Lesson 3 Flashcards
definition of sense relations:
vocabulary as a set of organized elements; a dynamic and well-integrated system of lexemes structured by relationships of meaning (sameness-synonymy, opposites-antonymy, hierarchy-hyponymy or meronymy).
what kind of antonymy can one distinguish?
three kinds: 1) gradable antonyms, 2) complementary antonyms, 3) converses
definition of hyponymy:
kind of relation used to relate specific elements of a more general category
definition of meronymy:
it is part of relation used to describe the parts of a class represented by another word.
definition of collocation:
syntagmatic relation (horizontal). Meaning arises from the co-occurrence (combination), more precisely from the predictable co-occurrence of words in the same sentence or text.
semantic transparency and graded idiomaticity:
each lexeme makes an independent
contribution to the meaning of the whole collocation. Each lexical constituent is also a
semantic constituent. A whole range of meanings from more literal to more metaphorical.
Definition of lexical density (LD):
Proportion of lexical words in a text. How much information is
encoded in a text by means of lexical words. LD= Lexical words/Total words x 100
Parameters influencing lexical density: degree of pre-planning; feedback; personal and
social relations, interactivity; language in action texts vs narrative/informative texts.
definition of lexical variation (LV):
measure of the different words in a text; how sophisticated a text is.
Type-Token Ratio (TTR) = Types/Tokes
What determines the REGISTER of a text?
-Field: what? What is happening and what is being talked about
- Tenor: who? Who is taking part and their relationship to each other
- Mode: how? How language is being used (channel, medium, nature of exchange)
main features of spoken English:
informality (use of colloquialisms), setting in a shared context (use of pronouns, deictics,
ellipsis, vagueness and hedges), interactivity (direct questions and question tags, vocatives),
lack of planning (syntactic fragmentation and the add-on strategy (parataxis), disfluencies,
false starts and hesitations), spoken medium (prosody and paralinguistic features).
main features of written English:
Sentence structure and complexity; phrase complexity and lexical density; (generally more
formal) vocabulary; higher pervasiveness of the passive voice; verb tenses; specific
vocabulary; nominalisation.
What are the major text types:
● Narrative texts
● Descriptive texts
● Directive texts
● Expository texts
● Argumentative texts
main features of narrative texts:
They have to do with ‘real’ world events in time. They display sequences
of events that are often rendered through activity verbs, dynamic verbs, and adverbial
expressions of time that provide the basic narrative structure. They include fictional texts
(invented ‘real’ worlds, e.g. fairy tales, novels) and non-fictional texts (reporting facts as in
newspaper reports, recounting historical events, travels and life experiences like in blogs
and diaries).
main features of descriptive texts:
They are concerned with the location of persons and things in space
(and in a broad sense also with the emotional state, physical appearance, etc.). They
provide background information (and characterization) which set the stage for narration.
main features of directive texts:
They are concerned with concrete future activities (potential actions).
They include actions that should be performed by the receiver of the message, in the form of
orders, instructions, suggestions. Linguistically realized for instance through imperatives,
direct questions, suggestive remarks, modal verbs.
