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

Contact Languages

Bilingualism

Routine use of two languages by a speaker or a community.

Diglossia

Imbalance between two languages spoken in a bilingual community, one language is imposed on the other.

Lingua Franca

A tool of communication between people who have different native languages.

Pidgin

Mixed codes resulting from the combination of morphological, syntactic, and phonetic features of one language with the lexicon of another. A pidgin can become the native language of a community, in which case it would be a creole.

Language Varieties

Historical/Diachronic Stages in the Evolution of Castilian

Modern Spanish originates from medieval Castilian, a dialect of Latin influenced by Basque. There are four stages in the development of Castilian:

1. Medieval

Context and Genesis

Public debate throughout the nineteenth century created new psychiatric institutionalization centers, psychological studies, and information platforms, creating modern psychiatry.

Anys90: Cesare Lombroso identifies an inseparable inheritance disorder associated with genius and degeneration.

Figure of the crazy in Spain: "If Verdaguer" Final Century: related to medicine, crime, and literature.

Reflex novel process popularization topic of mental illness: Creating characters with attributes and manifestations from medical discourse through fictional debate on the limits of madness.

Serrallonga Daniel: A Star Away

Exit Chapter I, VII, and VIII. The history of Serrallonga we tell from other person perspectives, views, diss.

Three blocks:... Continue reading "Serrallonga: Mental Illness and Degeneration in 19th Century Literature" »

Romantic Literature: Characteristics

• Importance attached to freedom of originality and individualism.
• Projection of rebellion and escapism into nature.
• Nationalism.

Poetry Traits

• Use of topics such as love, loneliness, and passion.
• Rhetorical language.

Prose was used, especially in fiction and journalism.

Realist Literature: Characteristics

• Sentimental exaltation replaced by observation.
• Plausible reality is portrayed, and criticism is present.
• The novel is the most cultivated genre.

Realistic Novel Features

• Interest in reality and everyday life.
• Treatment of current issues with objectivity and realism.
• Critical presence of the omniscient narrator.

Realism and Naturalism in Spain

• Prereality: Began in 1849 with Fernán Caballero, characterized by a moralizing

Morphological Units

Morphology requires identifying and describing extra units, which are the PABRA, root, base, and the morpheme.

• Word: Minimal free form. You can change its position in a sentence (but you can change the article by the noun). Its features are:
  • Separability: i.e., between two units, you can add others.
  • Potential pause: prior or posterior that delimits the unit.
  • If bounded by several morphemes, they are inseparable and have a fixed order.
• Root: Is the basic segment or constant in any significant word. It results from removing all morphemes that accompany it.
• Theme: Part of the underlying word for flexion, remaining stable in all the reflexive forms. It is the result of diminishing grammatical accidents. It can be simple or complex.

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

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" »

Phonic Resources

Alliteration

Repetition of phonemes or syllables in several words.

Paronomasias

Slight phonetic changes involved.

Diafora

Disparate meanings: repetition of a word with different meanings.

Morphosyntactic Resources

Anaphora

Repetition of one or more words at the beginning of successive verses or statements.

Epiphora

Repetition of a word at the end of several verses.

Anadiplosis

Repeating the last element of a group of words at the beginning of the next group.

Epanadiplosis

Repetition of a word at the beginning and end of a verse or sentence.

Polysyndeton

Repetition of conjunctions which does not require syntax.

Poliptoton

Repeating the same word with different grammatical accidents.

Enumeration

Sequence of words with the same syntactic function.... Continue reading "Rhetorical Devices" »

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" »

Semantic Language Evolution Explained

Semantic changes occur when words are no longer used because they are no longer useful, leading to the appearance of new ones that enrich the vocabulary according to the needs of the moment.

Drivers of Semantic Change

• Foreign Influence: Incorporating loanwords, both justified and unjustified, from other languages.
• Need for New Names (Neologisms): New realities necessitate the creation of new terms.
• Linguistic Causes: These can be phonetic, leading to a divergent phonetic evolution of a word, or motivated by morphosyntactic characteristics.
• Social Causes: A word may become a specialized term, or sometimes the opposite occurs, where a specialized term becomes generalized.
• Psychological Causes: Some changes originate

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" »