English Exam – QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

1) What is the role of equivalence in translation and how many types of equivalence can be
hypothesized?

Equivalence is one of the central issues in translation: Catford, for example, viewed it as textual
interchangeability, Holmes as the preservation of sound, rhythm and sense in the target text. One
of the most widely accepted views of equivalence is the one provided by Eugene Nida in 1964.
Nida proposed that Chomsky’s generative grammar could guide translators’ decisions: in short,
Nida thought that the translator could extract the kernels from the source text then apply the same
or different techniques to generate the target text. The transformations could include things that
translators commonly do to produce a “natural” sounding text: permutation (changing the order of
elements), replacement (changing word classes), explicitation (addition), implicitation (deletion).

According to him there are two different types of equivalence, formal and dynamic. The dynamic
equivalence is based on the principle of equivalent effect, meaning that the translation attempts to
produce an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original text.
The formal equivalence, on the other hand, tries to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic
structures of the target language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original.
The equivalent effect is based on the four basic requirements of a translation, that are: making
sense, conveying the spirit and manner of the original, having a natural and easy form of
expression, producing a similar response. Peter Newmark reformulated the two types of
equivalence in terms of semantic translation (formal equivalence) on the one hand and
communicative translation (dynamic equivalence) on the other.
Besides Nida’s theory on equivalence, we also have Werner Koller’s, who recognizes five other
types of equivalence: denotative equivalence (it focuses on the extralinguistic content of a text),
connotative equivalence (it focuses on the lexical choices), pragmatic equivalence (it is oriented
towards the receiver of the text / message), text – normative equivalence (it is related to text
types), formal equivalence (it focuses on the aesthetics and the form of a text).

Dollerup introduces the concepts of translations as approximations (there is no ideal translation)

and adequacy, in which a translation is said to be adequate when it conveys the meaning of the
source text. An adequate translation is not necessarily an equivalent, because it is just about the
target text, while an equivalent translation is about a matter of different parameters related to the
target language.

2) What are the central properties of languages as complex systems and what is their impact on
translation?

Languages can be defined as complex systems, that are self – organizing, consisting of many
different parts which interact with one another in a non – linear manner. They are adaptative and
dynamic by definition.
Viewing language as a complex system helps us understand how meanings emerge from
interactions of several dimensions and therefore how translation is not the linear sum of individual
components but is shaped by the linguistic and extralinguistic components.
The central properties of languages as complex systems are six: dynamicity, complexity, non-
linearity, nestedness, emergent self-organization, stochasticity.
The first property, dynamicity, means that the system evolves through time; the second one,
complexity, concerns the fact that the system can be described only in terms of a high number of
 dimensions; the third one, non-linearity, means that small changes may determine large scale
systemic alterations; the fourth one, nestedness, means that the system components may be in
turn complex systems; the fifth one, emergent self-organization, shows that the structure and
organization of the system is the result of a process of emergence from its interactions with the
environment and among its parts; the sixth and last point is called stochasticity and states that the
system dynamics can only be described in probabilistic terms.

3) What is “texture” and the difficulties caused by it in the translation process.

Lexicon is a complex system in which the two notions of complexity and organization are
complementary.
Each word can be considered a complex micro – system with two orders of complexity: 1 st order
complexity, that is, mapping between words and concepts and 2 nd order complexity, or rather, the
cross – lingual mapping between word / concept pairs: translation is a 2 nd order complex system
because it establishes a mapping between complex systems. The cross – lingual mappings between
word / concept pairs also differ in the degree of complexity and organization.

“Texture” is a difficult word to translate, it is paradigmatic to the texture of meaning. It denotates

the properties held by objects received through the sense of touch. Texture can be termed as a
pattern in which the individual elements that go on to make such pattern are not distinguishable.

Texture is complex from both points of view of the orders of complexity: concerning the 1 st order
complexity, texture is complex because it covers a multifaced, loose and fuzzy semantic space, with
multiple domains and dimensions. Regarding the 2nd order complexity, texture maps on a weakly
organized lexical space in Italian, characterised by insufficient organization and high competition, in
the sense that there are different Italian words which compete to cover the semantic space of
texture.
If we try to translate “texture” in Italian, there are many translations depending on the collocation;
there is no specific term to label the whole concept but Italian lexicalizes individual components of
the schema. The term can be rendered via perceptual modalities, such as “grana” or “trama” or
even mental elaborations of the object’s perceptual properties, “struttura”, “essenza”.

4) What are the major phonological asymmetries between English and Italian concerning the
quantity and quality of consonants and vowels and what kind of difficulties may they represent
for translation?

English and Italian differ both in terms of the type and number of phonemes they have, as well as in
terms of their allophones. With regards to consonants, English has phonemes that Italian does not
have, i.e., /Θ/ /ð/ (dental fricatives), /h/ (glottal fricative) /ŋ/ (nasal) /ž/ (postalveolar fricative), /r/
(rhotic “r”).
In Italian, /h/ does not exist as a phoneme and it is not glottal. Also, in Italian, /r/ is non – rhotic and
it has phonemes English does not have, for instance, /ts/ /dz/ /ɲ//λ /. This causes inevitable gaps in
both phonetic systems: as for the vowels, English and Italian show a big difference in both positions
of pronunciation and, most importantly, on the length of a vocal.
In English, the length is phonological, but not in Italian: these asymmetries have an important
impact on translation, involving difficulties in the rendering of alliteration, rhymes and phonetic
effects especially in those domains where the phonetic texture of the text is significant.
 Other specific difficulties in translation, phonologically speaking, are onomatopoeia, rhyming
compounds and phonological symbolism.
English has many phonetic nexuses associated with a semantic value: just to name a few, /SN/
indicates unpleasantness, /SW/ breadth, /SH/ denotates immediacy or sudden events, and so on. In
Italian, there are very little nexuses associated with a semantic value: /SCI/, /R/, /LU/, /FL/, but the
semantic meaning they carry, in the majority of cases, does not overlap with English.
As for the rhyming compounds, English has a lot of them, while in Italian, they are almost absent
(teeny – weeny, flip – flop, etc.). It is frequent, in the English language, to meet schemes of
phonological symbolism, which represents different feelings from a semantic point of view: for
example, the association of high front vowels (i, l, y) with smallness, brightness and the association
of low and back vowels with darkness or heaviness.

5) What do we mean by Language Typology?

Language typology is the field of enquiry that focuses on classifying languages according to their
structural features. According to language typology, a language can be classified upon genetic
relatedness, i.e. in terms of families and areally shared properties, i.e. the fact that intensive
contacts among languages reproduce similarities.
The two main approaches to language typology are morphological typology, which classifies
languages on the basis of morphology, and the word order typology, which analyses languages on
the basis of syntax and their word parameters.
Morphological typology is the oldest approach provided by Schlegel, distinguishing between
isolating, agglutinating and inflectional languages. Isolating languages are languages in which there
are separate words to express grammatical categories such as plural; in the agglutinating
languages, each morpheme corresponds to a single grammatical function or lexical meaning. In
inflectional languages, the form of a word changes to show a change in meaning or grammatical
function.

Then incorporating, polysynthetic and fusional languages are also added. Incorporating languages
are those languages in which polymorphic words are incorporated; polysynthetic languages are
languages in which words are composed of many morphemes.
Fusional languages tend to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical,
syntactic or semantic features.
Word order typology is another important approach to language typology: Greenberg distinguished
between six possible types of word order in languages, OVS, SVO (English, Italian), VSO (Welsh),
SOV (Turkish), VOS (Malagasy), OSV.
With regards to word order differences between English and Italian, word freedom generally
correlates with the existence of a rich morphological system. Italian has twenty – four possible
orders of a sentence which are semantically equivalent, while English follows more rigid and fixed
word orders which are pragmatically more ambiguous than Italian.

6) Differences between the Italian and English morphological system and the translation problems
deriving from such.

In the area of morphology, the main asymmetries between the English and the Italian systems
concern the inflection and derivational processes.

With regards to inflection, Italian has richer inflectional typology than English: Italian has specific
markings for the gender, number for nouns, adjectives and articles, and the person for the verb.
 English, on the contrary, uses the same number and person markings except for the 3 rd person
singular and it also has the –‘s marking for the possessive.
As for the tenses, English has three main markings (past tense: - ed, progressive: - ing, past
participle: -en or -ed) while Italian has verbal conjunction for indicative, subjunctive and conditional
tenses. Italian has three cases (Io – me – mi), while English only has two (I – me).

Translational criticalities in this sense include, firstly, the fact that Italian is a pro – drop language
while English is a non pro – drop language; secondly, Italian and English show different usages of
possessives: Italian uses the definite article before body parts when referred to unique entities,
whereas English usually uses possessives. Finally, the translation of articles is critical because
English and Italian convey differently the relationship of determination: Italian has seven definite
articles while English has only 'the'; Italian has four forms of indefinite articles while English has
only a/an. Also, English uses zero pronouns with plural nouns, whereas Italian uses definite articles.

As for the derivational morphemes, English and Italian have a few differences regarding the
derivational affixes: as for prefixes, English has a-, co-, ex-, in-, or even re-, to name a few. Italian,
on the other hand, has negative prefixes like “de-, dis-, -a, in-, s-“ that can establish five different
relationships between the base and the derived word: contrariety, privation, reversion,
contradiction and opposition. Italian prefixes can employ different criteria, including one based on
a syntactic function of derived formations: nominal, adjectival and verbal. Nominal prefixes can be
collocated in two groups: spatial – temporal (co -, extra – fuori -) and a valuative – conceptual one
(arci -, de-, stra-, super-).

Concerning suffixes, English has, again, specific ones such as -able, -ism, -ful, -fy, and so on,
whereas in Italian, the result of the suffixation process is, usually, a derived form that belongs to
the same grammatical category of departure (risotto  risottata) but we can also see the passage
from the derived form to a different grammatical category (pigro  pigrottare). Suffixes in Italian
can be derived from nouns, adjectives or verbs and this involves a high degree of creativity.
Italian also has another important derivational process which is infixation: infixes can be inserted
within the base or between it and the suffix. For example, -c, ic-, icc, -ol are common Italian infixes:
infixation contributes to the connotative value of a word and its pragmatic use, therefore it is
difficult to translate such peculiar words from Italian to English.
As for English, conversion is another morphological process that is very common in comparison to
Italian: there is noun to verb conversion (bottle > to bottle) as well as verb to noun conversion (to
fear > fear), adjective to verb (green > to green), conjunction to noun (if > ifs), preposition to noun
(up, down > the ups and downs of life), as well as interjection to noun. In Italian, from the present
participle we can derive lexemes which can be used as adjectives (affascinante) or nouns
(commerciante); the adjectival function, however, prevails on the nominal one.

7) What are the “Universals of Translation”?

Baker defines the Universals of Translation as linguistic features that typically occur in translated texts; on
the other hand, language universals are the basic principles that govern the structure of all languages,
determining what is possible and impossible in languages. There are three different types of Universals of
Translation: simplification, or rather, tendency to simplify the language used in translation through a
narrower range of vocabulary. Then we have explicitation, that is, expansion of the target text by inserting
additional words to achieve greater transparency, increasing the length of texts in the target language
(target text expansion). Finally, there is normalization, in other words, the tendency to conform to the
typical patterns of the target language and even to exaggerate its features through lexical adjustments.
 8) Malone’s nine translation strategies.

In 1988, Malone introduces a list of nine translation strategies to cope with the lexical differences between
the source and the target language: firstly, equation (of realia), secondly, substitution, or rather, the
translation has little to no semantic or morphosyntactic relation to the source text. Moreover, there is also
divergence, that is, choosing one possible solution among various potential alternatives; furthermore, we
have convergence, or rather, choosing many alternative solutions from one word in the source text.

Also, there is amplification, that is, the addition of elements to the lexical item opposed to reduction, or
rather, subtraction of elements to the lexical item. Then, there is diffusion, that is, providing elaboration to
bring out its meaning without adding any extra layer of meaning as well as condensation, thanks to which a
source text item is contracted without omitting any layer of meaning. Finally, we have reordering, in which
various procedures are introduced to the syntactic units into the most familiar patterns of the TL.

9) What is morphopragmatics and why is it problematic in translation?

Morphopragmatics was developed as a theory by Wolfgang Dressler in 1994: it can be defined as the area
of general pragmatic meanings. Within a theory of morphopragmatics, pragmatics is not a secondary
meaning derived from semantics and morphology is capable of a direct interface with pragmatics.

English has a very small set of morphological instruments to express some shades of meaning, which rely
mostly on adjectives and lexical modification. Alteration represents a high difficulty in translation in this
sense, especially verb alteration: this asymmetry between English and Italian involves criticalities in the
translation of Italian texts, which mostly play on the ludic dimension of words.

Another criticality in terms of translation is that English has about ten suffixes with a denotative value of
smallness, but they are not as productive as the Italian ones. English therefore must try to render it as well
as possible through adjectives: Italian also has augmentatives and pejoratives.

Howbeit, English makes a great use of reduplication, a morphological process in which the root or stem of a
word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. There are three
types of reduplicatives: apophonic, in which the accented vowel changes and the base remains unchanged
(for example chit-chat); rhymed reduplicatives, in which the initial consonant varies and the rest of the
constituent is rhymed relatively to only one part; rhyming compounds, in which both bases are rhyming
(artsy-craftsy, hugger-mugger).

In Italian there are some reduplicatives such as walkie-talkie, but they are fewer in number and are not
integrated into the structure of the language; in English, on the other hand, they are involved in the whole
linguistic system, syntactically and morphologically, i.e. you can derive reduplicatives from nouns, verbs,
adjectives and adverbs that are reused in different categories (ex: dilly-dally/dilly-dallier).

In general, reduplicatives are more phonologically motivated than semantically motivated, but there are
homogeneous areas of meaning in which the use of a reduplicative is associated with a precise concept,
which may be, for instance, pretentiousness, smallness, secrecy or playfulness.

To obtain an effect which is as equivalent as possible to the target language, the translator must recognize
and understand the verbal play first. This implies three operations, or rather, identifying the mechanism,
the subject of the joke and, finally, be aware of linguistic ambiguities. Once the pun is interpreted, the
translator must find some terms that can build a word play in the target language that evoke in the reader’s
mind images as similar as the ones suggested by the original text.
10) What types do English and Italian belong to in terms of language typologies?
In terms of language typologies English is predominantly isolating (I-am-a-woman), but it also has
agglutination (un-fashion-able) and some inflection (go-goes). It has a SVO structure; Italian is
predominantly flectional (dic-o; dic-i), with some agglutination (in-discut-ibil-mente) and some
isolating features (io, ieri, tra).

11) The verb phrase and its translational criticalities.

The areas of the VP structure which may represent difficulties in translating from English into Italian
are tenses, aspect, diathesis, mood and modality. In the area of tenses, there is a significant
difference between English and Italian, because the English Simple Past can express Italian passato
remote, passato prossimo and imperfetto, even though English can express imperfetto with either a
Simple Past Continuous or a “would+inf” form.

A specific difficulty in translation is represented by the asymmetry between the Italian passato
prossimo and the English present perfect because English always marks the distinction between the
progressive aspect and the simple aspect, while Italian does not.

The Present perfect continuous indicates an action that began in the past but continues to take
place at the moment of utterance. In most cases in Italian it is translated with the Presente, but we
can also use nominal expressions.

The future also gives way to translation difficulties. In most cases the English future form is
rendered with the Italian Presente, but it is also possible to use the periphrases 'stare per' and
'avere da'. When the English future is expressed with 'will' instead, it is possible to translate it with
the Italian Futuro.

As for diathesis, English uses one main auxiliary, the verb “to be”, whereas Italian, besides the verb
“essere” uses “venire” and “andare”, too, and the passive is only possible with transitive verbs. The
auxiliary “essere” can be used in all modes and tenses of the verb, except for the remote past tense
of the indicative; “venire” can instead be used only with the non-compound tenses of the verb;
“andare” has two interpretations: an aspectual interpretation, in which we emphasize the final part
of a process that does not allow us to specify the agent (ex: La fabbrica è andata distrutta
nell’incendio), and a modal interpretation of necessity (ex: Questo dicumento va letto
attentamente). Other auxiliaries that can be used with a passive value are stay “restare”, remain
“rimanere”, and finish “finire” (ex: è rimasto ferito nell’incidente./ è finito schiacciato/ Resta
inteso).

In English, the passive form is used to express a change of focus, an unknown agent, to convey
impersonality or topic continuity. In Italian, the passive form can be either nominalized or
transformed back into active and the “si impersonale” is used to convey impersonality. Moreover,
in English, there are also sentences that are passive in meaning but not in form: in these cases, we
tend to focus more on the activity itself rather than on the agent.

Another difference with Italian is that English has verbs that have a double object. In this case we
can have two passive sentences, i.e. both objects can be moved to the subject position and English
allows a double construction. There are also verbs in English which have an entire proposition as an
object complement. In this case, it is possible to extrapolate the subject of the object clause and
make it the subject of a passive sentence, which in Italian cannot be translated literally.
 12) Cruse’s four main types of meaning.

According to Cruse, we can distinguish 4 main types of meaning in words and utterances: propositional
meaning, expressive meaning, presupposed meaning, and evoked meaning.

First of all, the propositional meaning of a word or an utterance arises from the relation between it and
what it refers to as a real or imaginary world, as conceived by the speakers of the particular language. This
type of meaning provides the basis on which we can judge the truth of an utterance. Translators must
respect the truth of the propositions expressed in the text.

Secondly, the expressive meaning relates to the speaker's feelings or attitude rather than to what words
and utterances refer to. Two or more words or utterances can therefore have the same propositional
meaning but differ in their expressive meanings.

Thirdly, the presupposed meaning arises from co-occurrence restrictions, on what other words or
expressions we expect to see before or after a particular lexical unit. There are two types of it: selectional
restrictions or collocational restrictions, which are semantically arbitrary and do not originate from the
propositional meaning of a word.

Finally, evoked meanings arise from dialect and register variation. A dialect is a variety of language which is
used within a specific community or group of speakers. It may be classified on one of the following bases:
geographical, temporal or social.

13) Punctuation.

There are two extreme positions on punctuation: on the one hand, some believe that punctuation serves
no purpose; on the other hand, others argue that it is important because it helps readability and reflects on
pauses, gaps, and also serves to dissolve grammatical ambiguity. Punctuation is a dynamic system,
autonomous respect to other levels of linguistic analysis. Its referential domain is the text where
punctuation plays an indexical function. On the cognitive point of view, interpunction signs indicate where
and how our mind can operate to build a scheme that allows the interpretability of the text in virtue of the
principle of cognitive economy: punctuation is not just a matter of prosody or intonation.

There is a deeper relationship linking the choice of the interpunct sign to the cognitive process of
elaboration of meaning: for this reason, we may introduce the concepts of natural and marked punctuation
because they allow the reader to recognize that some specific mental elaboration must be performed at
some point.

Punctuation can be natural when it facilitates the access to the cognitive pattern; on the contrary,
punctuation is marked when it makes the cognitive pattern less accessible. They both depend on choices of
iconicity, biuniqueness, salience and transparency: Grice distinguishes three principles of punctuation,
biuniqueness, or rather, avoiding syntactic and semantic ambiguity, salience, that is, to make your mind
clear and, lastly, saliency, or rather, to report what you want to highlight.

The iconicity factor has to do with the fact that the interpunct sign reflects the semantics or syntax of the
text: regarding the semantic iconicity, the lack of punctuation reflects the free stream of consciousness and
hyphens reflect the speaker’s emotivity.

Concerning the diagrammatical iconicity, if interpunctuation coincides with the grammatical bounds of a
sentence, it has the maximum level of transparency, whereas, if it is absent, it has the highest degree of
cognitive effort.
 14) Neologisms.

There are three main types of neologisms: unstable, diffused and stable neologisms. The main mechanisms
to create neologisms are: blending, or rather, the parts of two words are put together to form a new word,
as well as affixation, that is, the adding of prefixes or suffixes to an existing term and meaning extension,
that is, the semantic extension of an already existing word.

Other processes include compounding, that deals with joining two or more words into one, as shown in
“skateboard”. There are different kind of compounds: noun – noun compound, noun – verb compound,
adjective – verb compound, preposition – verb compound, preposition – preposition compound, and so on.
Their meaning might be compositional (when it is the result of the combination of its parts) or non –
compositional (when it is determined by combining the meaning of the parts).

Then, there is zero formation, also called conversion or functional shift; furthermore, we have clipping, or
rather, the shortening of a polysyllabic word. Moreover, the acronym formation, a word formation process
that takes place from the initials of a group of words that designate one concept. Back – formation, on the
other hand, is a process in which a suffix is cut off of a base and used as a root. In addition, there are
loanwords and calques: loanwords are words that are borrowed from one language to another while
calques are borrowed words or phrases translated from one language to another. Lastly, we also have
adaptation as seen in words like “taggare” from the English verb “to tag”.

15) Mood and modality.

Mood is a morphological category whereas modality is a semantic one: we may distinguish two types of
modality: propositional modality, that is the speaker’s attitude to the truth – value of the proposition and
event modality, regarding the fact that can potentially occur. There are two types of propositional modality,
or rather, epistemic and evidential modality, and two types of event modality, deontic and dynamic
modality.

By using the epistemic modality, the speaker expresses their knowledge: there are three types of epistemic
modality, speculative (expressing uncertainty), deductive (expressing one possible conclusion) and
assumptive (expressing a reasonable conclusion).

With the evidential modality, the speaker indicates the evidence they have for a fact and it can be either
sensory or reported; the meanings of the “evidentials” may be of direct and indirect evidence. The indirect
evidence can be reported or inferred. We can distinguish three kinds of reported evidence: second hand, in
which the speaker claims to have heard of the described situation from a direct witness, third hand, in
which the speaker has heard of the situation but not from a witness and, lastly, evidence from folklore, in
which the speaker claims that the situation is part of an established oral tradition.

As for the event modality, it can either be deontic, in which the conditioning factors are external, the
obligation or permission emanates from the external source, or dynamic, in which the conditioning factors
are internal, expressing ability or willingness coming from the individual concern.

There are asymmetries in translation because English uses modal verbs such as “will, shall, ought (to),
could, can, may, might” etc. and has a restricted use of the subjunctive whereas Italian makes a wider use
of it. In Italian, modality is included in the choice of the verb itself or expressed in periphrases like “dovere”
plus infinite or “andare” plus infinite, “è possible che” plus infinite, “è altamente probabile che” +
subjunctive to translate the “will” with an epistemic value.

The so – called “cognitive verbs” are difficult to translate to Italian because each one can have different
meanings depending on the context: the verb “to assume”, which has different shades of meaning in
English, is often wrongly translated with the Italian “assumere”, while its equivalent term could be
“presumere”. Depending on the context, however, it can also be translated with verbs such as “ipotizzare”,
“supporre”. In its gerund form, “assuming”, it can be used as a conjunction indicating a premise: it can be
rendered as “purché” or “ammesso che”.

“Assume” is complex because, firstly, it covers a multifaced semantic space, involving complex abstract
features, and secondly, because it maps on a weakly organized lexical space in Italian.

16) Non – equivalence and translational strategies to deal with such.

Non-equivalence occurs when the target language has no direct equivalent for a word which occurs in the
source text. The type and level of difficulty can be depending on the nature of the non-equivalence. There
are different kinds of non-equivalence: culture – specific concepts, in which the source language may
express something that is totally unknown to the target language. As for the lexicalization gap, the source
language word may express a concept known to the target one but it is not lexicalized; then, the absence of
superordinate in which the target language may have specific words (hyponyms) but no general word
(superordinate) to head the semantic field.

In addition, the “no hyponym” kind of non – equivalence, in which languages tend to have superordinate
words but lack of specific ones, since each language makes these distinctions in meaning, relevant to a
particular environment. Furthermore, there is the difference in the interpersonal dimension, in which the
physical perspective may be of more importance in one language than it is in another.

Regarding the difference in expressive meaning, this occurs when a word in the target language has a
different expressive meaning but the same propositional meaning as a word in the source language. If the
target-language equivalent is neutral compared to the source language item, the translator can sometimes
add the evaluative element by means of a modifier or adverb.

Then, a difference in morphological form can be encountered, for instance, trainer/trainee and differences
in the frequency or the purpose with which a particular form is used. Finally, an effect of non – equivalence
can be caused by loan words, whose translation is, in most cases, very difficult: loan words are a direct
importation of foreign lexemes in the vocabulary of a given language.

There can be a few strategies to deal with non – equivalence in translation, for example, the use of more
general or neutral words, cultural substitution, the explanation of a loanword and the translation by
paraphrase, omissions or also adaptations and, lastly, compounding and calquing.

17) What is evidentiality and what are its most frequent linguistic expressions?

Evidentiality concerns the evidence for the factual status of a proposition: briefly, it is the set of all these
forms that articulate the idea that the speaker does not have direct knowledge of something. Evidential
modality can be either sensory or reported, and the evidence may be direct (visual, sensory or auditory) or
indirect, that can be either reported or inferred: we distinguish three types of reported indirect evidence,
second – hand (when the speaker claims to have heard of the described situation from a direct witness),
third – hand (when the speaker claims to have indirectly heard of the situation) and evidence from folklore.

Evidentiality is very important in newspaper articles, which are full of evidentiality clues that inform the
reader on whether the journalist has direct knowledge of the information, if it is an hypothesis or if they are
writing on the basis of second – hand evidence.

In English, there are evidential expressions such as “It has been reported…”, “Apparently”, “It turns out
that”, “Alleged”, “Stated”, “Allegedly”, “Reportedly”.
In Italian, the most natural translation of evidentiality expressions is with the conditional, otherwise, one
must understand the value of the indicator and try to render it with the most appropriate paraphrase, for
instance, “Varie fonti affermano” or “Stando a quanto riferito” in place of “It has been reported”, or “a
quanto pare” in place of “Apparently”.

18) Deontic and dynamic modality and their linguistic expressions.

There are two types of event modality: deontic, in which the conditioning factors are external, the
obligation or permission emanates from the external source (verbs such as “may” for permission or “must”
for obligation are used), and dynamic, in which the conditioning factors are internal, expressing ability or
willingness coming from the individual concern (verbs like “can” for ability and “will” for willingness are
used).

19) Verb – framed and satellite – framed languages.

Verb-framing and satellite-framing are typological descriptions of how verb phrases in different languages
describe the manner of motion and the path of motion. The verb of motion may encode the event, manner
and path: the manner is the type of motion described by the verb while the path is the direction of the
movement.

These concepts can be encoded in the verb as part of its root meaning (verb – framed), or in a separate
particle associated to the verb (satellite – framed). English is a satellite-framed language as it uses particles
to show the path whereas Italian is a verb-framed language, in fact, it directly encodes motion path and
may leave out the manner of motion or express it in a complement of manner.

Frames are structures of concepts, knowledge representation structures which consist of information
organized into interconnected units. A frame represents an entity as a set of slots with associated values.
The meaning of a concept is related to its relationship to other concepts.

20) Text Linguistics.

Text linguistics is the study of texts: texts are seen as language units which have a definable communicative
function in a context, characterized by principles like cohesion, coherence and informativeness.

What makes a text a unified meaningful whole are two groups of principles, constitutive (text – oriented)
and regulative (context – oriented). Regarding the constitutive principles, there are cohesion, coherence,
informativity, intentionality and situationality: cohesion is the way in which components of the surface text
are mutually connected within a sequence, while coherence refers to a set of conceptual relations under
the surface text, the deep semantic meaning of it.

There are seven different ways to obtain cohesion: recurrence (repetition of patterns), parallelism,
omission, paraphrase, pronominalization, progression and topic continuity. Concerning informativity, it has
to do with the extent to which the occurrences of the presented text are expected or unexpected. As for
intentionality, it is a user-oriented notion: it relies on Grice’s cooperative principle, according to which a
speaker must make his contribution such as it is required.

Regarding situationality, a text is relevant to the situation of occurrence. Finally, intertextuality concerns
the factors which make the utilization of one text dependent upon knowledge of other texts.

Moving on to the context – oriented principles, there are three: efficiency, as it requires that a text should
be used with a minimum effort. The effectiveness principle is the creation of conditions to attain a certain
communicative goal through the use of creative language. Then, we have appropriateness as it seeks an
accord between the text setting and standards of textuality.

21) Information structure.

The information structure includes what the speaker is attending to, what the speaker wishes the
addressee(s) to focus on, what is assumed to be already known, or what is considered the most important.
There are several theoretical approaches to information structure, two of them distinguishing between
given and new information (theme and rheme) and between topic (what we are talking about) and
comment (what is predicated of the topic) as well as the focus (what is highlighted).

Chafe defines given information as what it is supposed to be already known by the addressee at the time of
utterance, whereas the new information is what the speaker assumes to be introducing in the
consciousness of the addressee at the time of utterance. To Jan Firbas, who re – conceptualized the
difference between theme and rheme, rhematic elements have the highest degree of communicative
dynamism whereas the thematic elements contribute the least to communicative dynamism.

This leads to Halliday’s definition of theme and rheme: the theme is the point of departure of the message
whereas the rheme is the part of the message where the theme is developed. Thematic progression is a
method of development of a text, it regards how utterances link up to one another to make the text
progress. There are three types of progression: linear progression, constant theme progression and split
rheme progression.

Other two principles for sentence dynamism include the end – focus (the point of focus falls upon the end
of the clause) and end – weight (new information presented more accurately, it works hand – in – hand
with the end – focus principle).

22) Language instruments for focus, topic continuity and givenness.

The main instruments for focus, topic continuity and givenness are achieved through the passive, the
clefting, the it extraposition, the dislocation, the fronting, the presentatives, the articles and the intransitive
verbs.

The passive is used to manipulate information structure by presenting information from given to new, by
maintaining the end-focus and end-weight and keeping the topic continuous in discourse. Most commonly,
the subject contains given information while the agent presents new information. As for the clefting, a cleft
sentence breaks information in a sentence into two parts in order to provide an extra focus to one piece of
information. There are two types of clefting, the it – cleft and the wh – cleft.

The it extraposition moves subject or object clauses outside of their normal positions. It can help with
sentence balance. There are four types of extraposition: extraposed that – clause, extraposed wh – clause,
extraposed infinitive clause and extraposed gerund clause.

As for dislocation, it is a construction with a pronoun in the main clause and a definite noun phrase before
or after the main clause: it can be either left or right dislocation. With the fronting, a clause is placed in
initial position when normally it follows a verb. The presentatives are words or syntactic structures that
present or introduce an entity bringing it to the addressee’s attention. As for articles, a/an introduce new
information while the definite articles, like the, introduce given information.