LANGUAGE & CIVILIZATION B1: ENGLISH

TEMA 1

¿Why do translators need to do linguistic analysts?

Linguistic analysts try to find the pattern and try to understand the context the text
works with. It also tries to discover meanings that are not obvious on the surface

SFL (systemic functional linguistics) function is to make meanings. These meanings are
influenced by cultural context in which they are exchanged.
 Using a language is a process of making by choosing.

Some key words for reading questions:

- Field: What the language is being used to talk about
- Tenor: The role relationships between the interactants (informal or formal,
frequency of contact, size of distance, power…etc.)
- Mode: The role language is playing in the interaction
- Lexicogrammar: Words that can’t be separated out from grammar and vice
versa

MORPHOLOGY

When you read a text, you must not only have acknowledge of words, you bring in
different kinds of knowledge that help you understand the text
The context is the most important thing in a text, to know how to interpretate it and
understand it better

Applying different types of knowledge to texts:

Linguistic knowledge:
- Semantic tractions
- Grammatical class and grammatical function
- Knowledge of other languages (cognates)
- Synonyms and antonyms

Knowledge of the world

- Knowledge of classes of objects, their uses etc…
- Knowledge of social conventions
- Knowledge of human relations
This knowledge is organized in “schemas”, and “scripts”

Schemas: Our ability to arrive automatically at interpretations of what is unsaid or

unwritten must be based on pre-existing knowledge-structures. Is a pre-existing
knowledge structure in memory
Script: Is a pre-existing knowledge structure involving event sequences. We use scripts
to build accounts of what happened

We use our world knowledge and knowledge of the language to understand what
unexpected words mean
- Inference: a conclusion you make about something by using information you
already have about it

Dinnotation: literal meaning of a word, what the extract meaning a word has in
context
Connotation: to choose a synonym over another word related to the secondary
meaning
To be naïve is to not understand a situation

Morphology is the building blocks of language.

- Morphology us the study of the internal structure of words and fors a core oart
of linguistic study today
o The term is Greek and is a makeup of morph- meaning shape and -ology
which means the study of something
- Words are composed of morphemes

Simplex words don’t have internal structure (only one morpheme) They can’t be split
into smaller parts which carry a meaning or function
Complex words: Have internal structure (consist of two or more morphemes)

An inflexional morpheme changes the number of the word, meanwhile the

derivational morphemes change the meaning or grammatical form.
A compound it’s two words that form a noun with a different meaning

In English people take a process and turn it into a noun. The purposes of creating
words have as topics:
- Zero derivation or conversion
- Compounding: morph words together
- Abbreviation: clipping, acronyms and blending words
- Affixation: inflection and derivation

Farfetched: something difficult to believe / not very believable

Oceangoing: Something that can cross a big ocean. A big boat
Brink shit-house: Something rough

There is no formal criterion that can be used for a general definition of compounds in
English.

A noun phrase is anything that words like a noun. The headedness of a word in English
goes at the end of a sentence, meanwhile in Spanish it goes at the beginning