DISCOURSE MEANING

Linguistic knowledge accounts for speakers’ ability to combine phonemes into morphemes, morphemes into words, and words into sentences. Knowing a language also permits combining sentences together to express complex thoughts and ideas. The linguistic ability makes language an excellent medium of communication. These larger linguistic units are called discourse.

            The study of discourse, or discourse analysis, involves many aspects of linguistic performance and of sociolinguistics. as well as linguistic competence. Discourse analysis involves questions of style, appropriateness, cohesiveness, rhetorical force, topic/subtopic structure, differences between written and spoken discourse, and so on.

VERBS – PRESENT AND PERFECT PARTICIPLES AND INFINITIVES

1.      Present participle (V + ing) in introductory verb phrases express action of the same time as the main verb.

VERBS – PAST PARTICIPLES

The past participle is used in the following:

PRAGMATICS (Speech Acts)

We have referred to the ‘context’ of a sentence or discourse, and the importance of context in interpreting language. The general study of how context influence the way sentences convey information is called Pragmatics.

VERBS – VERBALS

1.      The following verbs can be followed by the infinitive  (to + v) as the direct object:

agree, forbid, mean, care, forget, offer, decide, hope,

plan, deserve, intend, pretend, refuse, fall, learn,

                        Mr. Smith and Mr. Parker deserve to be promoted.

                        They decided to leave early.

                        The secretary offered to come in early.

                        He hopes to see them again.

THE PRINCIPLES OF PRAGMATICS

Syntax has rules; Pragmatics has principles

2.1  The Cooperative Principles (CP)

    CP consists of four sub-principles, or maxims:

Word formation Processes in Languages

Nowadays, the terms ‘word formation’ does not have a clear cut, universally accepted usage. It is sometimes referred to all processes connected with changing the form of the word by, for example, affixation, which is a matter of morphology. In its wider sense word formation denotes the processes of creation of new lexical units. Although it seems that the difference between morphological change of a word and creation of a new term are quite easy to perceive there is sometimes a dispute as to whether blending is still a morphological change or making a new word.

VERBS – MODALS

1.   After all modals use the simple form of the verb (V) . The following a list of modals:

            Can,  could, must, may, should, will, might, would, shall

            They can walk five miles without getting tired.

            They could walk five miles without getting tired.

VERBS – TIME CLAUSES

Use the simple present tense in future-time clauses (when the action will take place sometime in the future). (Never use will or going to in future-time clauses.) Time clauses are introduced by such words as: when, while, after, before, as soon as etc.

VERBS – CONDITIONALS

The types of conditional sentence can be read below:

VERBS – WISHES

- Present wishes are expressed in the past tense.

  1. Ralph wishes (that) he had $1000,000.          (but he doesn’t)

  2. Mary wishes (that) she lived in New York.    (but he doesn’t)

  

VERBS – TENSES

The following are common verb-tense problems:

1. Present perfect. Remember to use the present perfect only when the action has started in the past and still relates to the present.

I have been in the United States for six months.

She has played the piano since she was a child.