Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for Language and literature

Themes and Social Critique in Lazarillo de Tormes

The protagonist's life often revolves around deception and survival. Many characters are representative of Spanish society of the time. The narrator critiques this society, highlighting its pervasive poverty and the plight of the dispossessed. A constant motif in the work is religion; the narrator subtly critiques the clergy and false piety. The concept of honor is also explored throughout the novel, criticizing its external, superficial manifestation. With Lázaro, the protagonist and narrative diverge significantly from the traditional heroic figures prevalent in novels of the time. The main character is a common man, an antihero.

Literary Style and Language of Lazarillo

The language is direct...

Narration and Description: Narration is a text type where a narrator tells a story about characters in a specific place and time. Description details a person, object, place, or process. Basic text forms (narrative, description, and dialogue) can appear individually or combined in a single piece.

Statements: Statements (words, phrases, sentences) are minimal communication units, separated by pauses, conveying a complete message. A simple sentence has one verb; multiple verbs create a complex sentence.

Using the Dictionary: Dictionary entries may include information on etymology, gender, grammatical category, meanings, expressions, usage fields, and more. To find a word, locate the infinitive form; nouns and adjectives are listed in the masculine...

Mercè Rodoreda and Gurguí was born in Barcelona in the district of Sant Gervasi on 10 October 1908. She is known primarily as a novelist and short story writer, but also wrote several plays and poetry. Growing up in a quiet neighborhood and surrounded by the love of her parents, especially her grandfather, she developed a passion for reading.
In 1928, she married her maternal uncle, John Gurguí, who was fourteen years older than her. He had gone to America when he was very young and had become quite wealthy by 1921. This marriage, which she never accepted, along with the birth of their only son, George Gurguí, became a traumatic experience for her. She felt immense guilt over her child's mental illness, which forced him to be interned...

Theme 1: Properties of the Linguistic Sign

The linguistic sign possesses several defining characteristics:

• Arbitrariness: The relationship between the signifier and the meaning is established by convention; it is an arbitrary ratio.
• Discontinuity: The linguistic sign is discontinuous because it can be segmented (e.g., librito).
• Linearity: In oral communication, sounds are emitted one after another so that they arrive at the receiver in a sequence.
• Immutability and Mutability: It is said that signs and languages are immutable because their form and meaning are given to us, yet they can also change over time.

Functions of Language

Language serves various purposes depending on the focus of the communication:

• Referential or Representational: Corresponds

Core Business and Economic Concepts

Defining the Company

The company is the socio-economic unit in which working capital and management are coordinated to produce goods or services, meeting the demands of the common good. Necessary elements include: capital, labor, and material resources.

Industrial vs. Business Services

The primary difference lies in the nature of the work:

• Industrial Services: Involve working directly with raw materials (e.g., a carpenter).
• Business Services: Provide intangible services (e.g., a bus company).

Understanding VAT (Value Added Tax)

VAT is a tax that is paid on the added value of purchased products or services.

Information Management and Processing

Phases of the Information Cycle

1. Collection: The time required to gather data

Lexical Relations

1. Synonymy

Words with similar meanings can arise due to various factors:

• Archaisms: Words falling into disuse.
• Dialectical variations.
• Technological advancements.
• Colloquialisms: Informal language use.
• Standard lexicon: General vs. specific terms.

2. Antonymy

Words with opposite meanings can be categorized as:

• Complementary: One term negates the other (e.g., single-married).
• Gradual: Opposition on a scale (e.g., big-small).
• Reciprocal: One term implies the other (e.g., buying-selling).

3. Hyponymy and Hypernymy

These describe hierarchical relationships between words:

• Hyponymy: A more specific term (e.g., pink, purple are hyponyms of color).
• Hypernymy: A more general term (e.g., color is a hypernym of pink, purple).
• Co-hyponyms: Terms sharing

Workday and Weekly Distribution

Maximum Work Week:

Defining Actual Working Time

• 1) Actual working time includes the time spent by the worker on operations prior to carrying out a job.
• 2) Training time regarding the prevention of occupational hazards is considered actual work time.
• 3) Time spent by the employee commuting from home to the workplace is not considered actual work time.
• 4) Neither the change of clothes nor time spent on personal toiletries is included in actual work time.

Rest Period Limits

• b) Workers must have at least 12 hours of rest between workdays.
• c) Minimum weekly rest days can be accumulated for up to fourteen days, with one and a half days being uninterrupted. For those under 18 years of age, rest days shall be at least 2 uninterrupted

System Requirements and Data Architecture

Online vs. Interactive Systems

Online systems require a higher processor than interactive systems because they necessitate a very short response time, and data is constantly being analyzed. Associated costs are often higher.

Data Architecture

• Centralized: Information resides in one location once all systems are centralized.
• Distributed: Instead of using one large PC, several smaller systems are utilized (Distributed System).

Example: In a centralized system (e.g., Kobe City), updating all users simultaneously can be challenging.

Software Development Tools (SW Tools)

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)

• UPPER CASE Tools: Ranging from requirements capture to generating the database scripts.
• LOWER CASE Tools:

Understanding Language Functions

• Referential (Representative): Focuses on the context, conveying objective information about reality.
• Expressive (Emotive): Focuses on the sender, expressing emotions, attitudes, or subjective feelings.
• Conative (Appellative): Focuses on the receiver, aiming to influence or elicit a response from them.
• Phatic: Focuses on the communication channel, used to establish, maintain, or close communication (e.g., social greetings).
• Metalinguistic: Focuses on the code itself, using language to talk about language.
• Poetic: Focuses on the message for its own sake, emphasizing aesthetic or artistic qualities of the language.

Spanish Language Varieties and Dialects

Castilian Spanish: First appearances in the Glosas Emilianenses (...

Linguistic Connectors: Classification and Usage

Additives

• Continuative: and, also, even, including cough, moreover, still, too.
• Distributive: neither... nor, or, on the other hand, some... others.
• Order: to start, until now, check before, at this moment, now, now that, where, until then, finally, in short, in fact, generally.

Contrastive Connectors

• Concessive: even that, although, much by little, all that, though.
• Adversative: but, however, on the contrary, that and everything.

Disjunctive Connectors

• Reformulation: or, well, either, that is, in effect, by the way.
• Exemplification: for example, and as such, in short.

Consecutive and Comparative Connectors

• Causal: because, since, to.
• Consecutive: therefore, so that, then.
• Conditionals: if, if, unless, whereas,