Lesson 2

ILS1: Introduction to Textual Analysis Lesson 2

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What are words “made of”?

• Structure (morphology, suffixes, prefixes, case markers, etc) • Content (meaning and referential relations) • Lexical Relations (synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, etc.)

• Grammatical Relations (syntactic templates, textual structure) 2

Word and meaning 1 Ambiguity: say what you mean, or mean what you say?

We look at the way users of text can exploit the capacity of words and structures to carry more than one meaning.

2 Metaphor: life is a journey; life’s a beach and then you fry We explore the way metaphor operates within text, and looks at some of the effects of metaphoric language.

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Word and meaning 3 Idiomatic language: flogging dead crocodiles; keeping your feet under water Here, we look at some set structures of language having specific meanings that don’t necessarily relate to the individual words within the structure.

4 Denotation and connotation: what are words worth?

We look at the emotional loading that many words carry, and the way producers of text can exploit this capacity of language to make texts effective 4

What are words made of?

• Some questions about words, like ‘What is a word?’ might be answered by looking at ways in which words in the English language are structured and/or used in communication.

• Definition: WORD is a unit of language with internal stability and positional mobility.

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Word structure • The study of the structure of words is called morphology. • Most users of English would assume that words are the smallest units of language to carry meaning. This, however, is not the case.

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Activity 1 • Look at the following sentence: – The plogs glorped bliply.

• What do the words in this sentence mean?

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The plogs glorped bliply.

1. What do the words in this sentence mean?

2. How many plogs were there? One or more than one?

3. What were they doing?

4. Were they doing it now or in the past?

5. How, or in what way, were they doing it?

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Commentary: • There was more than one plog, because this word carries the plural marker ‘s’.

• ‘Glorped’ is marked as a verb by the use of the past tense marker ‘ed’, so the reader knows what the plogs were doing, and the fact that they were doing it in the past.

• Finally, the reader can tell how or in what manner the plogs were glorping—bliply— because the word carries the adverb marker ‘ly’.

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Morpheme • Just a brief look at any text can establish that units smaller than words are carrying meaning. • These units are morphemes.

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Words may be made up of one or more morphemes: • One morpheme dog, elephant, establish, child • Two morphemes dog+s, establish+ment, child+ish • Three morphemes dis+establish+ ment, child+ish+ness.

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• In theory, there is no limit to the number of morphemes a word can have.

• However, there tends to be an upper limit (due to logic and comprehension), and six morphemes is about it for English.

– Antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters) 12

Activity 2 • Identify the individual morphemes in the following word list. – pigs, barked, unlikely, motherhood, salty, cherry, taller, hammer, displease, hardship, superheroes, player

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• • • • • • • • • • • •

pig+s, bark+ed, un+like+ly, mother+hood, salt+y, cherry tall+er, hammer, dis+please, hard+ship, super+hero’es, play+er.

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Commentary • Meaning therefore exists in units of language smaller than the word, in morphemes.

• Users of English frequently use the term ‘word’ when, strictly speaking, they are referring to morphemes. For this reason, linguists prefer the term ‘lexeme’ to the term ‘word’.

• Lexeme refers to a unit of meaning that may be smaller or larger than the traditional term ‘word’ implies.

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LEXEME • Definition: A meaningful linguistic unit that is an item in the vocabulary of a language. • Also called citation form.

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• Many morphemes can constitute words by themselves: pig, bark, like, mother, salt, cherry, tall, please, hard, super, hero, play.

• These are usually referred to as free morphemes.

• Others are only ever used as parts of words: s, ed, un, ly, hood, y, er, dis, ship, es, er.

• These are usually referred to as bound morphemes.

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Inflection • Bound morphemes have two functions.

• One is to act as a grammatical marker, giving information about number, verb tense, aspect and other grammatical functions.

• These are inflectional morphemes.

• Examples in the data are -s, -ed, -er (comparative), -es.

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Derivation • The second is to form new words.

• These are called derivational morphemes.

• Examples in the data are un-, -ly, -hood, -y, dis-, -ship, -er (to create a noun of agency).

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Activity 3 Now classify these morphemes into the following groups: 1 Independent or free. These morphemes can stand on their own.

2 Dependent or bound. These morphemes must be attached to another morpheme.

3 Grammatical. These give grammatical information and mark the role of the word in the sentence.

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• • • • • • • • • • • •

pig+s, bark+ed, un+like+ly, mother+hood, salt+y, cherry tall+er, hammer, dis+please, hard+ship, super+hero’es, play+er.

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Ambiguity 1. Lexical (a single word carrying more than one meaning) 2. Syntactic (also called ‘structural’; the whole structure carries more than one meaning) 3. Textual (contextual) 4. Situational (contextual) 23

Lexical or structural?

• The professor said on Monday he would give an exam.

• The chicken is ready to eat.

• Visiting relatives can be boring.

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Textual or situational? • You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen; it said, 'Parking Fine.' So that was nice."

(English comedian Tim Vine) • "'Do you believe in clubs for young people?' someone asked W.C. Fields. 'Only when kindness fails,' replied Fields."

(Quoted by Graeme Ritchie in The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes. Routledge, 2004)

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• A lady with a clipboard stopped me in the street the other day. She said, 'Can you spare a few minutes for cancer research?'

I said, 'All right, but we're not going to get much done.'

(English comedian Jimmy Carr)

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METAPHOR • The existence of metaphor allows for a further expansion of meaning.

• By linking words or concepts that don’t generally have a semantic link, a new meaning can be expressed.

• Metaphor allows producers of text to make semantic connections in a few words, that would otherwise take lines of writing or long stretches of speech.

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• The literal translation of a metaphor rarely produces the same effect as the metaphor itself. • Metaphor can be used to make comments on aspects of human behaviour or society without the writer having to spell out (literally) the point he/she is trying to make.

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• Metaphor is often seen as something that is more likely to exist in the domain of literature, and not as something that has a lot to do with everyday life. • Advertising, for example, is often very creative; tabloid newspapers are known for their inventive ways of using the phonological and lexical levels of language.

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Examples: • Simply put, a metaphor is a figure of speech containing an implied comparison.

• Here's a metaphor example: – The curtain of night fell upon us.

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Commentary • In this metaphor, the evening did not develop into a velvet curtain. • Rather, simple words are being used to paint a colorful picture. • Now, we know it is nighttime, but it's been written in a manner that alludes to how quickly night arrived with the kind of darkness that comes from closing a thick curtain.

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IDIOMS • An idiom is a phrase, or a combination of words, that has developed a figurative meaning through frequency of use.

• In terms of transparency of meaning they can be: – Fully transparent (to squeeze sb.’s brain) – Semi-transparent (to swim with sharks) – Non-transparent (opaque) (to kick the bucket) 33

Tongue-tied

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Costs an arm and a leg!

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No syntactic transformation with opaque idioms!

• Kick the bucket.

– He was kicking the bucket.

– The bucket was kicked.

– He regularly kicks the bucket.

– He kicked the bucket twice.

– They kicked the bucket together.

– He kicked the bucked slowly • Vs. He died slowly.

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Denotation and connotation

What are words worth?

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Denotation • Refers to the literal meaning of a word, the dictionary definition.

• For example, if you look up the word snake in a dictionary, you will discover that one of its denotative meanings is "any of numerous scaly, legless, sometimes venomous reptiles¡having a long, tapering, cylindrical body and found in most tropical and temperate regions.“ 38

Connotation • On the other hand, refers to the associations that are connected to a certain word or the emotional suggestions related to that word. • The connotative meanings of a word exist together with the denotative meanings. • The connotations for the word snake could include evil or danger.

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