![S. JOHNSON’S DICTIONARY (1755), about 42,000 entries LEXICOGRAPHER. n.s. [? lixicographe , French.] A writer of dictionories; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words. Commentators and lexicographers acquainted with the Syriac language, have given these hints in their writings on scripture. Watt’s Improvement of the Mind.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/talknbu-111127173230-phpapp01/85/Talk-nbu-21-320.jpg)
![OED: a selection from the entry for “spaghetti” [It., pl. of spaghetto thin string, twine.] 1. a. A variety of pasta made in long thin strings. Occas., a dish of spaghetti. 1888 MRS. BEETON Bk. Househ. Managem. §2952 Maccheroni, or Spaghetti, a smaller kind of macaroni,..generally follows the soup . 2. An Italian: usu. contemptuous. slang. 1931 ‘D. STIFF’ Milk & Honey Route iii. 38 Italian hobos are equally rare. They are the ‘wops’ or ‘spaghettis’. 3. Complex roadways forming a multi-level junction, esp. on a motorway. colloq 1966 Guardian 4 June 14/2 Details of one of the biggest pieces of motorway spaghetti so far designed in Britain were published...](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/talknbu-111127173230-phpapp01/85/Talk-nbu-24-320.jpg)
Talk nbu
- 1. Primary school education and computer-based language study TEMENUZHKA SEIZOVA-NANKOVA
- 2. New methods of studying English 1 We are at the threshold of a new era of English language studies. The time-honoured, hands-on methods,’using relatively small amounts of data and large amounts of thought’ are not supplanted but are strongly complemented by the new methods 1 D. Crystal. Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language
- 3. ‘ grammatical syllabus’ Research into the contemporary language of 20 th century fostered by the theories and methods of descriptive linguistics gave as a result the so-called ‘ grammatical syllabus ’ focusing the linguistic competence of language speaker (NSvsNNS) . Grammars such as Thompson and Martinet(1986) supported English coursebooks based on slot and filler approaches to language teaching
- 4. ‘ the communicative syllable’ Research into language (Hymes 19..) gave as a result the so-called ‘ communicative syllabus ’ in coursebooks focusing the communicative competence of language speaker (NSvsNNS). Activities are built around a situation and learners themselves are responsible for conduction the interaction to its conclusion
- 5. ‘ lexical syllabus’ The new perspective in language study introduces new methods of analysis as a consequence of the technological revolution the time-honoured, hands-on methods,’using relatively small amounts of data and relatively large amounts of thought’ 2 are not supplanted but are strongly complemented by the new methods The ‘ lexical syllabus ’ places special emphasis on lexical patterns and reliance on a corpus for making generalizations on language.
- 6. Some new contentions Grammar and lexis can no longer be separated and opposed to each other Change of emphasis within mainstream linguistics inevitably brings about changes in foreign language teaching/pedagogy Electronic instrumentation and computer science has already changed the way we look at language. All areas of language study have been profoundly affected by technological developments
- 7. Grammar – huge corpora of spoken and written English are making it possible to carry out studies of structures of unprecedented detail and in an unprecedented range of varieties The Lexicon – remarkable progress in the compilation of lexical databases giving rise to an explosion of new types of dictionaries and that is not all.
- 8. SOME OLD AND NEW CONCEPTS AND TERMS CORPUS WORD/WORD FORM/ LEXEME GRAMMATICAL OR FUNCTIONAL WORD / LEXICAL WORD ENTRY/HEADWORD/LEMMA TYPES AND TOKENS CORE VOCABULARY
- 9. CORPUS What is a corpus- a large collection of data in machine readable form available for use not only for researchers but also for language teachers and learners. Some of the standard computer corpora: The BNC (British National Corpus) Corpus of the Contemporary American. The Brown Corpus of American English
- 10. WORD/WORD FORM/ LEXEM E Ambiguity of the term ‘word’ (Lyons p.194-208): The phonological or orthographic word The grammatical words e.g. sang the past tense of sing, represents one grammatical word, while cut on the other represents 3 grammatical words. The relation is one-to-one . Instances of one-many b/n phonological and grammatical words: e.g. /mi:t/: meet , meat , and many-one /ri:d/,/red/: read(homonymous form pr.& past tense of read) the latter being in correspondence with the orthographic word red , and reed The lexeme -a third usage of the term ‘word’ e.g. singing is another form of the word /verb sing , but singer is a different word with its own set of forms. Notationally, lexemes will be distinguished from words by the use of capitals. The orthographic word cut represents three different inflectional forms’/i.e. 3 different grammatical words/ of the lexeme CUT.
- 11. GRAMMATICAL OR FUNCTIONAL WORD / LEXICAL WORD the four major parts of speech /PoS: Noun, verb, adjective and adverb PoS tagging
- 12. Defining the adjective “honest” A person who is honest does not tell lies, cheat people or violate the law A person who is honest always tells the truth, respects other people, obeys the law and pays taxes Someone who is honest can always be trusted Someone who is honest does not hide things from you Someone who is honest can be trusted with valuables and money etc. etc. THE MEANING OF WORDS CAN BE CULTURALLY CONDITIONED
- 13. Defining the noun “bird” A bird is… An animal with the body covered in/with feathers, with two wings and a beak, which is able to fly. Female birds lay eggs An animal with feathers, two legs and two wings, which is able to fly. BUT WHAT ABOUT PENGUINS AND OSTRICHS? We conceive a general image, a mental PROTOTYPE based on our experience and containing the most distinctive characteristics of the class. Some members are less central than others.
- 14. “ BUTTERFLY” Butterflies live only one day She is a butterfly when she dances WORDS DENOTE OBJECTS AND CONCEPTS , BUT MAY HAVE EMOTIONAL OR STYLISTIC CONNOTATIONS
- 15. DIFFERENT TYPES OF LEXEME 1. The computer is an electronic machine which is used for storing, organizing and finding different types of information SOME WORDS HAVE ONLY ONE REFERENT OR MEANING (MONOREFERENTIAL) 2a A violent storm broke out 2b It was only a storm in a tea cup 2c His speech provoked a storm of criticism SOME WORDS HAVE SEVERAL RELATED MEANINGS (POLYSEMOUS) 3a. I was walking along the bank of the river Cam 3b. I used to work at the Royal Bank of Scotland 3c The nearest bank is in Gower street SOME WORDS HAVE DIFFERENT UNRELATED MEANINGS ( HOMONYMS) THE NATURE OF LEXEMES AFFECTS THE ORGANISATION OF LEMMAS IN DICTIONARIES
- 16. Semantic links between words 1 Freedom and liberty (NEAR)-SYNONYMY Black or white; fast or slow; brother or sister; married or single ANTONYMY (or COMPLEMENTARITY) 3. flowers, roses, daffodils, violets, tulips, daisies HYPERONYMY (SUPERORDINATES) and HYPONYMY ( SUBORDINATES) 4. To cook, roast, simmer, fry, bake, boil, barbecue… SEMANTIC FIELD
- 17. Discuss the following examples 1. I would like to win a post-graduate scholarship to do research (not * to make research) 2. How do you do? 3. The ups and downs of life ( not * the downs and ups) 4. The early bird catches the worm ( not * the early cat catches the mouse) 5. Torrential/heavy rain in Bangladesh ( not * strong rain) 6. He has spilled the beans ( not * spilled the peas) “ WORDS KEEP COMPANY WITH OTHER WORDS” AND TEND TO CO-OCCUR IN PREFERRED OR FIXED COLLOCATIONS.
- 18. To sum up, lexis … is dynamic refers to the external world refers to mental concepts has emotional and stylistic connotations has one or several referents and meanings relates to other words in the language may co-occur with other words in fixed or semi-fixed patterns.
- 19. WHAT DOES KNOWING A WORD MEAN?
- 20. How many words are there in English? It is not easy to count them and there are different ways of doing it : Dictionaries Electronic corpora Speakers’ competence
- 21. S. JOHNSON’S DICTIONARY (1755), about 42,000 entries LEXICOGRAPHER. n.s. [? lixicographe , French.] A writer of dictionories; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words. Commentators and lexicographers acquainted with the Syriac language, have given these hints in their writings on scripture. Watt’s Improvement of the Mind.
- 22. THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY ON HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES, OED The 20 volume 1989 edition
- 23. OED Features The project started in the second half of the 19th century It covers English since the 14th century The second print edition in 20 volumes + 4 additions has 616,500 headwords and derived words and phrases A CdROM and an online version, which is regularly updated, are also available.
- 24. OED: a selection from the entry for “spaghetti” [It., pl. of spaghetto thin string, twine.] 1. a. A variety of pasta made in long thin strings. Occas., a dish of spaghetti. 1888 MRS. BEETON Bk. Househ. Managem. §2952 Maccheroni, or Spaghetti, a smaller kind of macaroni,..generally follows the soup . 2. An Italian: usu. contemptuous. slang. 1931 ‘D. STIFF’ Milk & Honey Route iii. 38 Italian hobos are equally rare. They are the ‘wops’ or ‘spaghettis’. 3. Complex roadways forming a multi-level junction, esp. on a motorway. colloq 1966 Guardian 4 June 14/2 Details of one of the biggest pieces of motorway spaghetti so far designed in Britain were published...
- 25. MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S : the American counterpart to OED
- 26. The Webster’s It covers American English since the 18th century Its 1963 edition contains c. 114,000 word families (a headword accompanied by its inflected and derived forms) It is regularly updated. There are several print editions and an online edition, which is freely available
- 27. OTHER TYPES OF DICTIONARY in SIZE (college dictionaries, desk dictionaries, pocket dictionaries) in ADDRESSEES for EFL learners (from 60,000 to 80,000 entries), or for native speakers in CONTENTS ( general or specialised, varieties of English) in NUMBER OF LANGUAGES ( monolingual, bilingual, multilingual) In FORMAT ( paper, CD-ROM, online)
- 28. THE COLLINS COBUILD Learner’s Dictionary Monolingual general Learners’ Dictionaries usually contain: Spelling variants IPA p honetic transcription Grammatical and syntactic information Information on frequency Definitions of various senses Examples of usage Sense relations, e.g. antonymy Register labels (e.g formal, slang) Frequent lexical collocations Usage notes Typical learner errors Use of colours, symbols and figures Special sections
- 29. ELECTRONIC CORPORA Corpora are collections of text in electronic form that are meant to represent a language, or a register of it. Several corpora are available for English that can be analysed through specific software in terms of frequency and use of words in context. e.g. The British National Corpus (BNC)
- 30. WHAT ARE THE MOST FREQUENTLY USED WORDS IN ENGLISH ? From” The British National Corpus, BNC” the determiner of preposition and conjunction a determiner in preposition to infinitive it pronoun is verb to preposition was verb I pronoun for preposition that conjunction you pronoun he pronoun be verb with preposition on preposition at preposition by preposition GRAMMATICAL WORDS ARE THE MOST FREQUENTLY USED
- 31. FREQUENCY OF LEXICAL WORDS ( based on the BNC) The 10 most frequent nouns are: time, year, people, way, man, day, thing, child, Mr, government. The most commonly mentioned animal is the horse , closely followed by dog The 10 most frequent adjectives are: other, good, new, old, great, high, small, different, large, local. The most frequently mentioned colours are black, white, red and green . The order coincides with the hierarchy of colours which scholars have observed in many languages. The top ten frequency adverbs are: never, always, often, ever, sometimes, usually, once, generally, hardly, no longer rarer nouns are: fax, ribbon, ant, colitis, wheat, spelling, holly, monarch, voltage, morale Rarer adjectives ; rude, faithful, ministerial, innovative, controlled, conceptual, unwilling, civic, meaningful disturbing
- 32. HOW MANY WORDS DO NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH KNOW? It depends on variables such as age and education and use (receptive or productive): According to research A two-year old child: very limited vocabulary but growing at great speed An English university student : 20,000 word families An adult educated speaker : 50,000 lexemes CHECK YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF ITALIAN: “ CERULEO” ,“CETACEI” ,“OTITE” “ ILLUMINISMO”
- 33. The mixed nature of PDE lexis: Germanic versus romance words - a core (c. 40%) of high-frequency Germanic words usually short and used to refer to common “things”, actions and concepts (e.g. man, woman, day, child, bread, to go, to get, phrasal verbs) and - a wider component (c. 60%), of less frequent words of classical or romance origin usually longer and used in specialised or formal contexts (e.g. encyclopaedia, tonsillectomy, parliament, infrastructure)
- 34. GERMANIC /ROMANCE NEAR-SYNONYMS Discover e.g. Columbus discovered a new continent Find out e.g. Her parents found out that she had a boyfriend Continue e.g. The treatment has to be continued for 4 weeks Go on e.g. We can’t go on like this any longer Pig / cow = the living animal Pork/ beef = the meat you eat regal, royal e.g. royal family, regal powers Kingly e.g. kingly manner
- 35. “ GOOD” AND “FALSE FRIENDS” WITH ITALIAN Similarity may help at times e.g. problem, result, company, million, community Similarity may be misleading at other times, e.g. actually, eventually, argument, factory, educated, lecture, library, magazine, major, agenda
- 36. English loans in Italian and other European languages From a “borrowing language” English has become a “donor language”. Why? In present-day Italian there are many different types of anglicisms and people have different attitudes to this phenomenon. What is happening in other languages? Comment on the following anglicisms in Italian. Do they have an Italian counterpart? film, mission, management, welfare, governance, briefing, week-end, pub, scannerizzare /”scannare”, mouse, computer, talk-show, report, devolution, boom, impeachment, ghostwriter
- 37. Variation in English 1. USER-RELATED VARIATION e.g. geographical area (GB, USA etc), age, education 2. USE-RELATED VARIATION, or REGISTER MODEL 2.1. what is talked about (FIELD or TOPIC) 2.2. the MEDIUM used ( e.g. spoken /written, electronic language) 2.3. the relationship between speakers/writers , e.g. formal, informal (PERSONAL TENOR)
- 38. Some lexical differences between BrE and AmE 1. He lives in a lovely apartmen t in New York AmE / flat BrE 2 . The autumn term will start in September Br.E / fall AmE 3. Where can I find a gas station? AmE / petrol (BrE) 4. 11/9/2001 Br E / 9/11/2001 AmE
- 39. Register variation 1.1 Tonsillectomy is needed 1.2. Doctor “ I have to remove/to take your tonsils out 2.1 Influenza A/H1N1 broke out in Mexico last year 2.2. Swine flu broke out in Mexico last year 3.1 These are my children 3.2 These are my kids 3.3. This is my offspring
- 40. CORE / BASIC VOCABULARY Choose the most neutral and general lexeme to refer to someone “who has very little fat on his/her body”and, with the help of dictionaries, identify the differences in meaning: emaciated, skinny, slender, lean, slim, thin
- 41. Frequency lists What is a frequency list: it is a list of words but unlike in a dictionary
- 42. Adjective thin (16) S: (adj) thin (of relatively small extent from one surface to the opposite or in cross section) "thin wire"; "a thin chiffon blouse"; "a thin book"; "a thin layer of paint" (15) S: (adj) thin , lean (lacking excess flesh) "you can't be too rich or too thin"; "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look"-Shakespeare (7) S: (adj) slender , thin (very narrow) "a thin line across the page" (2) S: (adj) sparse , thin (not dense) "a thin beard"; "trees were sparse" (1) S: (adj) thin (relatively thin in consistency or low in density; not viscous) "air is thin at high altitudes"; "a thin soup"; "skimmed milk is much thinner than whole milk"; "thin oil" S: (adj) thin ((of sound) lacking resonance or volume) "a thin feeble cry" S: (adj) thin (lacking spirit or sincere effort) "a thin smile" S: (adj) flimsy , fragile , slight , tenuous , thin (lacking substance or significance) "slight evidence"; "a tenuous argument"; "a thin plot"; a fragile claim to fame"
- 45. Types of “prefabricated language” SOCIAL ROUTINES ( OR PRAGMATIC IDIOMS) e.g. I’m looking forward to hearing from you, Can I help you? DISCOURSE ORGANISERS e.g. in other words, to sum up, for example, e.g.( exempli gratia), .i.e (id est) IDIOMS e.g. to beat about the bush, to kill two birds with one stone, BINOMIALS e.g. to and fro, pros and cons, bed and breakfast PROVERBS e.g A friend in need is a friend indeed, Garbage in. garbage out SIMILE e.g. As ugly as sin, as happy as a lark SLOGANS AND FAMOUS QUOTATIONS e.g Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country ( J. F. Kennedy) Yes, we can (B. Obama)
- 47. LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS: A PERVASIVE FEATURE OF ENGLISH AND A MAJOR DIFFICULTY FOR LEARNERS Napravi mi usluga Do me a favour Napravi mi torta Make me a cake
- 49. A lexical collocation is… … when two lexemes belonging to two different word classes tend to co-occur for reasons other than grammatical ones e.g. to take up/start/pursue a career * to make career
- 51. Communicative competence Match the situations to expressions as in the model : 1.You meet a friend Hi! 2.You have done smth wrong 3.It’s time to go home 4. You meet your teacher 5.you are having a wonderful time 6.Somebody has done smth wrong to you 7.You are bying an icecream 8.You don’t like what you are eating. a. I’m sorry b. Thank you very much c. Yippee! d. I’ll see you tomorrow e. This is not fair f. This is fun! g. So sorry h. Thanks i. Hi! j. Good morning k. How are you doing l. yummy