LINGUA INGLESE 1

ACCENTS OF ENGLISH
Accent= the way in which a language is pronounced in a specific geographic area
 Native accents: UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
Native accent = the way in which a language is pronounced in the different geographical areas
where it is used as a mother tongue-
 Foreign accents: where English is a foreign language (Europe, Asia,…)
 ‘Nativized’ or non-native accents: countries where English is spoken as a 2nd language (India)
These are parts of the world where English was introduced as a colonial language and subsequently
retained after independence for international communication an intranational affairs.

Every variety is acceptable and right but there are some other elements which are most to do with social/
cultural dimension, social network, gender, sex or age.

—> 2 best varieties of English language: British English (BrE) VS American English (AmE)
+ their respective pronunciation standards Received Pronunciation (RP) or BBC pronunciation —> upper
classes and public schools (British society wants to know immediately where people are from socially)
and General American —> the best variety

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

Phonetics —> the science that studies physical characteristics of sound
 Articulatory = production of sound
It deals with the physiology of speech production, which is very important for the sounds of
languages. Any speaker is capable of making a wide range of modifications to the vocal tract in
order to utter many different sounds.
What happens in the course of a speaker’s life is that the speech habits associated to one’s native
language become so entrenched that producing new sounds may become very difficult.
 Acoustic = transmission of sound
 Auditory = reception of sound

Phonology —> describes the organization of the sound system of a language

THE ARTICULATORS
The act of phonation consists in the contraction of the muscles in our chest and the production of a flow of
air which passes throughthe larynx, the glottis,, the pharynx, and then the oral cavity or the nose.

 The palate consists in 3 parts:

1. Alveoral ridge (=cresta alveolare) – between the hard palate and the front teeth
2. Hard palate – can be touched with the tip of the tongue and is also called ‘the roof of the mouth’
3. Soft palate/velum – the back part of the palate which can be raised or lowered so that the air may
escape through the mouth or through the nose.
 Tongue – the most important articulator because it is the change of its position inside the oral
cavity which determines the type of sound produced
 Lips
 Teeth
 Glottis – the opening between the vocal cords
 Glottal stop – the closure of the glottis creates an interruption of the air stream
 Pharynx – a passage leading from the top of the larynx to the back of
the mouth
 Larynx – ‘voice box’ because it contains the vocal cords which are used to pronounce voiced sound
 distinction between voiced sounds VS voiceless = vibrated or not
  Nose – is involved in the production of nasal sounds when the air stream moves into the nasal
cavity by lowering of the soft palate

GRAPHEMES, PHONES AND PHONEMES

 graphemes: a letter of the alphabet ( a discrete mark in writing or print <t>
—> many of them are silent, not pronounced in certain English words
-> usually are different from phonemes!
 phoneme: distinctive sound in a language capable of creating a distinction in meaning between two
words —> we can obtain MINIMAL PAIR for example dog and fog which are made up of the same
phonemes except for one
Graphemes and phonemes should not be confused. In many cases graphemes and phonemes share the
same mark or symbol (<t> and /t/) but in many other cases there is no one-to-one correspondence
between grapheme and phoneme:
<c>
 /k/ in ‘cut’ [kʌt]
 /s/ in ‘nice’ [naɪs]
 /ʃ/ in ‘ocean’ [ˈəʊʃn]
<o>
 /ʌ/ in ‘come’ [kʌm]
 /əʊ/ in ‘home’ [həʊm]

Silent graphemes
• <t> in castle, Christmas, often (by some speakers)
• <k> in know, knock
• <l> in walk, talk, folk
• <w> in write, wrong
• <b> in debt, bomb, doubt

B Spelling-to-sound
Where the spelling is b, the pronunciation is regularly b as in baby ˈbeɪbi
2. Where the spelling is double bb the pronunciation is again b as in shabby ˈʃæbi
3. b is silent in two groups of words:
 before t in debt det, doubt daʊt, subtle ˈsʌtl
 after m at the end of a word or stem as in
– climb klaɪm
– lamb læm
– thumb θʌm
– bomber ˈbɒmə(r)
IPA
—> the most widely used phonemic notation, it is a set of symbols used for representing the phonemes and
sounds of all languages.
—> the phonetic transcription of words is provided by bilingual an monolingual dictionaries
- broad transcription—> phonetic transcription which considers only phonemic values
- narrow transcription—> transcription which signals a greater amount of phonetic information
—> phoneme symbols are enclosed within slant brackets //
—> phonetic transcription of words is enclosed in square brackets []

 Homophones: orthographically different but phonetically identical - ‘aloud’ and ‘allowed’ [əˈlaʊd]
 homographs: orthographically identical but phonetically different
- lead [liːd] (condurre), lead [led] (piombo)
- tear [tɪə(r)] (lacrima), tear [teə(r)] (strappare)

ENGLISH PHONOLOGY
Phonology = describes the organization of the sound system of a language, it is the study of the sounds
which have a functional and distinctive role in a language.
 Segmental phonology: describes the phonemes of a language and the way they combine
 Suprasegmental phonology: deals with units larger than the phoneme (syllables, rhythm) and their
related phenomena (stress, intonation, rhythm)

The central task of phonology is the identification and the description of the smallest distinctive units, the
phonemes. The phonemes of a language are a set of distinctive units into which the continuous flow of
speech can be segmented. The phonemes have no individual meaning but they can combine to form
meaningful patterns (words). Their primary function is that of creating semantic oppositions so that words
can be distinguished from one another.

Minimal pairs = a pair of words which differ only by one phoneme. The nature of the phoneme is in itself
abstract, in the sense that each phoneme may be considered as a ‘sound type’ or a mental representation
of the distinctive sounds of a language. In actual speech a single phoneme may be uttered in many different
ways, depending on the different anatomic characteristics, individual speech habits, or even mood and
health status of different potential speakers.
e.g. kit [kɪt] → cat [kæt] → cot [kɒt] → caught [kɔːt]

Allophones = different realization of the same phonemes in different contexts —> represented in
transcription by diacritic symbols added to the phonemic ones.
Allophonic variation does not involve any change in the meaning of words but it is responsible for some
differences in accents.
Phoneticians consider the phonemes abstract entities, abstract conventional representations of a family of
slightly different phones.
-> affrication: top /tɒp/
->aspiration: train / treɪn/
->partially released: set [set]
- clear /l/: lip [lɪp]
- dark (accompanied by back resonance) in syllable
- final position as in ‘hill’ [hɪl] or before another consonant as in ‘milk’ [mɪlk]

VOWELS
oral, voiced and egressive* sounds produced without any obstruction to the airstream coming from the
lungs: iː, ɪ, e, ɜː, ʌ, æ, ɑː, ɒ, ɔː, ʊ, uː

Short single vowels (also lax):

/ɪ/ – fit /fiːt/, pick /piːk/, difficult /ˈdɪ.fɪ.kəlt/
/e/ – pet /pet/, sent /sent/, attention /əˈten.ʃən/
/æ/ – pat /pæt/, flat /flæt/, family /ˈfæ.mə.li/
/ʌ/ – cut /kʌt/ jump /dʒʌmp/, cover /ˈkʌ.vər/
/ʊ/ – put /pʊt/, book /bʊk/, cushion /ˈkʊ.ʃən/
/ɒ/ – pot /pɒt/, dog /dɒg/, hospital /ˈhɒs.pɪ.təl/
/ə/ – about /əˈbaʊt/, system /ˈsɪs.təm/, complete /kəmˈpliːt/.

Long single vowels (also tense):

/i:/ week /wi:k/, feet /fi:t/, media /ˈmiː.di.jə/

/ɑ:/ hard /ha:/, park /pa:k/, article /ɑː.tɪ.kəl/
/ɔ:/ fork /fɔ:k/, walk /wɔ:k/, August /ɔːˈɡʌst/
/ɜ:/ heard /hɜ:d/, word /wɜ:d/, surface /ˈsɜː.fɪs/
/u:/ boot /bu:t/, group /gru:p/, beautiful /ˈbjuː.tɪ.fəl/

Front <——> back : which part of the tongue is raised

close <——> open: distance between tongue and palate

Criteria for classifying vowels:

• Vertical distance between tongue and palate –> Open, Half-open, Closed
• Which part of the tongue is raised –> Front, Central, Back
• Duration of a vowel –> Long, Short
• Position of the lips –> Rounded, Spread, Neutral

DIPHTHONGS: a combination of 2 vowels, or better an oral, voiced, egressive glide from one vowel to
another vowel uttered with the same emission of sound - the 1st element is normally more audible than
the second .
 closing diphthongs: /eɪ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, /aʊ/, /әʊ/
 centring diphthongs: /ɪə/ found in dear, /eə/ found in fair, and /ʊə/ found in cure (absent in AmE
due to rhoticity) – their second element is the central unstressed sound [ə]
-> instead AmE has pure vowels followed by /r/

 triphthongs: English has five triphthongs, which are formed by the diphthongs ending in /ɪ/ and /ʊ/
+ the sound /ə/
- /aʊ/ + /ə/ = [aʊə] hour
- /aɪ/ + /ə/ = [aɪə] fire
- /eɪ/ + /ə/ = [eɪə] player
- /əʊ/ + /ə/ = [əʊə] mower
 - /ɔɪ/ + /ə/ = [ɔɪə] employer

NON-PHONEMIC SYMBOLS
THE SCHWA SOUND
It is a central, lax sound, also used as an expression of hesitation —> the tongue is completely relaxed so
the sound it is similar to all the others but at the same time it isn’t
– ‘vitamin’ /ˈvɪtəmɪn/
– ‘petition’ /pəˈtɪʃn/
– ‘president’ /ˈprezɪdənt/
– ‘occur’ /əˈkɜː(r)/
– ‘campus’ /ˈkæmpəs/

[i] and [u] represent the long phonemes /iː/ and /uː/ in unstressed position, for example at the end of a
weak syllable or before a stressed syllable beginning with a vowel.
e.g. happy [ˈhæpi], react [riˈækt], you [ju], situation [ˌsɪtʃuˈeɪʃn]

CONSONANTS
consonants are sounds produced with an egressive flow of air coming out of the mouth or the nose
accompanied by obstruction or friction in the articulators

ALWAYS pronounced with some sort of obstacle, friction, etc…

 voiced or voiceless depending on the vibration or otherwise of the vocal cords
 manner of articulations and place of articulation

Manner of articulation:
 plosives —> consonants sounds which involve a stricture of the mouth that allows no air to escape
from the vocal tract and the compression and released of the air
- /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/

 fricatives —> characterised by a “hissing” sound which is produced by the air escaping through a
small passage in the mouth – they are also called sibilants or continuants
- labio-dental /f/, /v/; dental /θ/, /ð/; alveolar /s/, /z/; palato-alveolar /ʃ/, /ʒ/; glottal /h/

 nasals —> the air escapes through the nose, the main difference between the three types of nasals
is the point where the air is stopped in the mouth.
- /m/, /n/, /ŋ/

 affricates —> begin as a plosives and end as a fricatives – palato-alveolar /ʧ/ /ʤ/
  liquids —> the tongue produces a partial closure in the mouth, resulting in a resonant, vowel-like
consonant
- /r/, /l/
/l/ has two important allophonic realizations: in syllable initial position its pronunciation is
accompanied by front resonance, in this case it is said to be ‘clear’ (e.g leaf [lif]
black [blæk]); in syllable final position or before another consonant its pronunciation is
accompanied by back resonance and it is said to be ‘dark’ (e.g pool [puɫ] milk [mɪɫk])
/r/ presents many different types of pronunciation in English
linking -r —> if a word ending with silent /r/ is followed by another word beginning with a vowel =
the /r/ is pronounced to link the 2 words

 approximants —> phonetically similar to the vowels but also similar a fricative; shorter than vowels
and they are NON-syllabic (there is always another vowel sound attached)
They are formed bringing our articulators close together (but no full closure as in plosives)
without producing air friction (unlike fricatives)
- /w/, /j/
/j/ yes, you, year, usually
/w/well, work, one/won (homophones), between

Syllabic consonants = they occur as the nucleus of syllables

/l/
couple [ˈkʌpl], middle [ˈmɪdl], able [ˈeɪbl]
/n/
listen [ˈlɪsn], rotten [ˈrɒtn], sudden [ˈsʌdn]

Place of articulations:
 bilabial —> pronounced with both lips brought together
- /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/
 labiodental —> the lower lip and the upper teeth are kept close to each other
- /f/, /v/
 dental —> involve the contact of the blade (front part) of the tongue behind the upper teeth
- /θ/ /ð/
 alveolar —> tongue close to or touching the ridge behind the teeth on the roof of the mouth
- /t/, /d/, /n/, /l/, /s/, /z/
 palato-alveolar —> articulated with the tongue in a further back position with the tongue tip or
blade coming close to the area between the back of the alveolar ridge and the front of the hard
palate
- /ʧ/ /ʤ/ /ʃ/ /ʒ/
 palatal —> a consonant sound produced by raising the blade, or front, of the tongue toward or
against the hard palate just behind the alveolar ridge (the gums)
- /j/
 velar —> contact occurs between the tongue and the soft palate or velum
- /k/ /g/ /ŋ/
 glottal —> involves a stricture in the glottis
- /h/

English - Italian phonemes in contrast

 Long/short opposition —> leave [liːv] vs live [lɪv], Italian speakers will pronounce them as if they
sounded the same
→The importance of the mistake is notable in this phrase: “I want to leave” vs “I want to live”
  Laxness —> pronunciation of the 6 short vowels, the length is an important feature of English
vowels, for Italians this trait is difficult because in Italian vowels tend to be long and tense, and
length is not a distinctive feature
–> /ɪ/ /e/ /æ/ /ɒ/ /ʌ/ /ʊ/
 Dental fricatives —> / θ, ð/ tend to be substituted by Italian dental plosives /d/ and /t/
–> Thriller [ˈθrɪlə(r)]
 Aspiration —> in plosives → pain [peɪn]; tea [tiː]; with [h] → hotel [həʊˈtel]
 Inflections – for noun and verb inflections, the ‘morphophonemic’ system of English has a simple
rule: if the word ends with a voiceless consonant the ending will be voiceless too, [s]; if the word
ends with a vowel or a voiced consonant, the ending will be also voice, [z]; if the word ends with a
fricative or affricate sound, the ending will be [iz]
—> [s] , [z], [ɪz] e.g. books [bʊks], claps [klæps] trees [triːz], pens [penz], needs /niːdz/
buses /bʌsɪz/, washes / wɒʃɪz/
 Non voicing of “s” is always voiceless /s/ consonant – Italians tend to voice syllable initial fricatives
and therefore male a typical pronunciation mistake consisting in the voicing of syllable initial [s]
—> e.g. small [smɔːl], slim [slɪm], snail [sneɪl], swim [swɪm] → [*zmɔːl, *zlɪm, *zneɪl, *zwɪm]
 Regular past tense and past participle
inflections <-ed> → [t], [d], [ɪd]
—> e.g. asked [ɑːskt]; lived [lɪvd]; needed [niːdɪd]; wanted [ˈwɒntɪd]

American English
—> “rhotic” variety because the /r/ is always pronounced and diphthongs such as /ɪə//eə//ʊə/
—> yod dropping = the omission in AmE of the sound /j/ after dental and alveolar consonants and followed
by the phoneme /u:/ - the yod is present in all the other cases
—> intervocalic /t/ is voiced

THE SYLLABLE
Syllable is a phonological unit made up of one or more phonemes.
- a minimum syllable is made up of one vowel only.
opened syllable: they end with a vowel
closed syllable: they end in a consonant

 The initial and final consonants may be groups of consonants. They are called consonant clusters
(or blends)
– For instance, prompts and strength
 The patterning of consonant clusters is subject to phonological rules. For example, you cannot have
the sound [zb] or [mn] at the beginning of a word
– For instance, mnemonic is pronounced /nɪˈmɒnɪk/
 The most common pattern is CVC (like in did /dɪd/)
– In Italian, CV type are 70% of total syllables. CVC only 17%.
– In English, CVC and VC amount to 60%. V and CV 40%

STRESS
 Prominence given to a syllable – we notice it because it stands out in a given woed
 The result of four acoustic components
- Pitch (Altezza del suono)
- Loudness (Volume)
- Duration (lunghezza)
- Quality (qualità) = when a vowel is different from neighbouring vowels
 In phonetic transcription stress is indicated by a top vertical line – stress mark – preceding the
stressed syllable
 - In long words, you might see a bottom vertical line preceding another syllable that is not
primarily stressed. We call those secondary stresses

STRESS PATTERNS
1 syllable
Monosyllabic words are normally stressed
Exception: one-syllable grammatical words occurring in weak positions – e.g. a [eɪ]; for [fɔː]

2 syllables
 TYPE ⬤ ● STRONG + WEAK
e.g. money [ˈmʌni]; river [ˈrɪvə(r)] ; breakfast [ˈbrekfəst] and not [*ˈbrekfɑst]

 TYPE ⬤ O STRONG + STRONG

It means that the unstressed syllables remains strong (that is, you pronounce it as a full vowel,
without making it into a weak form)
e.g. background [ˈbækɡraʊnd]; phoneme [ˈfəʊniːm]; pillow [ˈpɪləʊ]

 TYPE ● ⬤ (weak + strong)

e.g. result [rɪˈzʌlt]; report [rɪˈpɔːt]; believe [bɪˈliːv]

 TYPE O ⬤ (strong + strong)

e.g. although [ɔːlˈðəʊ]; myself [maɪˈself]; tycoon [taɪˈkuːn]

STRESS SHIFT
• predicative
[maɪ sʌn ɪz fɪfˈtiːn ]
my son is fifteen
• attributive
[aɪv lɒst ˈfɪftiːn paʊndz]
I’ve lost fifteen pounds

3 syllables
longest words usually comes from Romance language
 TYPE ⬤ ● ● - 3 syllable words with primary stress on the 1st syllable (strong + weak + weak)
Ex: family, manager

 TYPE ⬤ ● O - 3 syllable words with primary stress on the 1st syllable and a full vowel on the 3rd
syllable (strong + weak + strong)
Ex: telephone, summertime
- The suffix -ate is always strong in verbs but weak in adjectives and nouns
Ex. Operate, hesitate, fortunate, chocolate

 TYPE ⬤ O ● - 3 syllable words with the primary stress on the 1st syllable and a full vowel on the
2nd (strong + strong + weak)
Ex: grandmother, newspaper

 TYPE ● ⬤ ● - 3 syllable words with primary stress on the second syllable (weak + strong + weak)
Ex: remember, agreement

 TYPE O ⬤ ●- 3 syllable words with full vowel on the 1st syllable and primary stress on the 2nd
syllable (strong + strong + weak)
 Ex: sensation, unhealthy

 TYPE O ● ⬤ - 3 syllable words with a full vowel on the 1st syllable and primary stress on the 3rd
syllable (strong + weak + strong)
Ex: afternoon, understand

Germanic rule: stress on the 1st syllable

Ex: answer vs reply

—> suffixes that carry stress

-ageous (outrageous)
-agious (contagious)
-ation (celebration)
-ee (addressee)
-ician (politician

—> Suffixes that are not stressed (stress is left on the root word)
-able (reliable)
-ful (wonderful)
-less (meaningless)
-ness (happiness)
-ment (development)

—> suffixes that assign stress to the penultime syllable

-ic (economic)
-ics (linguistics)

CONNECTED SPEECH:
= continuum of sound, modulated by intonational contours and rhythmic patterns and pauses – in spoken
language the transition from each sound segment to the next is ‘smooth’
 Phonetically characterised by articulatory accommodations and sound variability —> it means that
in fast, fluent speech the speech organs take a quicker, easier route from one position to the next
than they would in slow speech

Variability in connected speech is caused by 3 main factors:

1. Influence of the phonetic environment (the sounds that comes before and after)
2. the rhythmic pattern of the syllable in which each phoneme occurs
3. the speed of utterance = espressione (the fast we speak we worst we pronounced)

-> five main variations caused by the influence of phonetic environment: similitude, linking, assimilation,
elision and weak forms

Similitude:
accommodation in the articulation of a sound segment to an adjacent segment, so that they become
similar
Example: keep, cup and cool (think about how you pronounce /k/ when it precedes different vowels

Many types of similitude depending on the voice, tongue position, lip position, in vowel or consonant
proximity, in nasality.

Linking:
In connected speech linking is realized across word boundaries between consonants and vowels, different
or same consonants. Between vowels and semi- vowels is added the sound /w/ or /j/ to obtain a smooth
transition across word boundaries.

Assimilation:
The replacement of a sound with another sound due to the influence of an adjacent one
– But, differently from similitude, assimilation is the actual replacement of one sound for another.
—> usually occurs at the boundaries between syllables/words, as well as in compounds

We distinguish two types of Assimilation:

It can be historical assimilation = it occurs in the course of the centuries and explains change in
pronunciation – ex. Raspberry, sugar, handkerchief
or contextual assimilation = it is something that has to do with present English, it occurs when utterances
are spoken at normal speed, when speech is slow and emphatic it may not take place, for example:
 in voice – ex. He was sent
 position of the lips – ex. Bad boys
 tongue position – ex. This shop
 coalescence or the combination of 2 sounds into another one - ex: Shut your eyes

Elision:
The dropping of a sound which once existed (historical elision) or which exists in slow speech (contextual
elision)
-> historical elision responsible for the loss of some following sounds:
- <t> in castle
- <k> in know
- <l> in walk
- <w> in write
- <b> in debt

Like similitude and assimilation, elision is determined by economy in the articulatory effort.

-> contextual elision responsible for:

- h-dropping in the weak form of grammatical items like he, him, his – ex. Tell him
- the loss of /t/ and /d/ in certain syllable-final clusters like <st, ft, nd, ld, n’t> - ex. First class, didn’t think
- dropping of unstressed initial syllables – ex. Suppose, police

Smoothing: A particular case of elision in British English, which consists in the reduction of the elements of
diphthongs and triphtongs. Assimilation and elision combined together in fluent, rapid speech are
responsible for pronunciations which sound extremely clipped and often uncomfortably obscure to
foreigners.
- Ex. ‘I am going to buy some’  ‘I’m gonna buy some’
Ex. ‘What do you want to do?’  ‘Watcha wanna do?’

Vowel reduction and weak forms:

Vowel reduction is responsible for remarkable differences between the pronunciation of words in isolation
and in connected speech.
This phenomenon of vowel reduction consist in the reduction to a weak vowel, in general to the neutral
schwa sound [ə] but also to the short vowels [ɪ, i] and [ʊ, u], of strong, longer vowels and diphthongs when
these are in a weak unstressed position.
There are morphological changes involving stress shift, as in irony/ironic, legal/legality in which the same
syllables are weak or strong depending on whether they are unstressed or stressed.
Vowel reduction is characteristic of grammatical words such as: auxiliaries (are, have), modals (can, must),
articles (a,the), conjunctions (and, but), personal pronouns (you, he) and prepositions (to, from)  the two
forms, the weak one and the strong one, coexist and are recorded in dictionaries.
-> weak form: used when the word is in an unstressed position in an utterance
-> strong form: used when the word is in a final position or the speaker wants to attribute a particular
emphasis to it.

Rhythm:
= the alteration of strong and weak ‘beats’ in connected speech
 English is a stress-timed language = based on the regular occurrence of accented or prominent
syllables

Tonicity: the assignment of rhythmic prominence ‘accented’ syllables stand out as more prominent in
connected speech

Intonation:
The variation of pitch (= altezza) in connected speech and is something that allows us to understand what
the speaker is saying.
—> the nucleus is the syllable which receives the greatest prominence in an intonation phrase and carries
pitch movement
Intonation is an utterance having its own intonation pattern or tone and containing a nucleus, usually a
simple sentence (clause) ˈwhat do you ↘ˈmean?

Tonality: refers to the segmentation of long stretches of connected speech into shorter units called
intonation phrases

Tones:
The term tone refers to the way pitch is modulated in language.
1. Falling tone —> to convey a sense of finality and generally associated with statements
- Our ˈEnglish ˈfriends are ˈcoming ˈround ↘ to ˈdinner
2. Fall-rise —> to convey doubt, uncertainty
- Are you ˈsure you won’t V ˈmind
3. Rising tone —> to convey a sense of non-finality and is generally associated with question or
incomplete clauses
- would you ˈ like a ˈglass of ↗ ˈ wine
4. Rise-fall —> to convey surprise and admiration or strong emotional feelings
- ˈthat was a ˈmarvellous ꓥ idea

The main functions of intonation in spoken English are: attitudinal, grammatical, accentual and discoursal.
- Attitudinal function: the attitudinal function is that of conveying the different attitudes and
feelings that can be expressed when we speak. This approach is considered non-scientific
and subjective.
- Grammatical function —> related to the segmentation of speech into meaningful units;
intonation can modify the syntactic structure of utterance
Example:
1. The paintings which were stolen / were of great historical value
-> defining relative clause because it delimits the domain of the subject “the paintings”
2. The paintings / which were stolen / were of great historical value
-> non defining because it does not delimit the domain =. All paintings were stolen and were of
great value
 - Accentual function: involves the placement of nuclear stress on the tonic syllable, thus
indicating where the focus of the intonation is centred.
- Discourse function: closely connected to the accentual function, the nucleus is normally
found at the end of an intonation phrase. This happens because speakers tend to place
new information at the end of utterances, this is, to assign end-focus

GRAMMAR:
= a set of rules which allow the production of well-formed sentences and utterances.
Educated native speakers intuitively follow the rules of grammar, whereas foreign learners study grammar
in an explicit way in textbooks and millions of non-native speakers may develop new rules which deviate
from standard rules.

There are two types of grammar:

 Theoretical grammar = new analytical models developed by linguistics to describe a language
 Descriptive grammar= describes how a language works, drawing from a long tradition of grammar
studies, using both traditional and new terminology
In the past the was prescriptive grammar, how to speak correctly
Nowadays grammar is more flexible and there are hybrid forms that you can decide to use.

Morphology —> the area of grammar dealing with the internal structure of words
It can be divided into derivational and inflectional
Syntax —> the area of grammar dealing with the way in which words combine to form larger units such as
phrases, clauses and sentences

The units of grammar: (the previous one is made of the following one, ex. A text is made of sentences)
 Text = sequence of sentences which is coherent and cohesive
 Sentence (periodo) = the largest linguistic unit made up of one or more clauses
 Clause (frase) = a linguistic unit made up of one or more phrases, containing at least a verb phrase.
 Phrase (sintagma) = a linguistic unit made up of a word or a group of words. A phrase can be a noun
phrase, a verb phrase, an adjective phrase, an adverb phrase and a prepositional phrase.
 Word = linguistic unit (orthographically and phonologically) preceded and followed by spaces in the
written language BUT sometimes different separated elements can form one single meaning
(brother-in-law, week-end)
-> in the spoken form, word are surrounded by pauses and have only one main stress
-> words have internal integrity > a criterion that do not permit to insert other elements in the word (for
example the plural is made by adding -s but you can put it only at the end of the word)
 Morpheme = the smallest unit of meaning or grammatical function

Lexeme:
A unit of vocabulary which includes different variant form called word-forms (conventionally represented
with capital letters); “a group of related forms which share the same meaning and belong to the same word
class”
Ex. WALK (noun= passeggiata) WALK (verb= passeggiare)
—> two different lexemes
BANK (noun= money) BANK (noun= river)
—> two different lexemes with different meaning
TEACH (lexeme) teach, teaches, taught, teaching (word-form)

Words classes (parts of speech)

Divided according to meaning, structure and position in a sentence —> there are 9 different classes
Divided into open-class, called this way because they can include new realities and new words can be
created (Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs) – they are called lexical or continent words, and closed
class, where new words are rarely added and contain few items.
Distinction between grammar word (do not carry lexical meaning) and content word (contain meaning of
the text).

Content words (open-class)

- Nouns
- Lexical verbs= all verbs that convey content (action, state)
- Adjectives
- Adverbs
Grammar words (close-class)
- Conjunction
- Prepositions
- Determiners
- Pronouns
- Auxiliary verbs = they just convey grammatical convention
Some words may belong to more than one class  multiple class membership (ex. Round adj. verb)
only the co-text, the surroundings of the word, allows the reader/listener to understand the
difference + word stress helps disambiguation (rebel n. [rebl] vs rebel v. [rɪbel]

Open-class words
Length: (generally) polysyllabic
Origin: (generally) Latin, Greek, French, Germanic origin
Frequency: less frequent

Closed class words:

Length: (generally) monosyllabic or disyllabic
Origin: (generally) Germanic origin
Frequency: more frequent

Nouns—> lexical words which commonly refer to concrete objects or entities (they may take the ‘s
genitive)
Verbs—> express actions, events, states, processes and show the relationship between the participants in
what is referred to by the verb.
We can identify two types of verbs: lexical verbs (main verbs) and auxiliary verbs (modality, aspect or
question) for various purposes.
Lexical verbs can be dynamic (= referring to a physical process to allow the progressive form ex. To
walk, to play, walking, playing) and stative/state (=referring to states and conditions, do not allow
the progressive form ex: to know, to believe, to love)

Adjective—> description of qualities or properties of things, people etc. Have attributive or predicative
functions, the first one before a noun, the second one after a copular verb (verbs which express a
correlation between the subject and what comes after, to be, to seem, to appear).
Some adjectives can only be predicative or attributive (ex the main task- not the task main), some others
can be both depending on the position.

Adverbs—> are a lexical words which carry out several functions:

 Express degree (really, very, totally)
 Circumstances adverbs or adjunts provide information about an event or state (yesterday, now)
 Disjuncts allow the speaker to express their beliefs on the whole utterance (probably,
unfortunately)
 Linking adverbs or conjucts connect sentences (unfortunately, besides)
Auxiliaries—> a closed class of verbs which accompany lexical verb
 primary auxiliaries (to be, to have, to do)
 modal auxiliaries (modal verb – can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must) Have+ past
participle

Conjunctions—> link linguistic items

 coordinating conj.(in which the two elements enjoy equal status)
 subordinating conj. (in which one of the two elements is subordinated to the other)

Preposition—> function words that link words or syntactic elements and show the relationship between
two items, typically followed by a noun in which they from a Prepositional Phrase (PP), they can be simple
(single word) or articulated (more than one word)

Determiners (Det) —> Function words used before a noun to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness,
quantity, possession, etc.
The main subclasses are:
 articles (indefinite and definite): a, an, the
 demonstratives: this, that, these, those
 possessive: my, your, his, her, their, our, its, etc.
 quantifiers: all, few, many, several, some every, each, any, etc.
 cardinal numbers: one, two, fifty, etc.
 ordinal numbers: first, second, third, etc.

Pronouns—> close class of words which replace words avoiding repetitions (they derive their meaning from
the context)
Main subclasses:
 personal pronouns
 possessive pronouns
 demonstrative pronouns
 reflexive pronouns
 interrogative pronouns
 relative pronouns

Wh-words —> a frequently used expression to refer to function words beginning with wh-
 adverbs (interrogative, relative, exclamative)
 pronouns
 determiners

Numerals —> a set of words referring to number or quantity

 cardinal
 ordinal
 numerals may function as a noun

Words can also be grouped in terms of their syntactic or grammatical function within a clause – that is, the
role they play in relation to other words. Words can have the functions of subject (S), verb (V), object
(Obj), complement (C) and adverbial (A).

The subject (S) —> is the topic of a sentence (what the sentence is about). It usually precedes the verb and
determines whether the verb is singular or plural.

The verb (V) —> [also called verb element or Predicator (P)] is what is said about the subject.
The object (O) —> can be direct (Od) if the verb is transitive or indirect (Oi) if the verb is intransitive.

The complement (C) —> provides information about the subject or the object, and is necessary to
complete the meaning of the verb. It can be a subject complement (Cs) or an object complement (Co)

Adverbials (A) —> are usually optional and express a wide range of meaning, they can be of different types
according to the kind of information they provide.
 Circumstance adverbials (or adjunct adv.) provide information about the circumstances of what is
said. They can be time adverbials, place adverbials, manner adverbials, etc. (in Africa, outdoors,
attentively, since 1997.)
 Stance adverbials (or disjunct adverbials) express the speaker’s attitude on what is said. (honestly,
actually)
 Linking adverbials (or conjunct adverbials) link sentences together (furthermore, in conclusion,
finally)

The verb determines the type of clause. Transitive verbs object after. Ditransitive verbs two objects after.
The verb is the most important element. When we do an analysis we should start from the verb.

Syntax—> the area of grammar dealing with the way in which words combine to form larger units such a
phrase, clauses, and sentences and with rules which allow speakers to combine words into larger
meaningful units.

Our brain processes phrases in a linear way, we read a string of words. What comes first and what comes
after has a meaning, and effects our understanding. In some languages (including English), depending on
the function performed by an element, the word order changes.

Latin and German use inflections (declinazioni)—> the word order is not as important because depending
on the ending of a word, we can tell the grammatical function. ex puer canem videt = canem puer videt
(same meaning) - Der Junge sieht den Hund= den Hund sieht der Junge (same meaning= il ragazzo vede il
cane)
BUT in English the word order is important because it changes the meaning of the clauses the boy sees the
dog ≠ the dog sees the boy
Depending on the sequence of words we can determine the meaning of a sentence. Usually it is SVO (subj,
verb, obj)= a noun at the beginning of a sentence is a subject, the noun after a verb is an object.

Phrase (sintagma)= one or more words that do not contain subject-verb pairs necessary to form a clause.
Phrases can be very short or quite long.
More technical definition: a meaningful syntactic unit made up of one or more words that contains:
 A head: the most important element in the phrase, always present. The head can be a noun, a verb,
an adverb, a preposition etc. It’s mandatory to have a head in the phrase.
 Optional modifiers (not necessarily), accompanying words that define and modify the head. They
are divided into pre-modifiers (precede the head, can be nouns or adjectives) and post-modifiers
(follow the head, normally are prepositional phrases, relative clauses, complementation).

Phrases have a heads which:

 Determine the grammatical properties of the phrase
 Are obligatory
 Are semantically central
 Determine the inflectional properties (number and gender) of the phrase

Non-heads are modifiers; in one-word phrases, only the head is present

Types of phrases: each lexical word class (open-class words) has a dedicated phrase. So nouns, verbs,
adjectives and adverbs have all their phrases. Among function words (that is, closed-class words), only
prepositions have their dedicated phrase.
-> noun phrases (NP); verb phrase (VP), adj phrases (AdjP); adv phrase (advP); prepositional phrase (PP)
- except for prepositional phrases (PP) phrases can be constituted by a single lexical item
- all phrases can be extended by pre-modification or post-modification

—> Noun Phrases (NP) = the head is represented by a noun, even if sometimes it can be a pronoun (when a
pronoun is the head usually there is not a pre-modifier.) the noun is either alone or accompanied by other
words before or after it (determiners, pre-modifiers and post-modifiers).
Nps can be extremely long and complex, since a noun can take several pre-modifiers belonging to different
word classes, as well as post-modifiers.
ex. The girl went to school
She went to school (personal pronoun)
Someone is coming (indefinite pronoun)

In English nouns are productive to the left because adjectives come before the noun
ex. The blue leather suitcase (≠from Italian where the adj comes after the noun).
Usually the order is determiner- pre modifier – head- post modifier
ex. The (det) orange(prm) cat (head) on the desk (pom)

Determiners (Det) The role of determiner (Det) can be filled by articles, demonstratives, possessives,
quantifiers and numerals
Words denoting:
 Possession (my, your, his, her, their, etc.)
 Proximity (this, that, these, those)
 Distribution (each, every, either, neither, both, all etc.)
 Quantity (how much of something or how little of something like many, few, some, several, little
and the counting numbers one, two, three, etc.)
 Reference (both anaphoric and cataphoric like the definite article the and the indefinite article
a/an)
 Order (like the ordinal numbers, firs, second, third, etc.)

Pre modifiers (Pre-Mod):

 can be adj or adjP (a new car)
 Ns or NPs (summer clothes, a cute little dog)
When there are more than one premodifiers we have to ask ourselves the relationship between them in
the phrase
-> pre-mod are more common than post-mod

Post modifiers (Post-mod):

they modify the head, but come AFTER it; head nouns can be postmodified by both phrases and clauses
 A PP (that old man with a loving personality)
 a relative clause (mature students who attend alla classes)
 non-finite clauses (that man walking with his friend )
 some types of adjPs (something similar)
 some AdvPs (holiday abroad)
 a that-clause (…that you can…)
 appositive NPs (the author of paradise lost, John Milton, …)
English/ Italian NPs: English favours premodification (to the left of the head). NPs are concise and at times
ambiguous. Italian favours post modification (to the right of the head) and the use of prepositions. NPs
are longer and more explicit

1. The Los Angeles Police Departement – Il Dipartimento di polizia di Los Angeles

2. Air pollution – L’inquinamento dell’aria
3. The Birmingham train – Il treno per/da/ di Birmingham
4. Stansted airport – L’aeroporto di Stansted
5. The proposal of a national curriculum – La proposta di un curriculum nazionale

L’uso della preposizione rende più chiaro il senso della frase.

The verb phrase

The verb phrase consists of a head verb, either alone or accompanied by one or more other verbs.
It includes the verb + its compulsory elements
There are different types of verbs which have different functions:
- Lexical verbs (go, live, think)
- Primary verbs functioning as main verbs (do, have, be)
- Primary auxiliaries (be, have, do)
- Modal auxiliary verbs (must, may, might, can, could, shall, should, will, would)
If the VP contains only one verb, then it is a lexical verb, whereas if there are more verbs there is a lexical
verb pre-modified by on or more auxiliary verbs.

It carries information about mood, tense, modality, aspect and voice

! structurally very different from NP, AdjP, AdvP

Two functional parts:

1. The auxiliary, a grammatical morpheme carrying information about mood, tense, modality, and
voice
2. The main verb, a lexical morpheme carrying its lexical information and, often, an inflection.
The mood: four subcategories
 Indicative, Interrogative, Imperative, Subjective

Tense: it marks time – tense is an inflection on the verb that indicates the time reference of
expression.
In English, tense is marked on the first verb of the verb phrase
- ‘finite’ verbs > marked for tense ( I went; She does)
- ‘non-finite’ verbs > verb forms that do not carry a tense inflection (going; said)
Tense = property allowing the verb to differentiate between present and past
e.g. Jane likes music / Jane liked music
Tense is shown by the first verb of the VPs  tense is related to form, while time is related to
meaning.
Unlike in Italian, there is no morphologically marked form to express future time in English – but a
range of forms such as will/shall + infinitive, be + going to, simple present, present progressive, be
to + infinitive, be about to + infinitive

Aspect = property allowing the verb to give information about the start or the action
- Progressive (or continuous): the action is in progress – Sarah is helping her sister
- Perfect: the action is complete, that is it occurred at an earlier time and continues to the time of
utterance or is relevant to it – Sarah has helped her sister to take her degree
 - Perfect + progressive: (often called ‘duration form’) stresses continuity in the past and includes the
time of utterance – Sarah has been helping her sister since she was 12

Voice = is another grammatical category which can be expressed by some English verbs.
Transitive verbs can occur in the active or passive voice.
- Active voice: the subject is the agent and performs the action expressed by the VP – the singer
performed the song
- Passive voice: the subject is the recipient of the action – the song was performed by the singer
the function of the passive voice:
 The agent is unknown or irrelevant – Mr Constable has been murdered
 The focus is on the process to convey objectivity, especially in academic prose – The results
of the tests have been checked several times
 To disclaim responsibility - He is said to be a swindler
 More frequent in scientific writing and in the press

Use of auxiliaries
 If a VP is composed of a single lexical verb, it will be marked for tense
 If auxiliaries are present, the first will be marked for tense
NB: there are restrictions on the order of the auxiliaries!!

The role of auxiliaries verbs

They are used to express grammatical categories such as aspect, voice and modality.
 The primary auxiliary be is used to form the passive voice (the man was hit by a car) and the
progressive aspect (I am working)
 The primary auxiliary have is used to form the perfect aspect (I have worked)
 The primary auxiliary do is used to form the negative and interrogative forms (I don’t know, Do you
know?)

Modality and modal verbs

The VP can also express a distinction in terms of shades of meaning through the use of modal verbs. They
are frequently used in English and belong to the Germanic core of the language.
The same modals can express different meanings; the same meanings can be expressed in different ways.
Modal verbs function as auxiliary verbs, they accompany a lexical verb – they are nine:
 Can
 Could
 May
 Might
 Shall
 Should
 Will
 Would
 Must

There are also semi-modals, which are multi-word verbs which behave like modal verbs, these are:
 Need (to)
 Have to
 Have got to
 Ought to
 Had better
  Used to
 Be supposed to
 Be going to

Modal verbs are considered unmarked for tense, although some of them can be used to refer to future
time, while other modals seem to have a present time reference or a past time reference.
In terms of meaning, modal auxiliaries express point of view or stance.

They can be divided into three main groups according to their meaning:
I. Permission/possibility/ability
II. Obligation/logical necessity
III. Volition/prediction.

Modality can be divided into two main kinds: a) deontic or intrinsic modality, b) epistemic or extrinsic
modality.

a) Deontic or intrinsic modality refers to actions or events that can be trolled by humans. This type of
modality involves ‘permission’ and ‘ability’, ‘obligation’ and ‘advice’, ‘volition’ or ‘intention’.
These verbs are: can, could, may, might (permission/ability), must, should, have got to, had better,
ought to, need to, be supposed to (obligation and advice), will, would, shall, be going to (volition).

b) Epistemic or extrinsic modality refers to different levels of likelihood or certainty of a specific event
or state. Epistemic modality expresses different degrees of possibility or probability of a fact; it is
related to human judgement of whether an event or state is possible, probable, or certain.
This type of modality involves ‘possibility’, ‘necessity’, and ‘prediction’.

To be noted: the same modal verb can have more than one function!
That can’t be Sue (epistemic)
You can’t leave now (deontic)

The prepositional phrase (PP)

Prepositional phrases differ from the other types of phrases in that a preposition cannot stand alone as the
head word of a phrase. A preposition has to be accompanied by a prepositional complement – typically a
noun phrase.
PP can consist of:
 Prep. + noun phrase ( in the car)
 Prep. + adverb (above here)
 Prep. + clause (thank you for coming)

Adjective phrase
An adjective phrase (AdjP) is a phrase which has an adjective as its head. It can consist of a single adjective
or of an adjective with pre and/or post-modifiers. Modifiers can be single words, phrases or clauses.
Pre-modifiers: adverbs and occasionally NPs
Post-modifiers: adverbs; PP made up of Prep + NP; a preposition followed by a VP; a that-clause; a to-
infinitive clause; an -ing clause introduced by a preposition

Adverb phrase
It is a phrase which has an adverb as its head – only adverb phrases can modify adverbs BUT adverbs can
have various types of complementation.
AdvsPs can consist of a single adverb or of an adverb accompanied by modifying elements. Modifiers are
similar to the ones found in Adjective phrases.
Frequent pre-modifiers are degree adverbs such as very, rather, quite, extremely, fairly.
Frequent post-modifiers are the adverbs enough or indeed or complementation of Prepositional
Phrase/infinitive clause.

An AdvP conveys information related to circumstances such as manner, frequency, time, modality, place,
degree and point of view or it links clauses.

The clause and clause elements

A clause is a linguistic unit which is made up of one or more phrases and which is made up of one or more
phrases and which typically contains at least one verb phrase. If we talk about more verbs, we are talking
about sentences.

Phrases function as clause elements. Each clause element has a specific grammatical function in relation to
the linguistic system.
There are five major clause elements:
 The subject
It expresses what the clause is about and what is said about this entity. It is its topic, the S is
obligatory in English, and its position is typically before the verb element, except in interrogative
clauses, where it is placed after the auxiliary verb or after the operator, the verb which is used to
0form the verb element. The S determines the numbers of the verb element, whether the verb
should be singular or plural form.
There are also clauses which contain a dummy subject. These types of subjects do not carry
semantic continent, they fill the slot before the verb element, but is semantically empty.
While, a second S follows the verb  extraposed S
Subjects are usually noun phrases, generally they are the first NP we come across, they determine
the form the verb takes.

Two more criteria that can help identify subjects:

- In yes/no questions, the subject and the verb/operator swap position
- Tag questions help identify the subject

Word order - It is always important to put the subject before the predicate
‘seguiranno alcuni esempi’ = some examples will follow
‘nel capitolo 3 verrà presentata la grammatica’ = grammar will be presented in chapter 3
‘Giovanni parla molto bene l’italiano/l’italiano molto bene’ = John speaks Italian very well
‘Odio mentire’ = I hate lying
So…
The unmarked word order in English is SVO, while in Italian this order can vary to a certain extent.
The subject is compulsory in English, and not in Italian.

 The verb
The verb element (V) is a VP. The Verb element is the central part of the clause since it controls the
other elements, it determines whether and which other clause elements should occur. This means
that the lexical verb in the VP dictates what type of clause element, if any, can follow the verb.
Verbs are pivotal elements which specify the “bare-bone” content of sentences in which they occur.
They “say something or something else”.
 Verbs determine the number of obligatory elements in the clause.
The close relationship between the lexical verb and the other elements preceding or following it in
the clause is called verb complementation – this notion refers to the fact that the verb determines
the type of obligatory clause element that ‘complement’ or can be added to the verb in order to
make the clause grammatically complete.

Valency patterns of verbs

Lexical verbs are classified according to the number and type of elements that they require and the
patterns they can create, the combinatory potential. This is known as the valency pattern of the
verb. Depending on the verb complementation or valency pattern they allow, lexical verbs can thus
be classified as:
 Intransitives – S +V  the verb requires no complementation
 Monotransitive – S + V + O  the verb requires a direct object
 Ditransitive – S + V + Oi + Od  the verb requires two objects, an indirect object and a
direct object
 Complex transitive – S + V + Od + Co or S + V + Od + A  the verb requires a direct object
followed by either an object complement or by an obligatory adverbial
 Copular – S + V + Cs or S + V + A  the verb requires a subject complement or an obligatory
adverbial

 Object
The object element follows the verb and is affected by it. Os only occur after transitive verbs. There
are two types of O: the direct object (Od) and the indirect object (Oi)

 Direct object: refers to the entity which is directly affected by the process or action denoted
by the verb; position after the verb —> direct objects have a patient role while subjects
have an agent role. It is typically a NP.
They have strong relationship with the verb that precedes them, they become the subjects
of passive clauses and when a verb that requires a direct object to complete its meaning =
transitive verb
-> special cases: understood or implicit Direct object
Ex: Pat was reading (a book)
In Italian usually corresponds to “complemento oggetto”

 Indirect object: is the recipient that receives something or benefits from the action or
process expressed by the verb; you cannot have an indirect object without having also a
direct object.
Ex: my friend lent me his book
In Italian usually corresponds to “complemento di termine” and it comes before the direct
object.
The Oi is found only with ditransitives verbs, verbs taking two objects, verbs which usually
requires indirect objects:
to give, to send, to lend, to tell, to buy, to bring, to show, to ask, to offer, to buy, to assign,
to bet, to bring, to pay, to cost, to do, to feed, to find, to owe, to pass, to play, to get

Usually we have O(i) without a prepositions BUT when the indirect object has been
postponed -> we have the introduction of a prepositions (to/from)
Ex: we gave a pen to the boys
Like direct objects, they can become the subjects of passive sentences
 It is typically a NP, but it can also be a PP (with to or for) or a subordinate nominal clause
(nominal wh-clause)

 The complement
The complement (C) is an obligatory clause element which characterizes or describes the S or the O,
providing information about them. The C may be seen as an attribute to the S.
It is the element of a clause which follows a copular verb such as “be” or “seem” or “appear”
It can occur with verbs of change —> become, make, paint, colour, rub
or verbs of perception —> think or consider

We can have subject complement (Cs) or object complement (Co)

 Subject complement - Cs are needed only with specific verbs, copular verbs and complex
transitive verbs.
Cs follows a copular verb such as be, feel, seem, appear, look, remain, stay, become, turn,
sound, taste.
The Cs is typically an AdjP, a NP, or a PP, but it can also be a subordinate nominal clause.
It corresponds to the Italian complemento predicativo del soggetto.
When the complement complete the subject, they come after the verb.
Ex. Sofia is a teacher - SVC

 Object complement – Co follows the direct object it characterizes, and it occurs with
complex-transitive verbs such as make, elect, consider, name, find, regard (as), call, see, get.
The Co is typically a NP or an AdjP, but it can also be a PP in subordinate clause.
When the complement complete the direct object, they come after it
Ex. Mary made me successful – SVOC

 The adverbial
! not to be confused with AdvPs = formal description  The adverbial clause = functional
definition of a ROLE within a clause.
Ex. The train pulled away from the station very slowly (AdvP)
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to come to the wedding (AdvP)
In a moment, I shall pour you a cup of tea (PP)
Every day of my life I practice piano (NP)
Adverbials are usually oppositional elements added to the main, obligatory elements of a sentence
– they can be optional, when they are optional they can move around in the clause

Obligatory adverbial = adverbials that are required to complete the meaning of the verb
Ex. The waiter put the bread on the table (Obligatory adverbial)
Vs. The waiter cut the bread on the table (Optional adverbial)
Verbs: PUT, LAST, LIVE

Verbs which require an Adverbial:

- be, get, lie, remain, stay: can all be used with Adverb Phrases as compulsory Adverbials
- be, get, lie, live, remain, stand, stay: can all be used with Prepositional Phrases as
compulsory adverbials.

Adverbials vs complements:
 John was very quiet (C)
John was in bed (A)
  They are in danger (C) - SVC
They are in the garden (A) – SVA
 You should stay sober (C)
You should stay here (A)

Complements describe or characterize the S (or O)

Adverbials typically express place or direction.

So when we analyse a clause, we have to follow these steps:

1. Identify the verb
2. Identify the subject
3. Identify any compulsory constituents
4. Identify any further optional constituents

Main and subordinate clauses

- A main clause always contains a finite verb and typically contains an overt subject
- A subordinate clause cannot stand alone and needs to be attached to a free-standing clause
- A non-finite clause is always subordinate
- Simple clauses consist of a clause, compound clauses consist of a main and one or more
subordinate clauses

Typical functions of clause types:

Form  declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamative
Function  statement, question, directive, exclamation

Types of clauses
Phrases combine to form clauses. A clause is a larger grammatical unit which consists of one or more
phrases and which typically contains a VP around which other elements may be added (S, O, C and A).
There are different types of clauses according to their structure or their function. We can distinguish
between:
 Finite vs non-finite clauses: whether the VP is finite – it shows tense; or non-finite – it does not
signal tense and can thus be an infinitive, gerund or participle. This distinction is based on the form
of the clause.
  Main clauses vs subordinate clauses: whether the clause can stand on its own – it is independent;
or whether it cannot stand alone – it is dependent upon another clause. Main clauses tend to be
finite in form
 Declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamative clauses
 Simple clauses, compound clauses, complex clauses

Declarative clauses
 Normally used to make statements
 Overt subjects, a verb element and any necessary verb complementation
 They may also have optional adverbials

Interrogative clauses
 Yes-no questions
 Wh-questions
 Question-tag
The interrogative structure implies a subject-operator inversion
Any auxiliary which is used to make interrogative sentences is labelled operator (be, have, do)

Marked structures
- to highlight a particular element of the sentence
- the focused element is introduced by a dummy subject and followed by a relative clause
 IT-CLEFT STRUCTURE = It as dummy subject
The rain spoiled the picnic plans (unmarked)
It was the rain that spoiled the picnic plans
 WH-CLEFT STUCTURE
The rain spoiled the picnic plans. (unmarked)
What spoiled the picnic plans was the rain

Sentence
 The largest unit of syntactic structure
 A sentence must consist of a least one clause (main clause)
 In writing, a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop
 In speech sentences are not always complete

Types of subordinate clauses

1. Nominal clauses = similar to NPs, they perform the role of S, O, or C. They are usually introduced by
that- or wh-word
That this was the Parliament’s intention was clear [SVC]
I wonder whether I should apologize [SVOd]
The important thing is that you feel better [SVOdCs]
He made me what I am today [SVOdCo]

2. Relative clauses = may define or describe a noun

This is the problem which we are having at the moment
There’s Las Palmas, which is one of the Canary Islands
Function of relative pronouns: they stans for the subjects, objects, or prepositional elements of
their clauses.
 WHO = refers to human beings and occasionally pet animals; it is used in defining and non-defining
relative clauses, it stands for the subject of the relative clause – it may also stand for the object or
the prepositional complement of the relative clause.
WHOM = confined to very formal style, it is used more extensively when it refers to the
complement of a proposition, it is always used when the proposition is placed before the relative
pronoun.
WHICH = used to refer to a non-human subject or object of a relative clause; it is used for both
defining and non-defining relative clauses.
THAT = it used instead of who/whom or which in defining relative clauses ONLY. It used for
reference to either a subject or an object.
You cannot use that in non-defining relative clauses!!

NB: THAT AND PREPOSITIONAL COMPLEMENT – that may refer to the complement of a preposition
but not when the preposition is placed immediately before the relative pronoun:
The other girl that I told you about also lives in Bristol
(The other girl about that I told you also lives in Bristol)
The other girl about whom I told you also lives in Bristol (OK)
WHOSE = when the relative pronoun stands for a possessive determiner, whose is used in defining
and non-defining relative clauses; it is normally used for possession by humans and animals, but in
more formal styles it can also be used for things.

Relative clauses can be either defining (or restrictive) or non-defining (non-restrictive) depending on
whether they define the antecedent or add extra information (between commas).
ex. The tourists who got up early could see the dawn on the Nile
The use of relative pronouns is conditioned by the antecedent, whether it is human ( who, whom, whose,
that) or non-human (that, whose, which), whether it plays the role of subject (who, that, which) or object
(whom, that, which, zero pronoun), whether it is defining (who, whose, whom, that, which) or non-defining
(who, whose, which). (Commas are required)
ex. The tourists, who got up early, could see the dawn on the Nile
The relative pronouns stand for the subjects, objects or prepositional elements of their clauses.
Non-finite verb = verb that not express a subject but we need them because they are efficient

-Ing and -ed relative clauses: occurrence

In the case of -ing and -ed clauses, non-finite relative clauses only occur when the subject of the non-tensed
verb is the same referent as the head noun
-ed relative clauses: relative -ed clauses correspond to passive voice finite equivalents
-ing relative clauses: -ing clauses are not just reduced equivalents of their equivalent progressive finite
forms. Verbs which are not normally used in non-finite relative -ing clauses.

Conditional sentences
A subordinate conditional clause and the main clause form a conditional sentence. Conditional sentences
can be of three types, according to the likelihood of the condition. Each of them requires specific tenses in
the main and subordinate clauses.
1) Zero conditional: apply to scientific truth
2) First conditional: the action in the subordinate clause is quite probable or certain.
3) Second conditional: the action in the subordinate clause is improbable, or the supposition contrasts
with known facts.
4) Third conditional: the action in the subordinate clause is impossible, since it refers to a past time
and the condition did not come about and no longer takes place.
Morphology
= the area of linguistics that deals with the structure or form of words. It describes the way in which small,
meaningful elements called morphemes combine to create words
It can be:
- Inflectional – it deals with changes in the form of words that have grammatical meaning
Ex. -est signals the superlative of adjectives
- Derivational – it deals with the process of new word formation
Ex. Happy  unhappiness

Morpheme = the smallest unit of meaning or grammatical function

- Free: can stand alone as word
Lexical (pen, book)
Functional (if, the)
- Bound: cannot stand alone and must be linked to another morphem (called base or root)
Derivational (-ness, -able)
Inflectional (-s, -ing)

Like lexemes and phonemes, morphemes are abstract entities. Morphs (like word-forms and phones) are
their concrete realization.
 Morphemes are usually written in curly braces: { }
 The lexeme is written in capital letters (all uppercase)
 The abstract grammatical features that the morphemes encodes are written in normal letters.

Allomorphs
 -ed the morph that indicates past tense can be realised phonetically in different ways (allomorphs)
depending on the phonological context: ex. raised [d] looked [t] decided [ɪd]
 a/an indefinite articles (depending on the word that follows) ex. a book, an apple
 im- in-, il- ir- prefixes (indicating oppositeness of meaning) ex. impolite, intolerant, illegal, irrational

Free Morphemes
= they can stand alone as words (ex. The student)
Free root: free morpheme that belongs to a lexical word
Free functional morphes: they belong to the class of function words (ex. The, a..)

Bound Morphemes
Morphemes that connot occur on their own separate words, but need to be attached to another morpheme
There are two main categories: affixes and bound roots

Root, base
 Root= the core of the word, the morpheme which determines the meaning of the word
ex. happy is the root of happiness
 Bound root = a root that is not independent
ex. dent- in dentist, dental, dentistry (Latin dens, dentis)
 Base = part of the word to which any affixes are attached (inflectional or derivational)
ex. happy is the root (and base) of unhappy; unhappy is the base of unhappiness

Affixes
 Inflectional morphemes – they are always suffixes in English
 They do not create new words not modify the core meaning of a word or it word class
 Derivational morphemes – they can be prefixes and suffixes
They are used for deriving new words when attached to other morphemes
They can modify the word class of a word
Inflectional morphology
PDE regular inflections:
 Nouns –> -s plural
 Nouns –> -‘s possessive case
 Verbs –> -s 3rd pers. sing.
 Verbs –> -ed past tense
 Verbs –> -ed past participle
 Verbs –> -ing gerund
 Adjectives –> -er comparative
 Adjectives –> -est superlative

Number in English nouns

 most nouns add -s ex. girls, toys, cars
 some nouns add -es ex. tomatoes, branches, knives
 the pronunciation of the inflectional ending -s/-es depends on the phonetic context, i.e. there are
three allomorphs of the plural morpheme -s
ex. cakes = [s] (preceded by the voiceless consonant [k])
beans = [z] (preceded by the voiced consonant [n])
judges= [iz] (preceded by the affricate consonant []
 some nouns have irregular plural endings
ex. children, teeth, mice, oxen, curricula, sheep (see p. 131)
 uncountable nouns:
ex. evidence, advice, equipment, information

Possessive case in English nouns

The ‘s genitive versus the of- form
= synthetic versus analytic option

Verb inflections
Most Englis verbs are regular and have a paradigm of 5 word forms and 4 verb inflections
Ex. Love/ loves/ loved/ loved/ loving

There is a smaller number of very frequently used irregular verbs

Ex. take, took, taken
put, put, put
speak, spoke, spoken
lose, lost, lost
go, went, gone

Auxiliaries are very irregular, e.g. the verb to be has forms that differ from one another  am, are, is, was,
were, been, being (suppletion)
Most modal verbs do not inflect and have only two forms, ex. may, might, can, could

Gradability of adjectives and adverbs

 synthetic comparison
 -er ending (comparative) e.g. warmer
-est ending (superlative) e.g. finest
 analytic comparison
more and most e.g. more/ most interesting more quickly
 irregular comparison (process of suppletion)
ex. good better best; little, less, least; much, more, most; well, better, best; bad, worse, worst

Pronoun inflection
Pronouns, and personal pronouns in particular have retained a certain degree of inflection in PDE
Ex. Personal pronouns express number, gender and case often through suppletive forms: I - me; we - us, you
- you, he - him, she - her, it - it, they – them

Linguistic variability
All languages are open and dynamic entities which adapt to the history and culture of the speech
communities in which they are in use.

Standard vs non-standard varieties

A standard variety is the language par excellence in terms of social prestige, language functions and
domains of use

Sociolinguistics = the study of the relation between language and society

 Social variables: class, network, gender (men, women..), sexual orientation (heterosexual,
homosexual), age, ethnicity
 Attitudes (positive, negative) influence language change ( some variants may be perceived as more
or less prestigious)

Labov’s study
 In the North-East US, non-rhoticity is a major feature of working-class dialect (in the UK it is exactly
the opposite!)
 William Labov’s study of New York Department stores in 1972 – “Fourth floor”
 High class departments stores
Saks Fifth Avenue: rhoticity variety (63%)
 Mid-lower class department stores
Macy’s (medium status): non-rhotic variety (56%)
S.Klein (low status): non-rhotic variety (92%)

Hypercorrection
 Speakers tend to conform to the more prestigious linguistic norms
 Hypercorrection is more typical of socially insecure speakers such as middle classes and women

Historical linguistics or diachronic linguistics

The main paradigm (approach) to the study of language change
1. Comparative linguistics or linguistic reconstruction
2. The history of language: of it changes through the centuries

Internal and external causes of change

 Internal: regularisation, e.g. the levelling of the OE inflectional case system (see OE stān, PDE stone)
 External: extralinguistic or social factors (invasions, technological innovations, immigration)
Levels of language change
 Phonological change
- Loss of <r>
- 1600 split of /n/ and /ŋ/ as in sin and sing
- The Great Vowel Shift from the 15th century

 Morpho-syntactic Change
- Levelling of the OE case system
- Word order in ME
- Grammticalisation: ex. OE wilan (want) main verb  PDE will (modal verb)

 Semantic Change
- Me dogue (A Great Dane)  PDE dog = widening (from specif to a larger meaning)
- ME mete (food)  PDE meat = narrowing (from large meaning to small meaning)
- OE saeling (PDE happy)  ME seely (PDE innocent)  ModE silly (deserving compassion)
 weak  simple  ignorant  foolish = pejoration
- OE cwēn (woman)  PDE queen = amelioration

Historical periods and linguistic stages

 The Anglo Saxon period – Old English, OE (700-1150)
 The Normann period – Middle English, ME (1150-1500)
 Modern period – Modern English, ModEngl (1500-1900); Great Britain and Northern Ireland
united under the British crown. New territories explored and stable colonies established in
America, Asia and Africa.
 20th century – From English to “Englishes”, English as a global language – Present-day
English (PDE) (to the present)

The history of English

Old English - The Celts
 The original inhabitants of the British Isles were the Celts, Indo-European people who had lived in
Europe since 2000 B.C, and inhabited the British Isles since 100 B.C, before the Roman and Anglo-
Saxon invasions.
 Organized in tribes
 Druids: priests who also administrated justice, education, etc. More powerful then political chiefs
 Names of Celtic origin: London, Leeds, Avon, Thames, Kent, Cornwall
 Very few Celtic words in Old English
 Celtic languages spoken today: Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic (Breton)
There were many Celtic populations:
- The Gauls
They were a group of Celtic peoples of Continental Europe (Iron Age + roman period (V
century BC – V century AC)
- The Britons
They inhabited Great Britain from the Iron Age until the High Middle Ages (1000), when
they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, Bretons
Briton heritage: Welsh/Cymraeg

Roman Britain (AD 43- C.410)

In 54 B.C the Romans invaded British Isles, and gradually imposed the Roman life style and Latin, which
became the language of public and private recordings. The Roman heritage can still be detected in some
urban terminology such as strœt from Latin strata and toponyms ending in -chester

The Anglo Saxon (5th century AD)

Groups of West-Germanic tribes settled in the southern and eastern parts of the island.
They drove the native Celts out of the main urban centres and established total political hegemony.
Many Celtic communities were destroyed or assimilated, while others were forced to move westwards and
northwards, into aeras we know now as Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria and Scotland, were Celtic languages are
still spoken today.
The Germanic tribes systematically acquired political power and organized themselves in seven autonomous
kingdoms:
- The Anglo-Saxon Eptarchy - Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Kent and East
Anglia

Christianization of Britain (VI century AD)

- Approximately 6th century during the Anglo-Saxon rule
- Introduction of the Latin alphabet and abandonment of the Runic alphabet by the Anglo-
Saxons
- From the 9th to the 11th centuries manuscripts were translated from Latin into Old English
- Latin and Greek gave Old English a wide range of Gospel words related to religion and
spirituality: abbot, altar, apostle, candle, mass, minister, monk, nun, pope, priest

The Scandinavian invasion (8th century)

 Britain was close to their homeland and attractive for its material wealth (ex. Jewels).
 They were not very much interested in the conquest of territory (political conquest)
 The first settlers were located in the north-east of England.
 They expanded all through the island until the King Alfred the Great, the head of the West Saxon
region, defeated them in the 9th century (878 AD).
 The Danes destroyed all the Anglo-Saxons kingdoms
 King Alfred the Great raised an army and pushed them out of his kingdom
 Alfred saved the English language, had works translated from Latin to English
 He commissioned the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and encouraged the use of English in writing and in
speech

Danish (Vikings) influence was the strongest because the two Germanic languages had similar grammatical
structures, declensions and conjugations  mutual intelligibility in saying the simple thing related to
commerce (ex. Buying, selling sheepskin)

- English toponyms in -by are Danish in origin: Rugby, Derby, Whitby (the Danish word by
meant ‘farm’ or ‘town’)
- Simple-life words borrowed into English from Danish: law, band, odd, rotten, rugged, die

Old English period (700-1150)

 This term refers to Germanic dialects spoken by Jutes, Angles and Saxons: Kentish, West-Saxon,
Mercian and Northumbrian
 The West-Saxon reign was the most important religious, military and cultural centre in Europe
 West-Saxon was considered the first standard written language, associated with political, military
and cultural power in society
Features of Old English:
- Latin alphabet, with some differences from PDE (ex. The consonant thorn, or þorn, <þ>)
- Nouns, adjectives and pronouns were inflected for case, number and gender (synthetic versus
analytic language
- Word order was free
- Two types of verbs (strong and weak) = irregular and regular verbs in PDE
- Lexis was mainly Germanic but included a small percentage words of Celtic (names of places,
London), Latin and Scandinavian origin

Old English = a synthetic, inflected language => grammar is determined by a system of inflections

Beowulf (975-1025 AD)

Poem
Beowulf = a loyal character, leader of the tribe who goes to fight monsters, who represents the idea of a
frightening nature.
In this society, what made people fearful was nature and the monster: the scenery was created in the UK
but they are more similar to places in Germany rather than UK (dark forests)
So what we can see is that there is a link between language and the way of thinking.

Middle English, ME (1150-1500)

Major historical events:
1066 - Normans invaded England —> they spoke French while Latin was the language of the church and
education and English was still the language of the population
The mindset in the Middle Age is that there was a reality strictly organized = reality is a representation of
god, everybody and everything has their place in society
Everybody believed in god and was Christian and they believed that the king was there because he had
been invested by god to govern the society.
At court people speak French VS normal people spoke old English
The persistence of the French language in the UK was long and it had a huge impact on the English
language.
In English language you can have alternative ways to say the same thing:
1. One derives from the french root (usually with stress on the last syllable)
2. one derives to the Germanic one (usually with stress on the 1st syllable)

1215 - The Magna Charta Liberatum (Latin)

1476 - introduction of the printing press by William Caxton

Norman Britain
 many Norman kings were often totally ignorant of their country’s language
 government, law and administration were conducted in French and so was the Church together
with Latin
-> civil law: Normans (coming from continental Europe) they had a different kind of law system > the law
comes before any possible criminal act than if someone commits a crime they go to court and they are
judged
VS
-> common law: Anglo-Saxon law system —> no rules THEN if something happens that creates problems ->
the person is taken to court and the jury that decide if this person is guilt or not > after that the rule or the
law is made
if this case is the 1st case > becomes a precedent and all the similar crimes are judged based on the 1st
precedent
 the Normans integrated with English society though marriage
 in 12th and 13th centuries French/English bilingualism existed in the upper middle classes and
nobility > knowing French was necessary to climb the social scale

In the UK > Geoffrey Chaucer (the Canterbury Tales)

he was a diplomat who travelled a lot; he knew Latin, French and Italian.
thanks to his job he could observe what other countries had already done = he wanted to do for UK the
same thing that Dante and Boccaccio did for Italy
1st he wrote in French and then in Latin
-> then in English = the language spoken by his people
like Dante, he wrote a journey from sin (represented by the image of London) to salvation (Canterbury)
he wanted to standardise the language to provide a model > he has to do spelling and lexical choices

Translation of the bible > John Wyclif

It’s a complex operation because it is believed that these were God’s words
in the Middle Age = church became increasingly more important = there was a lot of corruption —> he
translated it because he wanted to be more close to Christians because they could not understand Latin
the translation of the bible in English is very important in terms of the language and of the Bible

William Caxton
He was a merchant and a diplomat, from the age of 50 he decided to learn the art of printing; after a few
years he set up the 1st English press (1476)
 focused his attention on contemporary works (Canterbury Tales)
He understood the importance of Chaucer’s work in creating unified national language and he personally
edited 2 editions of the book
the last work he printed was Malory’s Morte D’Arthur (best example of contemporary English prose)
—> he printed also a number of his own translation from Latin, Dutch and French

French vocabulary in:

 administration > treaty, government, royal, property
 general vocabulary
 religion > with a combination of Latin

-> specialization of certain terms

Ex: pig VS pork

Old English VS standard English

 differences in pronunciation influenced by Latin, French
 word order and use of shall
Middle English
I shal maken the fre tomorwen
Verray luf clenses þe saule

PDE
I shall make you free tomorrow
True love cleans the soul
Features of Middle English
 reduction of the case system (in nouns and adj)
 introduction of the pronoun she/shoe
 development of the feature with shall/will and the present progressive
 increasingly fixed word order with some variation
 French and Latin influenced vocabulary
 infinities dropped the -an suffix and developed the to+ form
 plurals of nouns and genitive singular marked by the -(e)s ending

Modern English (c.1500-c.1900)

Period of time which covers 400 years: Early Modern English 1500-1700
Modern English 1700 -1900
Major historical/Cultural events
English became a united and powerful country (with 7 million inhabitants)
- Separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church
Henry VIII wanted a divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragon  the Pope said no, he
didn’t want to lose his friendship with the catholic Spain.
Henry VIII funded the Church of England  the thought was that the people had to be in a
closer relationship with God, without some sacraments (like confession) or a hierarchy, so
without a mediator.
Henry proposed this religion where is the king but also the head of the church of England =
a new form of Protestantism.
There were two types of Protestantism  ANGLICANS AND PURITANS (more related to M.
Luther’s ideals of a more equal society)
The monarch believed to have also a religion power, he wanted to control it for 3 main
reasons:
- political: he was not powerful enough to influence the pope (France and Spain were far
more powerful)
- economic: Henry VIII wanted to divorce from the catholic Catherine of Aragon for not
giving him children, but the pope refused
- in 1531 Henry persuaded the bishops to make him head of the Church of England

- Queen Elisabeth I established the power of Britain on the seas

Daughter of Henry VIII, she was a very great leader and she was skilled in communication.
She wasn’t the daughter of the first wife – she wasn’t considered the legitimate heir, she was a
woman – so she was considered weak, irrationals and more similar to animals because women
express more than men their feelings; and she was redheaded (red is the colour associated with
passion, sins and the devil – red = bad person)  many problematics against her.
She made these characteristics her power, she wanted to prove to the country that she could be as
strong as a man  she created an image of herself (ex. When it was beneficially to show her
femininity she did it and when it wasn’t beneficial she didn’t do it)
She was ‘married to England’ = she was depicted as the ‘VIRGIN QUEEN’  she had a lot of
portraits done by artists. All of them had in common the fact that her hair were tithed back + having
red hair made her ‘special’.
For her trade was the most important foreign policy matter – especially against Spain, England’s
greatest trade rival.
The two policies that followed the Queen were:
1. To encourage English sailors, John Hawkins and Francis Drake, to attack and destroy Spanish
ships
 2. To encourage English traders to settle abroad and create colonies Britain’s colonial empire
of the 17th and 18th centuries

- Great flourishing of the theatre and literature (Shakespeare, The Authorized Translation of the Bible
– important moment)
Shakespeare was the genius of English literature  he created quotes that are still used nowadays:
love is blind, we have seen better days, fair play..
He had an important role in the standardization of Modern English.

- The English Civil War over the power of the Parliament versus the power of the Monarchy
Puritans wanted to overthrow Monarchy because they had the idea of an equal society,
they were for Democracy.
For some years there has been a democratic experiment with Cromwell, when this failed
Charles II became king  the problem was that he was French and spoke another language

- In 1702 England and Scotland were united under the British Crown

Britain became a colonial word power

- Since the 17th century English trading companies in India and slave trade in Africa
- Since the 17th century stable colonies established in America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, The
Caribbean and South Africa
- 19th century colonial empire in Asia and Africa

Origins of Standard Modern English

 South-Eastern midland variety of English (London area in the 15th century) underwent a process of
selection and acceptance thanks to the positive attitudes of speakers
 The language of the “powerful” emerging urban upper-middle class
 English supplanted the French and Latin in domains such as government, law, religion, literature,
and education

The British Empire

 Began in the early seventeenth century but if gathers speed from the 18th and 20th century.
 Progressive colonization in Asia, Americas, and Africa
 By 1913, 412 million people are part of the British Empire, almost a quarter of the world
population. The dominions included: Canada, Australia, India, the Caribbean, Egypt, South Africa,
Singapore and more.
Important work to describe this period –-> Moby dick by Melville

18th century Britain

 Britain possessed colonies worldwide
 Britain played a major role in the Atlantic slave trade
 Britain led the Industrial Revolution (technological innovations like mechanized industrial
processed, the steam engine, road and rail connections)  development of specialist terminology
Importance of the Robison Crusoe, which represents the self-made man

The industrial Revolution

 Approximately from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century
  Many new word creates (or begin to be widely used) at the time: ex. Oxygen, protein, nuclear, lens,
refraction, electron..
 The word ‘scientist’ was first created in 1834
 Names of disciplines:
Biology
Morphology
Taxonomy
Entomology
 Words for new things: train, engine, electricity, telephone, combustion
 New meanings to old words: locomotive, factory
 New compounds: railway, horsepower, typewriter

Language awareness and linguistic debate

 The most prestigious variety of English needed to be further elaborated and codified to achieve
functional efficiency and to increase its expressive power
 Need to create new words
 2 main processes of word formation:
Neologisers: Loans from French and Latin
Purists: expansion of native vocabulary through affixation

Language awareness and literacy

 Dictionaries
Robert Cawdrey, A Table Alphabeticall (1604)
John Florio, Queen Anna’s New World of Words (1611)
Nathaniel Bailey, Etymological English Dictionary (1721)
Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
 Grammars
Robert Lowth, A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762)
Joseph Priestley, Rudiments of English Grammar (1761)
Lindley Murray, English Grammar (1794)
 Newspapers and magazines
Weekly News (1622)
London Gazette (1665)
The Tatler and the Spectator (1711)
The Times (1790)

The language - Pronunciation

 The ideal of proper pronunciation. The rise of RP (received pronunciation)
RP as a mark of higher social class
 Decline in the social status of dialects and their accents
 Inconsistencies in spelling
 Changes in the vocabulary, new words from the field of science and the industrial revolution,
international trade and colonial expansion

(Late) Modern English (1700-1900)

 Simplification of inflection (only ‘s genitive and -s plural in nouns, the comparative and superlative
endings in adjectives) with the exception of pronouns
 Tendency to fixed word order
  Fragmentation of the standard. Speakers spread and settled in different geographical and socio-
cultural contexts worldwide.
- From the begging of the 17th century, British trading companies and the slave trade
- Pidgin English and Creoles emerges from the contact between English and other languages
(e.g. West African languages)
- Establishment of colonial settlements in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and
South Africa. Contact between English and native languages, as well as with Spanish, French
and Dutch. Result: so-called standard varieties of English.
- Institutionalisation of English in the colonies. It starts being used as a second language,
often becoming the official language of the law, the government, education, etc.

Pidgin and Creole

Pidgin: ‘a simple form of a language, especially English, Portuguese or Dutch, with a limited number of
word, that are used together with words from a local language. It is used when people who do not speak
the same language need to talk to each other’

Creole:
1. ‘a person whose ancestors were among the first Europeans who settled in the West Indies or South
America, or one of the French or Spanish people who settled in the southern states of the US’
2. ‘a language formed when a mixture of a European language with a local language (especially an
African language spoken by slaves in the West Indies) is spoke as a first language’

Sociolinguistics of Present-Day English

‘Sociolinguistics, the study of the sociological aspects of language. The discipline concerns itself with the
part language plays in maintaining the social roles in a community. Sociolinguists attempt to isolate those
linguistic features that are used in particular situations and that mark the various social relationships among
the participants and the significant elements of the situation. Influences on the choice of sounds,
grammatical elements, and vocabulary items may include such factors as age, sex, education, occupation,
race, and peer-group identification, among others. For example, an American English speaker may use such
forms as “He don’t know nothing” or “He doesn’t know anything,” depending on such considerations as
his level of education, race, social class or consciousness, or the effect he wishes to produce on the person
he is addressing. In some languages, such as Japanese, there is an intricate system of linguistic forms that
indicate the social relationship of the speaker to the hearer’. – Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Since the begging of the 20th century, ‘English’ has been used mainly to refer to the varieties of British
English. Since the mid-1980s, however, focus has been shifted to linguistic variation in terms of:
 Geographical location (American English, African English, New York English)
 Linguistic and ethnic association (Chinese English, Maori English, Indian English)
 Activities such as commerce, education, culture and technology (legal English, policespeak,
seaspeak)
 Combinations of location and activity (American legal English, British medical English)
 Fusion of English with other languages (Frenglish, Spanglish)

New varieties:
 Irish English
‘Otherwise known as Hiberno-English, this refers to dialects spoken across the island of Ireland.
Frank McCourt immortalised West and South-West Irish English in his memoir Angela’s Ashes, with
its liberal use of the definite article (“Do you like the Shakespeare,Frankie?”), and the unbidden
musicality that comes with inverted word order (“Is it a millionaire you think I am?”). Some [people]
 from Northern Ireland will plump for the past simple form of a verb where a past participle is
usually required, saying things like: “They’d never have did it had they knew.”’

 Singlish
‘Short for Colloquial Singaporean English, a creole language for which English is the lexifier
(meaning it provides the basis for most of its vocabulary) plus words from Malay, Tamil and varieties
of Chinese. […] Take Singlish’s being topic-prominent, for example: like in Mandarin, this means that
Singlish sentences will sometimes start with a topic (or a known reference of the conversation),
followed by a comment (or some new information). For example, “I go restaurant wait for you.”
Grammatically, it’s worlds apart from “I’ll be waiting for you at the restaurant,” but it’s evolved in a
region where that kind of sentence structure is the order of the day’.
 Balizean creole
Another English-based creole language, similar to Jamaican patois, which offers some compelling
takes on tense. The present tense verb does not indicate number or person, while the past is
indicated by putting the tense marker mi in front of the verb (“ai mi ron” - I ran), but this is optional
and considered superfluous if a time marker like “yestudeh” (yesterday) is used’
 Basic English
‘Basic English was invented by CK Ogden in 1930. Designed to allow language learners to acquire
English quickly and communicate at a very basic level, Ogden managed to reduce the language to
850 words, including only eighteen verbs!’
 Seaspeak
‘A controlled natural language (CNL) based on English that provides a lingua franca for sea captains
to communicate. First conceived in 1985, the premise is simple, grammar-free phrases that facilitate
comprehension in often fraught and dangerous situations. It has now been codified as
Standard Marine Communication Phrases’.

The diaspora of English

Diaspora: ‘populations, such as members of a ethnic or religious group, that originated from the same place
but dispersed to different locations. The word diaspora comes from the ancient Greek dia speiro, meaning
“to sow over”. The concept of diaspora has long been used to refer to the Greeks in the Hellenic world and
to the Jews after the fall of Jerusalem in the early 6th century BCE. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s,
scholars began to use it with reference to the African diaspora, and the use of the term was extended futher
in the following decades’ – Encyclopaedia Brittanica
 Expansion of English within the British Isles (i.e., Scotland, Wales and Ireland)
Subjugation of Gaelic-speaking populations

The first diaspora

Discovery of new territories and establishment of British colonies in USA, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and South Africa  English spoken as a Native language
- Development of linguae francae
- Formation of colonial standards
- Wave of political independence after WWII

The second diaspora

It refers to the diffusion of English as a Second Language (ESL), especially in Africa and Asia. It’s
strictly linked to processes of globalization, homogenization and imposition  including what we
commonly define as globalization.

Lingua Franca
1. 'a common language consisting of Italian mixed with French, Spanish, Greek, and Arabic that was
formerly spoken in Mediterranean ports'
2. 'any of various languages used as common or commercial tongues among peoples of diverse speech'
(Merlam Webster Dictionary)

1. A lingua franca is a language or way of communicating which is used between people who do not speak
one another's native language. Example: 'English is rapidly becoming the lingua franca of Asia.
(Collins Dictionary)

‘Lingua Franca’ is a more recent approach which is primarily interested in the structures and functions of
the language as used in international contact settings, by individuals with different linguacultural
backgrounds, and for none of whom English is a native language.
The reasons for the present predominance of English in the word:
External reasons: the colonial and industrial power of Great Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries; the
political, economic and technological power of the USA in the 20th century; the number of speakers; the
geographical spread; cultural heritage
And/or
Internal reasons: clarity, simplicity, size of its vocabulary, flexibility in creating new words, adaptability to
distant contexts

Main political and cultural events

1. English is the official – or main – language of many important countries in the world (UK, USA,
Australia, Canada, New Zealand)
2. English has been retained as the official language (along with other native languages) in more than
70 former British colonies after their political independence (India, and several African countries)
3. English has acquired growing importance worldwide in science, technology, international
organizations and business.

Why has English become a “Global” Language?

1. Native varieties of English (ENL or L1)
2. Varieties of English as a Second Language (ESL or L2), used intra-nationally in former British colonies
in the institutional, media and educational fields
3. English as a Foreign Language (EFL), English as a lingua Franca (ELF), English for Special Purposes
(ESP), Business English, English for Academic Purposes (EAP), Airspeak, Policespeak
4. Within each category there is a continuum from an educated standards to a very limited form of
communication

The three circles of present-day English

  The inner circle – English has a multifunctional role and is used as a native language (ENL or L1)
 The outer circle – English has the status of second language (ESL or L2)
 The expanding circle – English is used as a foreign language (EFL)

The native varieties

 a set of different but related varieties which share common core of grammar and vocabulary
 they differ mainly in pronunciation and lexis
 the two main ones are British English and American English
 They provide the norms for EFL learners

Australian English
 It is mostly similar to BrE in spelling and sentence construction
 Vocabulary and accent are distinct
 Development of a large lexicon of its own (esp. terminology of flora and fauna; ex. Kangaroo and
dingo)
 A number of nouns are shared by AmE and Australian English (ex. Zucchini vs. BrE courgettes)

British influence in Australia

 1788: British first settled in Australia
 Queen Elizabeth II is Australia’s Head of State
 British models are at the basis of Australia’s legal and political systems
 Until WWII most citizens were either born in Britain or British descendants
 After WWII assisted packaged scheme to help British people migrate to Australia (1945-1972: over 1
million immigrants from the UK)

American influence in Australia

 Before WWII: Australia was considered “British” (Cultural influence + political domination)
 After WWII: drift toward the American culture (music, cinema, television, food, shopping)

Development of an Australian Identity

 The representation of Australia as a country of white settlers no longer
 Acknowledgement of the indigenous component
 “Cultural cringe”: entrenched national inferiority complex which assumes ideas and cultures of
other places are automatically superior

Second language varieties or New Englishes

  Are used in institutional or educational contexts in multilingual countries, usually former British
colonies
 Have gone through a process of language contact
 Have been progressively acknowledged as local standards (e.g. Indian English, East-African English)
 Share common features that are different from native standard varieties

An example of ESL: Indian English

 The British East India Company ruled from 1600 to 1858 followed by the British Raj from 1858 to
1947
 A local elite which was ‘Indian in blood and colour; but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in
intellect’
 1.2 billion inhabitants, great/variety of languages (15 official one, Hindi representing 1/3 of the
population)
 English recognized as ‘associate official language’

English in India (linguistic policy)

 English a ‘link’ language for the Indian Administrative Service, higher education, science and
technology
 Its status is supported by the non-Hindi parts of India
 3-language formula: education for everyone in the regional language, in Hindi and in English
 Learning English raises people’s chances to get a good job (bank manager, university or college
teacher, civil servants, lawyer, etc.)

Linguistic nativization
 Emotional component of language use, ethnic identity
 English less used in the family, more in business, politics, technology
 English is a sign of class, education, authority, cosmopolitan, Western attitude
 Code-switching, lexical innovation (change-room, as honest as an elephant)

What language in the EU?

 24 official languages. Legal documents are translated into all of the (or a large majority)
 However, English is what most of the work is done in
English as EFL

The speech community of PDE

 Bi-lingualism or multilinguism is the norm
Perfect bi-lingualism doesn’t exist, there is always one language that dominates – it can’t be
achieved, not even by kids who have acquired the languages by their parents
 Languages play an important role in the construction of people’s identities
 Language contact
 Nativization, hybridization, code-switching
Code-switching = you switch to one code to another, it might indicate a variety or all the languages
all together  the use of two or more languages within the same utterance.
We can observe that language resources associated with English, i.e. standard English, ‘mixed
varieties’ like the blending of Tagalog and English, and internet slang word like the acronym ‘bae’
are part of speakers’ dynamic and flexible communicative repertoires, reflecting their life-
trajectories, experiences, knowledge and ideologies.
 New coinages: been-to= a person who has spent a long time abroad; change-room = dressing room
English as a foreign language
Various options:
- Choos one of the native standards for production on the basis of proximity, tradition,
personal needs or taste (ex. British Englis or American English)
- Favour a non-native model, English as a Lingua Franca
But be prepared to understand different varieties
English as a global language
 Establishment of new English-speaking communities in new geographical and socio-cultural
contexts
 Contact, and mutual influence, between English and other unrelated languages
 Formation of non-native varieties of English

The varieties of English

 Regional Englishes (e.g. Yorkshire English)
 Social Englishes (e g. Cockney English)
 Colonial Englishes (e.g. New Zealand English)
 Post-Colonial Englishes (e.g. Nigerian English)
 Immigrant Englishes (c.g. Chicano English)
 Pidgin English (e.g. Tok Pisin)
 English as a lingua franca (ELF)

Global Englishes
Thinking of language in terms of the identity of its community of speakers.
- Global English as a polylectal continuum.
Polylectal: having or recognizing many dialects within one language
This continuum ranges from standard varieties (known as acrolects → used by well-educated people) to
low-prestigious varieties (known as basilects) spoken by people with low formal or school education. In the
middle, intermediate local varieties (known as mesolects).

A continuum of billngualism.
At one end, the educated variety of English. At the other end, varieties that reflect specific cultural, social
and linguistic identities. It shows four functions:
1. Instrumental - English is the language of education.
2. Regulative - English is the language of administration or bureaucracy.
3. Interpersonal - English is the bridge language of communication between speakers of different
languages.
4. Imaginative - English is the language of different artistic (e.g, music, Iterary-) genres

How it is emerged?
 Deviationist perspective – Global Englishes are the result of imperfect learning of English
  Linguistic creativity perspective – Speakers of English in the world create their own norms
independently in relation to a specific geographical and sociocultural contenent
Difference between mistakes and deviations
Mistakes are unaccepted and do not contribute to language change
Deviations contribute to language change
 Language contact, 5 stages:
1. Foundation – English is spread to a non-english speaking country
2. Exonormative use – English is imposed in the country by its native speakers
3. Nativization – English speakers and local native communities mix and hybridize
4. Endonormative stabilization – an indigenous variety of English is established and becomes
accepted by the members of the speech community
5. Differentiation – the new variety of English is acknowledged as different from any other
English

The English lexicon: from words to phraseology

Lexicology deals with the description of the nature, meaning, history and use of vocabulary of a language,
also referred to as its lexis or lexicon. Lexicography covers the principles and the practices which are applied
to the writing of different types of dictionaries and vocabulary references works.

Lexis is dynamic
Three process of lexical innovation:
3. The creation of completely new words (coinage)
4. The borrowing of words from other languages (loanwords)
5. Word formation processes internal to the language
o Lexis is the level of language most rapidly and deeply affected by social, historical and cultural
change

Word-formation processes have been classified and labelled by linguists in different ways:
 The addition of prefixes, suffixes to a base  affixation (childish/childhood; happy/unhappy;
careful/careless)
 The addition of neoclassical combining forms of Greek or Latin origin (minivan, multitasking)
 The combination of two or more existing lexemes to form a new one  compounding (jet lag,
screen saver, paperback)
 Various types of shortening (sit-com for situation comedy; flu for influenza; BBC for British
Broadcasting Corporation)
 The fusion of two words into one  blending (Brexit from Britain + exit)
 The change of meaning of an existing lexeme semantic shift ( the verb zap: moving quickly 
keeping changing tv programmes with a remote control)
 The change of grammatical function without any formal change  functional shift or conversion or
zero-derivation (download and update can be both nouns and verbs and their grammatical role will
be made evident in context)

Word-formation processes can still be detected in words that have undergone a process of lexicalization,
that is that have become independent lexemes.

New word  Mansplaining = to explain something to a woman in condescending way that assumes she has
no knowledge about the topic

Meaning is complex
The term ‘meaning’ is often used in a general way to refer to semantics. Lexical semantics is the scientific
study of the meaning of the words and is very complex and challenging area, where several competing
theories have been developed.
 The relationship between “things” and “words”
 A referent is the entity in the real world that a word indicates or denotes
 Some words imitate sounds (onomatopoeic) but most words have an arbitrary connection with
“things”
Miagolare  to mew, to miaow
Abbaiare  to bark
Chicchirichi  cock-a-doodle-do
Acqua  water/ wasser/ eau..

Defining a word meaning may prove difficult

 words refer to, or denote, entities in the world, but this relationship (reference) can be expressed
in different ways
 the meaning of words can be culturally conditioned
 for example, when defining the noun “bird” we conceive a general image, a mental prototype
based on our experience and containing the most distinctive characteristics of the class. Some
members are less centrals than others.
 Words denote objects and concepts, but may have emotional or stylistic connotations BUT words
can be used in a figurative sense (metaphorical)
Ex. Butterflies live only one day vs She is a butterfly when she dances
Denotation = what the word literally refers to – objects, concepts
Connotation = the feeling a word involves – words have stylistic and emotional
connotations

Monoreferentiality and Polysemy

Some words gave only one referent or meaning and others have several related meanings.
While, some words have different unrelated meanings (homonyms)
o The nature of lexemes affects the organisation of entries in dictionaries

Semantic links between words

 Near-synonymy – freedom and liberty
 Antonymy (or complementarity) – black and white; fast and slow; brother and sister; married and
single
 Hyperonymy (superordinates) and hyponymy (subordinates) – flowers, roses, dafffodils, violets,
tulips, daisies
 Semantic field – to cook, roast, simmer, fry, bake, boll, barbecue..

Lexis appears to be very important, open and dynamic component of a language, well-integrated at the
levels of both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations.
The lexicon of a language is at the centre of a vast range of relations with etymology and history, spelling,
pronunciation, inflectional and derivational morphology, syntax, various types of meaning, sense relations,
register variation and lexical collocations and phraseology.
 - How many words are there in English?
Where are they stored?
It is not easy to count them, there are different ways of counting them:
1. Dictionaries
2. Speakers’ competence
3. Corpora
Words in the mind:
- Experimental evidence
- How many words a speaker knows depends on variables such as age and education and use
(receptive or productive)
- Reading vocabulary of the average American high student: 40,000
- Educated native speaker: around 50,000 words (rising to 60,000-80,000 if proper names,
names of places and idiomatic expressions are included)

What is dictionary?
Dictionary is different from vocabulary
Dictionary: 'a book that gives a list of the words of a language in alphabetical order and explains what they
mean, or gives a word for them in a foreign language'
Vocabulary:
1. 'all the words that a person knows or uses.’
2. 'all the words in a particular language'
3. 'the words that people use when they are talking about a particular subject'
Synonym of lexicon and lexis

Different types of dictionaries

Dictionaries vary in relation to a number of features, such as:
• The number of languages they cover, i.e. monolingual, bilingual or multilingual dictionaries.
• The number of lemmas they include, from the so-called unabridged (all words in a language) to college or
desk dictionaries (middle-size) to pocket dictionaries (essential words)
• Whether they are Diachronic (providing information about etymology and history of a language) or
synchronic (language of a certain period)
• Areas covered, such as general language, specialized areas of knowledge (e.g. business, science,
technology, medicine, etc.) or specific linguistic areas (e.g. pronunciation, abbreviations, neologisms,
collocations, idioms, proverbs).
Dictionaries vary in relation to a number of features, such as:
• Addressees, for example native speakers or foreign learners
• Attitude towards new words, foreign words, slang expressions and taboo forms like swearwords and
insults. If it includes them, it’s descriptive (that is, it just reports the words that are used). If it excludes
them, it’s prescriptive (that is, it gives rules on what language is acceptable).
• Focus, whether on words or things (dictionaries vs encyclopaedias)
• Organization, whether alphabetical order or semantic fields (usually called thesaurus)
• Type of publication, from paper format to electronic format to online dictionaries.

What is a corpus?
A corpus is a collection of naturally-occurring texts available in machine-readable form and assumed to be
representative of a given language, or a particular register of it.
Such data is studied by means of specific software programs to get information on language on a large,
systematic scale.
Corpora (the plural of corpus) can be seen as repertoires of words. Corpus linguistics is a relatively recent
development. By using IT tools, a corpus is queried to discover trends in the language (for example, most
used words, collocations, in which context does a word occur, etc.)

Electronic corpora
• Corpora are collections of text in electronic form that are meant to represent a language, or a register of
it.
• Several corpora are available for English that can be analysed though specific software in terms of
frequency and use of words in context.
e.g. The British National Corpus (BNC)

Corpus linguistic software applications

- Frequency lists
Text types: lemmas (live, cat, waiter)
Text tokens: individual word forms (live-lives, cat-cats..)
- Concordances/collocates
- Keywords

Multi-words lexical phrases

Phraseology
= the field that studies the widespread expressions used in popular language. It typically explored slogans,
commonplaces, proverbs and quotations, but it has recently come to include lexical patterns as well

Lexical collocations
The preferred co-occurrence of two lexemes that belong to two different word classes and retain their
independent meaning
When a word “keeps company” with other word for reasons other than grammatical ones
Ex. To take up/ start/ pursue a career (to make career)

The principles that underline this phenomena are, according to the linguist John Sinclair:
- the IDIOM PRINCIPLE refers to the existence in language of multi-word lexical pattern that
are units of meaning
- the OPEN-CHOICE PRINCIPLE refers to the part of language that functions according to
predictable grammatical rules
Types of “prefabricated language”
 social routines (or pragmatic idioms)
 discourse organisers
 idioms
 binomials
 proverbs
 simile
 slogans and famous quotations

Pragmatic idioms or social routines  expressions used in everyday situations such as greetings, leave-
takings, politeness formulae, apologises, transaction formulae, etc.
- hi, there
- how are you doing?
- See you later
- Sorry
- …

Discourse organizers
They are used to give structure to your speech or writing
Examples of this are:
- In addition
- For example
- To conclude
Idioms
= expressions of few words. The meaning of an idiom is not equal to the sum of its parts.
- To take a rain check (to excuse yourself from a commitment

Binomials
They are pairs of words linked by a conjunction (typically and) and whose order is fixed
Examples of this are:
- Black and white (not *white and black)
- More or less (not *less or more)

Similes
They are commonly used comparisons.
Examples of this are:
- As red as a lobster (to be red faced with anger or sun exposure)
- As cool as a cucumber (to be cool and collected)

Proverbs, slogans and quotations

They are used to convey a traditionally held truth based on shared experience.
Examples of this are:
- A leopard cannot change its spot (you can’t change your nature)
- ‘Never knowingly undersold’ (John Lewis stores)
- ‘Do one thing every day that scares you’ (by Mary Schmich)

Processes of lexical innovation

1) Coinage
 Involves the creation of totally new words, a necessary procedure when new ideas, concepts, or
objects are introduced as a consequence of recent inventions or discoveries. The act of creating a
new word or phrase that other people begin to use.

2) Borrowing
It involves the introduction of the term “adopted” from other languages. English is a language that
has absorbed lexical material form different languages, and as a result it has changed dramatically
throughout the centuries. Borrowing from other languages is a sign of how historical and social
events influence the development of a language. Modern English is a mixed language: the core is
made up of Germanic terms (40%) while the remaining 60% is made up of less frequent items of
romance or Latin origin. The impact of Latin and Greek has become quite profound in the 16th
century. Latin borrowings and adaptations were introduced especially in the field of humanities,
science and religion.

Examples of borrowings
Science comes to English directly from Old French. French, in turn, borrowed the word from the
Latin “scientia,” meaning “knowledge.”
Person: “Person” is another English word with both Latin and French origins. It comes from the Old
French “persone,” which is itself a French borrowing of the Latin “persona.”
Sky, from an Old Norse word meaning “cloud,” replaced the Anglo-Saxon “heofon” around 1300.
Alcohol is actually an Arabic word. The word comes from the old Arabic word for eyeliner, “al-
kuhul.”

3) Word-formation processes
1. Addition  compounding, affixation, combining forms
2. Deletion  acronyms and initialisms, clipping, blending
3. Semantic shift
4. Zero derivation (functional shift or conversion)

- Compounding = the combination of two or more lexemes to form a lexeme with a new
meaning.
 Noun + noun (country house, armchair, school day)
 Adj. + noun (green light, fake-news)
 Noun + adjective (user-friendly)
 Verb + particle (handout, dropout, lockdown)

Compounds can be of two types:

1) Compounds whose meaning is equivalent to the meaning of the two
components, or endocentric (car park)
2) Compounds whose meaning is not related to the meaning of components,
or exocentric (black bird, red cross)

- Affixation = is a process also referred to as derivation. It is the most frequent word

formation process in English. It involves the use of affixes, morphemes that can occur at the
beginning, end or middle of a word consequently referred to as prefixes, infixes and
suffixes. Derivational change that takes place without the addition of a bound morpheme
(such as the use of the noun impact as a verb) is called zero derivation or conversion.
- Bound morphemes = a word element that cannot stand alone as a word, including both
prefixes and suffixes. The two classes of bound morphemes that linguists recognize to
modify the grammatical class of words are inflectional and derivational morphemes.
Inflectional morphemes predictably influence the base words to signal a change in quantity,
person, gender, tense, or the like while leaving the base word’s class unchanged.
 Examples of derivation
Affixation: the process of adding a derivational morpheme – or affix – to a word to
create either a different form of that word or a new word to with a different
meaning; it is the most common way of making new words in English
Prefixation: prefixes include examples like “un-“, “self-“ and “re-“

Suffixation: suffixes come in the form of ending elements like “-hood”, “-ing” or “-
ed”

While prefixes typically maintain the word class (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) of the word it is
modifying suffixes often change the form entirely, as in the case with “exploration”
compared to “explore” or “highlighter” compared to “highlight”.
One can use multiple iterations of the same affixation to modify a word like grandmother to
mean an entirely different person – as in “great-great grandmother”, who would be your
mother’s mother’s mother’s mother; or a “re-re-re make of a film” wherein this film would
be the fourth iteration of its kind”.

- Acronyms = new words formed with the initials of other words. They are pronounced as full
words, not as a sequence of letters.
English has a vast number of acronyms, a lot of which refer to the names of institutions and
states: USA, NATO, UN, UK
Acronyms are read as words; in initialism each letter is read independently  both of them
represent the initial letters of a complex expression

- Clipping= a form of shortening: it involves the reduction of a word of more than one syllable
to a shorter form, which is often used in casual register.
Clipping is the process of forming a new word by dropping one or more syllables from a
polysyllabic word, such as cell from cellular phone. Also known as a clipped form, clipped
word, shortening, and truncation.
A clipped form generally has the same denotative meaning as the word it comes from, but
it is regarded as more colloquial and informal. On occasion, a clipped form may replace the
original word in everyday usage – such as the use of piano in place of pianoforte.

- Blending = it involves not only a combination but also a fusion of two words. It implies a
fusion of forms and meaning of two different words by putting together the beginning of
one word and the ending of another.
Blends belong to an informal stylistic level and are usually found in the language of
journalism, advertising, which exploit blends to create catchy and attention-grabbing
expressions (Brangelina, Brexit)

- Semantic shift = the change of meaning of existing lexemes

Ex. Zap = moving quickly
The plane zapped across the sky in a flash.
Zap = to change the programme you are watching on television using a remote control
 In the old days there were fewer channels to zap
Mail = letters and parcels delivered through the post office
Mail = messages sent through the Internet

- Conversion or functional shift (or zero derivation)

= very common process in PDE because of the reduction of morphological phenomena
Bottle (noun) / to bottle (verb)
To download (verb) / download (noun)
Dry (adjective) / to dry (verb)
Round: adjective, preposition, adverb, noun, verb
Conversion implies a change of word class, and therefore of function, but does not imply a
change in form. Therefore, the function of words changes while the morphological
structure remains the same.
In English grammar, conversion is a word-formation process that assigns an existing word to
a different word class (part of speech) or syntactic category. This process is also known as a
functional or zero derivation.

The mixed nature of English lexis: Germanic versus Romance words

PDE is made of a core (c.40%) of high-frequency Germanic words that are usually short and refer to
common “things”, actions and concepts  e.g. man, woman, day, child, bread, to go, to get, phrasal verbs.
A wider component (c.60%) of less frequency used words of classical or Romance origin which are usually
longer and used in specialised or formal contexts  e.g. encyclopaedia, tonsillectomy, parliament,
infrastructure.

Germanic/Romance near-synonyms
• discover e.g. Columbus discovered a new continent
• find out e.g. Her parents found out that she had a boyfriend
• continue e.g. The treatment has to be continued for 4 weeks
• go on e.g. We can’t go on like this any longer
• pig / cow = the living animal
• pork/ beef = the meat you eat
• regal, royal e.g. royal family, regal powers
• kingly e.g. kingly manner
• return
• come back

English-Italian false friends

 Eng parent – It genitore
 Eng relative – It parente
 Eng confetti – It coriandoli
 Eng argument – It dicussione
 Eng farm – It fattoria
 Eng factory – It fabbrica
 Eng fabric – It tessuto

Variation in English
1. User-related variation
It has to do with the geographical area (GB, USA etc), age, education, gender and ethnicity6
2. Use-related variation, or register model
 - What is talked about (field or topic) – use of specialized vocabulary
- The medium used (spoken/ written, electronic language) – spoken language tends to be
more informal and in other cases it may require more formality (political speeches, thesis
defence)
- The relationship between speakers/writers (formal, informal) –> personal tenor – use of
formal/informal social routines and/or vocabulary

Words and culture

The link between language and culture has been a major concern of scholars of different periods.
Cultural relativism = the nature of a particular language determines, or deeply influences, the habitual
thoughts of its speaker and that different language pattern yield different patterns of thought.
- In the 20th century the American scholars Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf raised the
issue that the language we speak constrains our word view.
- Eskimos have many words to refer to different types of snow  It determines the way they
see reality
- Wilhelm von Humboldt stressed the link between the structure and the character of a
language and the spirit of a nation
This belief is opposed by other scholars who support the view of language as a universal opposed by other
scholars who support the view of language as a universal faculty and stress what languages have in
common, rather than their differences – universalistic approach. Other scholars take a middle position and
argue that reality influences language and viceversa.

Words reflect changes in society

- HI-FI, TRANSISTOR, VIDEOTAPE (in the 1950s)
- GREEN / GLOBAL WARMING /CHAIRPERSON (in the 1970s)
- WEBSITE/ WORLD WIDE WEB (in the 1990s)
- SUBPRIME (LOAN) (2008)

The language of war in the 20th century

1. War-related expressions
Genocide, nuclear weapons (nuke), ethnic cleansing, bloody Tuesday/ Nine Eleven/ September
Eleven, Ground Zero
2. Weapons
b-52, Patriot Missiles, Tomahawk Missiles
3. Euphemistic and bureaucratic expressions
Collateral damage (Civilian casualties), Body bags (The bodies of the dead soldiers in the Vietnam
war), Friendly fire (Shots fired accidentally), KIA (Killed in Action), MIA (Missed in Action), WIA
(Wounded in Action)

Computing: a rapidly developing terminology

1. program, window, menu, mouse, address, disk, bug, spam
words borrowed from general language and acquiring a specialised meaning
2. floppy disk, hard disk, blog (from web+log), modem ( from modulator+demodulator), download,
search engine, to google
word formation processes
3. CD-ROM (Compact Disk Read Only Memory), FAQ ( Frequently Asked Questions)
acronyms and abbreviations
Political correctness: some taboo areas
1. N-word, black, Afro-American, African-American
2. Mr., Mrs., Ms,
3. Chairman, chairwoman, chairperson, chair
4. Lawyer, Lady Lawyer, woman lawyer
5. Husband and wife, accompanying person, spouse, partner
6. Disabled, handicapped, differently able

= to be politically correct means to refer to different ethnic and social groups in a respectful and accepted
way. The most sensitive areas are race, gender, religion, human body and death. The debate started in the
USA in the 1970s and it is rather controversial.

Gender Issues
 Gender-bias n. prejudice based on gender
 Gender-neutral adj. indicating a word or term that cannot be regarded as referring to one gender
only (chairperson, fire fighter, postal worker)
 Transgender adj. Someone who is transgender has a gender identity which does not fully
correspond to the sex assigned to them at birth.
 Gender-fluid adj. not identifying exclusively with any gender
 Use of ‘they/them’ instead of ‘she/her’ or ‘he/him’

The future of English lexis

PDE lexis will accept considerable geographical variation (e.g. AmE , BrE, Indian English) but will be shared
by global communities of scientists, professional people and Internet Users (English as a Lingua Franca).

ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES

What do you write at university?
 Notes during lectures
 Summaries to prepare exams
 Assignments
 Written exams

Improving your writing skills

 You will achieve better results in exams
 You will refine your written Englis
 You will improve your communication skills
 You will acquire competences that are necessary in all professional careers

What is a paragraph?
 A textual unit which develops a topic or a concept in a coherent way
 A well-written paragraph is clearly organized, coherent and readable
 A new paragraph starts when there is a shift of focus in the text
 A new paragraph starts with a topic sentence that indicated what the paragraph is about
 The topic sentence is followed by supporting sentences that elaborate and add descriptive details to
the topic

!! DON’T WRITE ISOLETED SENTENCES

Linking adverbials
  Enumeration and addition: first(ly), second(ly), first of all, finally, in addition
 Summation: in conclusion, to conclude
 Apposition: in other words, therefore, consequently, for example, in particular
 Result: as a consequence, therefore
 Contrast: besides, by contrast, on the other hand

- The style of academic writing should be formal and objective. In other words, colloquial
expressions should be avoided
- English is considered a global language. On the other hand, such a concept raises may
questions.
- Some creoles developed from 17th century English. As a consequence, many creole varieties
contain words that are archaic in other present-day varieties in English.

Signalling nouns
 A well-known controversy regarding the use of the English language regards linguistic sexism. This
issue can be illustrated with examples like the still prevailing male-oriented expressions postman
and businessman
 English nouns can express possession by adding the suffix ‘s. This feature is called ‘genitivo sassone’
in Italian
 Other signalling nouns: problem, question, factor, characteristic, phenomenon

Instruction words: define, illustrate, outline

Accuracy and correctness

 Make sure that your register is formal and academic
 Verify that subjects and verbs always agree in number
 Respect SVO word order
 Never omit the subject

Verb patterns
 To allow + somebody + to do something
 Composed of

The definite article ‘the’

 ‘The’ is a specifying element: the text, the train, the President, the man
 It is employed when a word is mentioned the second time
 The specified element may be post-modified
 The is placed before nouns with pre-modifying elements

When not to use ‘the’

 First mention of a countable noun in the plural form
 Uncountable nouns referring to generic concepts or abstract ideas
 Names of countries, languages and proper names

Morphology
 Using the ‘s genitive (synthetic pattern) or the of-form (analytic pattern)
the ‘s genitive is preferred for human referents and expressions of time
 Ending in -ics: linguistics, politics, statistics (the discipline)
  Derivation: grammar-grammatical; verb-verbal; syntax-syntatic; phonetics-phonetic; history-
historical/historic; economics-economy-economic-economical
 Mass nouns: information, research, evidence, advice, equipment, damage

Spelling
 Near homophones: quiet/quite; addition/addiction
 Communication, accommodation
 Literal/literary
 Capital letters: American, Mediterranean, English, February, Monday
 Disciplinary keywords: hyponymy, synonymy, hyperonymy

Punctuation
 FULL STOP: a strong pause that signals the end of a sentence
 THE COMMA: normally used before coordinating and subordinating conjunctions; it is used to single
out parenthetical comments and non-defining relative clauses
When not to use the comma:
- Before a defining relative clause
- After such as or like
- Between the subject and its verb
 THE SEMI-COLON: a shorter pause than the full stop and longer than the comma. It is used to
separate two independent clauses in a sentence when no coordinating or subordinating conjunction
is present.
 THE COLON: it is employed to introduce an example, a list or explanation in the form of noun phrase
or independent clause.
when not to use the colon:
- After the items such as, including or for example
- Between a verb and its object or complement
- Between a preposition and its complement

Style
 Avoid the use of colloquial expressions like a lot of for “many, several”
 Avoid general words like thing and stuff (use signalling nouns)
 Do not use contractions, such as don’t for do not or ‘cause for because
 Avoid personal comments introduced by I think, I believe, in my opinion
 A hyperbolic style may denote a childish or unscientific attitude