Linguistic Signs, Monemes, and Literary Analysis Essentials

Linguistic Sign Features

Root: The root is the carpenter-joiner and wood SIGIF.

Morpheme: It is the -er meaning 'person who works with' and the -o meaning 'male', while -s refers to the plural.

Characteristics of the Linguistic Sign

• Biplane: It consists of two levels. The signifier (expression level) is the string of sounds or spellings (e.g., the signifier of 'niño' is /n/ /i/ /ñ/ /o/). The signified (content level) is the concept in our minds associated with the signifier (e.g., 'niño' means 'young person').
• Arbitrary: The meaning of 'young person' varies by language: 'niño' in Spanish, 'warm' in Quechua, and 'boy' in English.
• Articulate: It is composed of smaller parts.

Monemes: Units of Meaning

The first articulation consists of units that possess meaning. For example, the sentence "Mis amigos triunfaron" decomposes into: mi-amig-o-s triunf-aron.

Moneme Classes

• Lexeme (Root): The part carrying primary meaning. Example: In "amigos", the root is "amig-" (person for whom one feels affection). In "triunfaron", the root is "triunf-" (the action of achieving a goal).
• Morpheme: The part that adds secondary significance to the lexeme. It is grammatical (e.g., -s, -o, -aron) and expresses gender, number, time, or mood.

Derivative Morphemes: Prefixes (e.g., des-, anti-, in-) are added at the beginning, while suffixes (e.g., -azo, -ito, -al) are added at the end.

Phonemes

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound, such as /g/ /a/ /t/ /o/ in "gato". They are not signs because, for example, /g/ has no inherent meaning, but it allows us to distinguish between "gato" (cat) and "pato" (duck).

Punctuation: The Semicolon

Rules:

• To separate items in a list when one of them already contains a comma.
• To separate two or more independent sentences that are closely related in meaning.
• To precede connectors such as but, while, yet, and however when they separate two long expressions.

Main and Secondary Ideas

The main idea exposes the most important content of a text. Secondary ideas provide additional data to expand, exemplify, or demonstrate the main idea.

Poetic Metrics

Metrics provide rhythm or a special sound to verse. It is used to measure the number of syllables in a line.

Focus on the Last Word of a Verse

• If the word is acute (oxytone), add one syllable.
• If the word is serious (paroxytone), the count does not change.
• If the word is proparoxytone (esdrújula), subtract one syllable.