or playact.
Not following the CP can also result in awkward or failed communication. For example, a speaker
who is obscure, unclear, or ambiguous, runs the risk of being misunderstood.

Grice did not, however, assume that all people should constantly follow these maxims.
Instead, he found it interesting when these were not respected, namely either "flouted" (with the
listener being expected to be able to understand the message) or "violated" (with the listener
being expected to not note this).
Grice's theory is often disputed by arguing that cooperative conversation, as with most social
behaviour, is culturally determined, and therefore the Gricean Maxims and the Cooperative
Principle cannot be universally applied due to intercultural differences.

Speech Acts
A speech act in linguistics is an utterance that has performative function in language and
communication distinguished by different aspects of the speaker's intention: there is the act of
saying something, what one does in saying it (such as requesting or promising) and how one is
trying to affect one's audience.
John Langshaw "J. L." Austin (1911 – 1960) was a British philosopher of language. He is
remembered primarily as the developer of the theory of speech acts.

Pragmatics: Speech Acts

• Locutionary act: what we say literally.
• Illocutionary act: the fact that saying something commits you to it (betting, promising,
swearing, naming, etc.). This is the force of the sentence, that you are trying to accomplish
it.
• Perlocutionary act: the effect the utterance has on its audience. This is what happens as a
result of the speech act.

Categorization of Speech Acts

• Representatives (assertions, claims and reports, etc.)
• Directives (requests, suggestions, commands, etc.)
• Expressives (thanks, apologies, complaints, etc.)
• Commissives (promises, refusals)
• Performatives (declaratives): the act of speaking itself performs the act (I sentence you to
life in prison, Class dismissed).

How to make a request

Three strategies:
1. Direct
2. Conventionally indirect
3. Non-conventionally indirect (hints)
Mitigating and softening
Mitigating: add “please”.
Softening: “Do you think I could…?”; “I was wondering if you could…?”; “It would really help if
you..”.; “Will you be able to perhaps…?”; “Can I ... for a minute, please?”.

MEANING
The point of view of linguists:
• Linguists are interested in the analysis of meaning in the context of everyday speech;
• They compare the way meaning is structured in a range of languages and how meaning
changes over time;
• They attempt to integrate meaning with the other components of general linguistic theory,
i.e. grammar, lexis.

Semantics: the branch of linguistics devoted to the study of meaning in language.

We can distinguish several types of meanings: lexical meaning, sentence meaning, grammatical
meaning and pragmatic meaning.
Lexical meaning is the meaning of words (cat = gatto).

Arbitrariness of the linguistic sign

Linguistic forms lack any physical correspondence with the entities in the world to which they refer.
e.g. Table / tavolo
The relationship between sound and meaning is said to be arbitrary or conventional.
The signifier and the signified are unrelated.
e.g. there is no special reason for a dog to be called dog.

Meaning and referent:

• are closely related;
• belong to different spheres (thoughts & real objects).

Signification: the relationship between sign and thing/concept.

Linguistic expressions (words and sentences) are said to be signs of the entities or states of affairs which
they stand for or of the concepts involved.
Signifier = the sequence of sounds that make up the word
Signified = the meaning of the sign

Some words in a language may be partly or wholly iconic because they reflect the properties of the
non-linguistic world, for example onomatopoeic expressions.

Semantic features
 • the components or the elements of a word’s meaning
• the meaning of a word can be described as the sum of its semantic features
i.e. girl might be analysed into such features: [young]; [female]; [human].
Semantic features have a dual nature. They can be either positive [+male] or negative [-male]. The same
semantic feature can be found in the meaning of more than one word, e.g. [+human].

Phonological features represent a small and finite number (phonemes form a small and closed class).
Semantic features represent a finite but considerably higher (words form an open and unlimited class).

Metaphor
• a figurative use of meaning
• a process of understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another
• an association of: a more concrete conceptual domain + the conceptual domain it helps organize

Metonymy
• the name of an attribute of an entity is used in place of the entity itself
• a kind of shift in meaning:
⮚ From the container to the contained

⮚ From a part to the whole

Synonymy
• It refers to the relation between two lexical items which have the same meaning
• Synonymy does not mean that two synonyms should be:
⮚ identical in meaning

⮚ interchangeable in all contexts

⮚ with identical connotations

• Synonymy occurs if items are close enough in their meaning to allow a choice to be made between
them in some contexts without any change of meaning of the sentence as a whole
• Context is fundamental to decide whether a set of lexical items is synonymous

Antonymy
Words with opposite meanings
• Graded antonyms have degrees of difference
e.g. big ...... small
normal
• Ungraded antonyms refer to an either/or contrast
e.g. single - married

Denotation and Connotation

Denotation:
• denotational meaning corresponds to the literal meaning
• the set of properties that something has to have to allow the expression to be applied to it
 • the denotation of a sign is commonly assumed to correspond to its intension (the set of defining
properties which determines the applicability of a term).
Connotation:
• all aspects of meaning that go beyond its sense
• the emotional association with a word (personal/communal)

Connotations cover a broad and indefinite range of meanings that cover disparate areas.
Connotative meaning is very difficult to identify and it’s like a cloud of associative and evocative meaning
that surrounds the denotative core of the more stable meaning of a word.

Affective Connotations have to do with the feelings or attitudes of the speakers.

e.g. resistance fighter; terrorist
If you label someone who fights a government as:
● a resistance fighter implies that you agree with his/her goals
● a terrorist implies the opposite

Collocative connotations pertain to the linguistic environment in which an expression usually occurs.
Social connotations: when we use different levels of formality according to the context and to the person
who we are speaking to.
Reflected connotations are associated with other meanings of a linguistic expression that may be activated
even when they are irrelevant in the situation.
Individual or restricted connotations are associations that an individual speaker or a small group of
speakers may develop as a result of their everyday experiences.
Coded connotations are the aspects of meaning that are evoked by cultural or literary codes.

Ambiguity
The property of having more than one meaning. This is also called polysemy (a lexical item which has a
range of different meanings as opposed to monosemy).
A large proportion of the vocabulary of a language is polysemic/polysemous. Language speakers prefer to
economize on effort whenever possible, one way of achieving this is to exploit the same material (the same
word) for multiple purposes (to express multiple meanings).
Homonymy is a lexical form that in a language accidentally carries 2 or more distinct and unrelated
meanings. This type of ambiguity is called contrastive because the two meanings are by nature
contradictory (in a given context one automatically excludes the other).
Disambiguation = the process whereby the various meanings of a word are discarded from the other
meanings on the basis of the sentence and the context in which the word is used. Once words have been
disambiguated and a sentence has a clear meaning, the sentence acquires a truth value.

Sentence meaning
Lexical meanings are stored in the mental lexicon in our heads, but sentence meanings are calculated every
time we hear a sentence.
The sentence meaning is made up of the meanings of the lexical items or the words.
But also, taking their order into account. That's why we call it compositional. So words can change meaning
depending on what sentence they're in. What is the sentence meaning? That's the message of the whole
sentence. And about each sentence we know whether it is true or false. That's its meaning.
Grammatical meaning
Grammatical meaning is absolutely essential for the meaning of the whole sentence. Consider the two
sentences, "Jane eats sushi" and "Jane ate sushi". They contain two identical words, Jane and sushi. But the
third, the verb, captures a grammatical difference in tense and aspect.
We understand that the first sentence, "Jane eats sushi", refers to a present habit, but not an ongoing
event. While the second sentence is very different. It may mean that Jane used to like sushi and eats sushi,
but it can also mean that she ate sushi on one occasion in the past. Grammatical meanings are reflected in
the endings of words. They are what linguists called inflection or inflectional morphology.

Pragmatic meaning
Pragmatic meaning depends on knowledge of the world and the discourse situation.
We shall illustrate this meaning with what linguists call implied meaning. Consider the following example of
a well known pragmatic inference. When we hear the sentence "Some professors are smart", we actually
understand that the speaker wants to say "not all professors are smart". If the speaker wanted to say all
professors are smart, he or she would have said "professors are smart" or "all professors are smart".

Implied meaning
Since she or he didn't do that, and said "some professors are smart", then the implication is that she or he
actually means not all professors are smart. Our understanding of the sentence is not based on the lexical
items only or the sentence message, but on that pragmatic meaning that comes on top of all the other
meanings.

Deixis
The branch of pragmatics that studies deictic words. It efers to those features of language which refer
directly to personal, temporal or locational characteristics of the situation within which an utterance takes
place. Their meaning is relative to that situation.
Words which refer backwards or forwards in discourse:
● anaphora: The use of a word referring back to a word used earlier in a text or conversation, to avoid
repetition
● cataphora: The use of a word or phrase that refers to or stands for a later word or phrase.

Types of deixis
• Personal deixis (me, you)
• Spatial deixis ( here, there)
• Temporal deixis (now, then)
They can be: proximal or distal. All these expressions depend, for their interpretation, on the speaker and
hearer sharing the same context.

Forms of address
An important form of social deixis influenced by such aspects of interaction as familiarity, solidarity and
respect.
Honorifics are synctactic and morphological distinctions used to express levels of politeness or respect,
especially in relation to the compared social status of the participants.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
A theory of the relationship between language and thought developed by the American anthropological
linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. Also known as the theory of linguistic relativity.
The hypothesis states that language determines the way people perceive and organize their worlds.
The theory has two parts:
1. Linguistic determinism = the idea that people’s language dictated the way we saw the world
2. Linguistic relativity = the idea that translating ideas from one language to another was extremely
difficult, perhaps impossible
Language and Dialect
Accent = those features of pronunciation which identify where a person is from, regionally or socially.
Regional accents can relate to any place or area: rural communities, urban communities, national groups
speaking the same language, our impression of other languages.
Social accents relate to the cultural and educational background of the speaker.
Accent refers to pronunciation only, dialect refers to grammar and vocabulary.
A regional or social variety of language can be defined by its:
• Phonology
• Vocabulary
• Syntax

Standard language
• the agreed-upon model taught in school and used in the media
• cuts across regional differences
• provides a unified means of communication
• provides an institutionalized norm which can be used in the mass-media, or in teaching the
language to foreigners

Linguistic forms or dialects which do not conform to this norm are referred to as substandard or
non-standard.

Dialect continuum
Variation tends to lie along a continuum:
• a gradual passage from one dialect to another
e.g. in the case of related languages Swedish, Norwegian, Danish
• from one language to another

Code-Switching
Code-switching occurs when speakers are bilingual (when people speak two languages) or bidialectal (when
people speak two dialects).
Spanglish is an example of Spanish-English code-switching.

Each speaker has his or her own individual way of speaking, his or her variety of language, called Idiolect.

Dialectology
The systematic study of all forms of dialect, but especially regional dialect. Also called linguistic geography
or dialect geography.
If a number of distinctive items belonged to a particular area, this was the evidence for saying that a dialect
existed.
It was possible to show where a dialect ended and the next began by:
1. drawing lines around the limits of use
2. postulating the existence of a dialect boundary where a group of isoglosses fell together

When many isoglosses surround or separate the same group of people the speech of that group is different
in a number of ways from the other groups near it. A bundle of isoglosses may mark a dialect/language
boundary.
CORPUS
A corpus is a large, principled collection of naturally occurring texts (written or spoken and stored
electronically) that is used for language research.
These texts include language from actual language situations such as letters, meetings, friends chatting,
class assignments, books, surveys, questionnaires, newspapers articles.
The design of the corpus must be principled, i.e. the goals of the researcher shape the design of the corpus
and guide the collection of texts that need to be representative of the type of language that the corpus is
intending to capture.

A principled collection of texts:

⚫ written/spoken

⚫ authentic

⚫ representative

⚫ digitalized

⚫ searchable

Types of corpora
1. Specialised corpora (e.g. La Repubblica Corpus: the language of Italian newspapers)
2. General corpora – much larger. (e.g. The British National Corpus: 100 million words of spoken and
written British English)
3. Multilingual corpus (e.g. made up of texts from two or more languages)
4. Parallel corpus (e.g. EUROPARL7: includes exactly the same texts translated in different languages)
5. Comparable corpora – a collection of similar texts in different languages or language varieties (e.g.
the LOB Corpus, comparison between American English and British English varieties)
6. Learner corpus – language use created by people learning a particular language. (e.g. the
International Corpus of Learner English)
7. Historical or Diachronic corpus (e.g. Helsinki corpus – 1.5 million words of texts from 700 AD to
1700 AD)
8. Monitor corpus – continually being added to. (e.g. the Bank of English)

Which are the criteria used to select the texts of a corpus?

⚫ Availability: texts rights, texts that are easy to find (libraires, archives), texts that are easy to collect
(paper texts or digitalized texts);
 ⚫ Topic: general or specialized texts (legal or medical texts), films, TV series, text produced by
learners;
⚫ Text type: interviews, newspaper articles, literary works, institutional archives, biographies, reviews,
conversations, tweets.

We can use corpora for:

⚫ extracting information from texts

⚫ comparing different texts (i.e. from different languages)

⚫ automatically categorizing texts

⚫ gathering information about language principles

⚫ analizing the behaviour of words

Practical applications of corpora:

⚫ Research in linguistics

⚫ Lexicology – the study of words

⚫ Lexicography – compilation of dictionaries

⚫ Automatic translation

⚫ Teaching languages

⚫ Marketing (analyzing customer satisfaction, improving sales performance)

A corpus can be made up of:

⚫ a single text (a literary work)

⚫ several texts (newspaper articles)

⚫ hundreds or thousands of microtexts (text fragments, messages, reviews, titles, tweets, posts)

Frequency lists
The frequency list of a corpus includes its most frequent words together with their number of occurrence.
By looking at the frequency list, we can usually get an idea of the topic of the corpus (general/specialized,
written/spoken). If we know how many words are included in a corpus, we can get an idea of what we are
investigating.
Prepositions, articles, conjunctions = grammatical or functional words. They are frequently used in all text
types and are usually found on the top of the list.
Nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs = lexical or content words. They belong to open classes of words where
new words are always added. They carry the content of the message.
Collocation and Colligation
Two concepts associated with the distributional properties of linguistic items in actual language use. They
refer to the likelihood of co-occurrence of:
⚫ two or more lexical items (collocation)

⚫ grammatical categories (colligation)

Collocation
Words that usually tend to co-occur together showing a frequency higher than what would be expected by
chance. A syntagmatic attraction.
Example: heavy rain.
Heavy = collocate (the word that occurs near a given word);
Rain = node word (the word we are interested in).

Strong collocation: one of the words of the collocation does not collocate frequently with any other words,
e.g. ‘dulcet tones’ may be regarded as strong
Medium collocation: one of the words that made up the collocation collocates with a reasonable, but
limited number of other words, e.g. ‘severe winter’, the adjective severe collocates with punishment,
discipline, problem, etc..
Weak collocation: the node word can be collocated with a multitude of other words, e.g. the collocation
‘good man’ may be regarded as weak

Colligation
The significant occurrence of a word with grammatical words or with grammatical categories.
Example: as + ADVERB + as + NOUN + can (as much as you can)

Corcondances
Corcondances show:
⚫ the shades of meaning of a word in real contexts;

⚫ the syntactic and grammatical context where words are used;

⚫ the behaviour of a word;

⚫ collocations.