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Thursday, January 13, 2011

WORD FORMATION PROCESS

- How new words are being formed in the language.
- The process consists of a combination of morphemes that are rule-governed (a new word is formed)
1.  AFFIXATION

- Process of forming words by adding affixes to morphemes
-    English uses only prefixes and suffixes

       Sing + er -- Singer
       un     + real -- unreal


2. COMPOUNDING
        Process that forms new words from two or more independent words
Examples of words formed by the compounding process:
girl + friend -- girl friend

PREPOSITIONS IN COMBINATIONS


1.    The following verb plus preposition combinations always appear as follows and must be learned together.

TO/FOR (PURPOSE)


Patterns for expressing purpose:

  1. for + noun phase

INDIRECT OBJECTS

Some verbs may be followed by two objects (an indirect object and a direct object). The following shows the patterns used when verbs take two objects.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Anaphora, Presupposition, and Metaphore


ANAPHORA

When two expressions refer to the same thing, they are said to be coreferntial. Discourse are filled with pronouns that are coreferential with other expressions, their antecedents. Rules of discourse determine when a pronoun can or should be used instead of a longer expression. The process of replacing a longer expression by a pronoun or another kind of ‘pro-form’ is called anaphora. Here are three examples of the use of anaphoric expressions, or pro-forms:
            I love Sally and Jack loves Sally too.
            I love Sally and Jack loves her too.                            (Pronoun)

            Emily hugged Helen and Steve hugged Helen too.
            Emily hugged Helen and Steve did too                     (Pro-verb phrase)