Notes, abstracts, papers, exams and problems of Language

Chapter 7: A Soldier's Prayer

A soldier in a trench is praying to Jesus, asking him to save him from the bomb attacks around him. He promises to be the best Christian possible if he survives. Even though the attacks immediately move away, he never fulfills his pledge in his entire life.

Characters

• Soldier
• Narrator
• Girl in the brothel

Setting

In the battle scene, we can sense fear, death, and anger. In the brothel, it is much happier, full of joy, peace, and pleasure.

Narrator

The narrator seems to be internal, but at the same time, he is omniscient (9).

Theme

The narrator is ashamed and hasn't forgotten what happened at Fossalta, so he's telling everyone the story in the third person, but letting slip that it was he who was praying. The last sentence... Continue reading "War and Peace: Two Short Stories by James Joyce" »

Understanding Linguistic Diversity

Linguistic Communities: A linguistic community is a group of people who share the same language. However, not all members of a community speak identically.

Types of Linguistic Varieties:

• Historical Varieties: These result from changes over time.
• Geographical Varieties: Language differences develop in different regions as a language spreads across a territory.
• Social Varieties: Certain social groups (e.g., based on age, sex, or social position) align with specific language patterns.

Speakers adapt their language usage to different communicative situations.

Standard Language

The cultural level of inhabitants within a language community explains linguistic differences. Certain groups have more prestige and are seen as... Continue reading "Understanding Linguistic Diversity: Varieties, Standards, and Taboos" »

Change: The narrative shifts from multiple characters in the prologue to focusing on one main character. There's also a change in the narrator, moving from first person to a third-person omniscient perspective. The tower is a key symbol representing the protagonist. Purpose: To reflect a family's history through fragmented perspectives, mirroring life's broken nature. The story is pieced together from these fragments. Topic: The story of a nuclear family, from its growth to its eventual collapse. Structure: The narrative is closed, consisting of three parts and 52 chapters.

Part 1: Approach

This section introduces the main characters and their relationships in a realistic manner. It begins with an epigraph. Several characters harbor a secret,... Continue reading "Family Saga: Structure, Characters, and Narrative Shifts" »

Galdós tells the adventures of the beautiful and poor girl Isidora Rufete, who, because of the lies told by her father, believes she belongs to a noble family and starts a lawsuit to obtain recognition of her rights. Her conviction makes her develop a noble, aristocratic pride that leads her to drop out of what could have been a modest life, more or less happy. She rejects a boyfriend who is a doctor with a good future career, is unable to work, acquires very expensive habits, and falls for a ruined marquis who will bring money and continually impregnate her with a son she will never want to recognize.

So as not to relent in her aspirations, and while litigation is pending, she is forced to bail herself out by becoming the mistress of men in... Continue reading "Isidora: Pride, Fall, and Society in Galdós' Novel" »

Asyndeton or Juxtaposition: Connecting without connectors.

Parataxis: Joining two clauses without a hierarchical relationship. Includes coordination and asyndetic sentence connection at the beginning, middle, or end of the second clause.

Hypotaxis: Joining two clauses with a hierarchical relationship.

Pseudo-Coordination (Greenbaum and Quirk 1997): Coordinating conjunctions with an idiomatic sense. Intensification, Continuation/Repetition, Different Classes (Identical Coordination Elements), Quantity.

Cohesion II: Lexical Mechanisms

A. Iteration

Repetition (can include structural variations), Synonymy, Hyponymy, General Word

B. Semantic Associations Between Words

1. Opposition (Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics)
   1. Complementary: male/female,