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

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" »

Joan Mari: Life and Work

Life

Born in 1948, Joan Mari is a prominent figure who now resides in San Sebastian. He completed engineering studies at university but never actively pursued a career as an engineer.

Work

His literary career began with the publication of his first novel in 1976. Titled Babilonia, this work quickly gained international recognition and is widely read. The novel delves into the history of the village of Babylon and its inhabitants. A central theme throughout the book is the continuous conflict and tense atmosphere, particularly concerning a "brother-drugs" dynamic. The title itself, Babilonia, is deeply influenced by themes of calamity and turmoil.

Ramon Leandro: Life and Literary Contributions

Life

Ramon Leandro was born in... Continue reading "Basque Literary Figures and Core Linguistic Principles" »

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" »

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,

Properties of Linguistic Signs

Linguistic signs possess several key properties:

• Arbitrariness: The relationship between the signifier (the form of the sign) and the signified (the concept it represents) is conventional, not natural.
• Discontinuity: Linguistic signs are distinct units, separate from one another.
• Linearity: In spoken language, sounds are produced sequentially, one after another, forming a chain in time as they reach the receiver.
• Immutability: From an individual speaker's perspective at a given time, the link between signifier and signified is fixed and cannot be easily changed by the individual. (Note: Language itself is mutable and changes over time within the community).

The Linguistic Sign and Its Components

A sign consists of distinct... Continue reading "Linguistic Signs, Literary Terms, and Medieval Spanish Poetics" »