Understanding Linguistic Registers and Sentence Structure

Linguistic Registers

Linguistic registers vary based on context and formality:

• Informal/Colloquial: General theme, daily use, oral channel, subjective intentionality, low formality. Often involves discussion and avoidance of known roots, colloquialisms. Generally denotative of language.
• Formal Standard: Generally oral or written, objective, medium to high formality. Avoids colloquialisms. Denotative language.
  • Written: Newspapers, signs, notices, informative texts.
  • Oral: News media, etc.
• Scientific/Technical: Specialized, written or oral, objective, high enunciative level. Uses symbols, jargon (monosemantic terms), and roots (Greek or Latin elements) or Anglicisms. Denotative language only.
  • Written: Journal articles, technical reports, theses.
  • Oral: Conferences.
• Literary: General, usually written, subjective, usually high formality. Characterized by great expression, artificiality, often complex syntax, using all words of the language (even vernacularisms). Connotative, figurative, polysemous, symbolic. It promotes diversity of interpretations and access to realities difficult to explain. Includes poetry (epic, lyric), fiction (novel, short story, prose), drama (comedy, drama, tragedy), and essays.

Sentence Coordinates and Subordination

Coordinates

When proposals are on the same syntactic level or rank.

Subordinate

When the proposition has a particular syntactic function with respect to the main verb.

Types of Coordination

• Copulative: (and, not) - Addition
• Disjunctive: (or, either/or) - Alternative
• Distributive: (neither... nor, either... or, now... now) - Alternative
• Adversative: (but, however) - Opposition
• Explanatory: (i.e., that is) - Clarification
• Causal/Ilative: (because, so, therefore) - Deduction
• Continuative: (therefore, moreover, furthermore) - Accumulation

Subordinate Clauses (Adjectival/Relative)

Relative pronouns introduce these clauses:

• That: (The girl that explains jokes will receive a prize.)
• Where: (The setting where they met.)
• Who: (The women who are more confident.)
• Where (Place): (This is the place where we went on the hidden path.)
• Who/Which/That/Whose (Possessive Relative): (Functioning as a Complement of the Noun (CN) on neutral: After Ouna's entire prayer.)

Compound Sentences

These are made up of two or more propositions or sentence structures, each with the articulation of a subject and a predicate. Propositions can maintain two types of relationships:

1. Coordination
2. Subordination

When there is no explicit linkage, we talk of sentences composed by juxtaposition. Syntactic cohesion in juxtaposed sentences is assured by the intonational curve in the oral channel and by punctuation in the written channel.