SEMANTIC ANALYSIS
In the semantic analysis section learners will find some or all of the following subsections:
learning new words and phrases
Here I give the translation of certain words and phrases that in my experience may represent an obstacle to the correct comprehension of the text by students. The translation given is always meant to fit the context as closely as possible.
synonyms and near-synonyms
I include in this section synonyms and near-synonyms for some of the words appearing in the text that are not normally used in everyday conversation, hoping in this way to facilitate their understanding on the part of students.
We say that two or more words are synonyms when they have the same or nearly the same meaning, e.g. shut and close. However, there’s seldom strict synonymy, but loose synonymy, so we’d better speak of near-synonyms. For reasons of economy, to have two or more words with exactly the same meaning is a luxury that languages cannot afford. The main reasons why it’s difficult to find strict synonymy or one hundred percent synonyms are the following:
Differentation of meaning. Words often change their meaning with the passing of time: originally, starve = die, but when die (probably of Scandinavian origin) began to be generally used the meaning of to starve was restricted to die of hunger; originally, mutton from French mouton = sheep, but it came to mean the ‘flesh of the animal’ and for the animal ‘sheep’ was retained.
Many lexemes are synonymous in some contexts but not in others: close/shut: we can say close/shut the door, but only the shop is closed; find/discover: we found/discovered the boys hiding in the shed, but Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin; busy/occupied: I’m afraid Mr Smith is busy/occupied at the moment, but I’m afraid this seat is occupied; freedom/liberty: the rights and freedoms/liberties of citizens, but you’re at liberty to do as you please.
Different collocations, however slight: answer and reply are synonymous in practically any context, but you can say, for instance, “you have only one answer correct on the test”, but cannot substitute reply for answer in this case
Different register: See REGISTER below.
The two synonyms belong to different dialects: lift (BrE.)/elevator (AmE.), pavement/sidewalk, sweet/candy, biscuit/cookie, tap/faucet, dustbin/trashcan, boot/trunk, etc.
antonyms
We give this name to two words which have opposite meanings: true/false. I include under this heading the three different types of antonyms generally distinguished by linguists: gradable, non-gradable and reversive.
Gradable antonyms can be used in comparative constructions: bigger/smaller than , and the negative of one member of the pair does not necessarily imply the other: if sb is less rich than another, for example, it does not necessarily follow that he is poor.
Non-gradable antonyms are not normally used in comparative constructions, and the negative of one member of the pair does imply the other: a person, for instance, is either dead or alive.
In reversive pairs one word is not really the negative of the other, the meaning being ‘(do) the reverse of’: to dress/to undress, teacher/student.
Finally, we should take into account that the antonym of some words may vary depending on the context where the word is used, e.g. the antonym of dry (seco) is wet (húmedo, mojado) generally, but sweet (dulce) if we are talking about a wine.
polysemous terms
We say that a word is polysemous or polysemic when it has two or more related meanings. There’s usually a basic meaning, and other meanings arrived at via metaphorical extension: foot (of a person), foot (of the stairs), foot (of a mountain), etc.
homonyms
We say that two or more words are homonyms when they are written and pronounced in the same way, but have different unrelated meanings, with a different etymology: bank (the financial institution) comes from F. banque, whereas bank (of a river) comes from ME, probably from ON banki; mole (the animal) comes from ME molle, probably from MDutch moll(e), whereas mole (a blemish on the skin) comes from OE māl.
metonymy and metaphor
Metonymy can be defined as a type of semantic change consisting in using the name of a person or object for another person or object to which it is closely related. That close relationship can be of many types: container-contents (he ate two tins of sardines), whole-part (all hands to the pump), symbol-institution (he renounced the crown for the love of a woman), etc.
It is important to distinguish between metonymy and metaphor1. In metaphor there is a comparison implied, but not so in metonymy. Let’s consider, for example:
1) the bird was about to fly
2) the White House has announced that…
we can see that in a) we are comparing a man’s attempt to escape to a bird which is on the point of flying away, but in b), we are not comparing the President to a white house, but substituting ‘White House’ for ‘President’ simply because American Presidents live in the White House. Consequently, we have a metaphor in a) and a metonymy in b).
lexical fields
A lexical or semantic field is usually defined as a set of related specific words (co-hyponyms) whose meaning may be said to be included in that of a more general word (superordinate). Thus, rose, carnation, daffodil, daisy, tulip, etc., being all hyponyms of the superordinate ‘flower’, form the lexical field of flowers.
In my teaching experience, a very good way to motivate students and encourage them to learn new words is to give them a few lexical items belonging to a particular lexical field, and invite them to complete it by adding other related terms. With this objective in mind, I have incorporated in every unit one or several lexical fields that the students can always add to with the help of their teacher or, in the case of self-leaners, consulting a good dictionary.
All lexical fields are arranged in alphabetical order for easy consultation and there is an index of topics at the end of the book.
analysis by distinctive semantic features
Componential analysis, that is the analysis of the meaning of a word into its semantic components, permits students to discover the semantic feature or features which distinguish between certain related words. Thus, to glitter and to glisten, for example, share the shining feature, but whereas to glitter is applied to sth which shines with a bright reflected light, e.g. gold, jewels, to glisten is said of sth that shines on a wet surface, e.g. tree leaves after a shower.
collocations
We can define collocation as “the way in which words are used together regularly”, but in every language there are some restrictions on how words can be used together. In English, for example, we say to do a favour, but to make a mistake. Collocations fall into two major groups: grammatical collocations and lexical collocations.
Grammatical collocations
It’s important to know how verbs, nouns and adjectives are grammatically constructed, that is what their grammatical collocations are: what preposition usually follows certain verbs, nouns or adjectives, if they pattern with a to-infinitive, an –ing form, a that-clause, etc., e.g. to suffer from, to taste of, to invest in, etc.; to finish + -ing form, to manage + to-infinitive, to believe + that-clause, to be believed + to-infinitive, etc.
Lexical collocations
Most words combine freely with practically any other word, depending solely on the meaning you want to convey; thus, you can condemn (censurar) practically anything. There are words, however, which tend to occur with some words and not with others, and it is these lexical collocations that students must know well if they want their English to be idiomatic: e.g. you make an impression, do research, set a record, lay the table (also set the table), you refer to a flock of sheep, but to a pack of wolves, a shoal of fish, but a school of whales, etc.
register
I use the word in the sense of stylistic variety, that is variation in a person’s speech or writing, depending on the type of situation, the person or persons addressed, the topic discussed, etc., e.g. standard English drunk, formal inebriated, intoxicated, informal/colloquial pissed, slang sloshed; standard English to die, formal to expire, to pass away (euphemistic), informal/colloquial to croak, to cash in one’s chips, to turn up one’s toes/to kick the bucket (dysphemistic), slang to snuff it, to conk out, etc. There is also technical vocabulary: cardiac for heart, or pulmonary for lung, and jargon: prof (profe), to flunk (catear) and crib sheet (chuleta), for example, are student jargon. Many borrowed words in English have synonyms of Saxon origin: help/aid, heaven/sky, annoy/irritate. Sometimes one of the synonyms is stylistically restricted.: ascend/climb, stop/cease, etc. Often the borrowed form has a more formal style: ‘commence’ as against ‘begin’ or ‘start’. Sometimes one of the synonyms becomes obsolete or almost obsolete: foe/enemy.
words easily confused
Grouped in this subsection are sets of two or more words with different meanings in English, but the same translation in Spanish, a fact that often makes students use them erroneously, e.g. to expect/to wait/to hope (‘esperar’).
false friends
We say that a word is a ‘false friend’ or a ‘false cognate’ when it has the same or very similar form in two languages, but a different meaning in each. The similarity may cause students to use the word wrongly, giving rise sometimes to awkward misunderstandings: fastidious, for example, does not mean ‘fastidioso’ (annoying, bothersome), but ‘meticuloso’. You’ll find examples of false friends in 2.2.9; 5.2.15; 6.2.12 and 9.2.11. Sometimes an English term is equivalent to a Spanish one, but only in one of its meanings: to assist can mean ‘asistir’, but only in the sense of ‘socorrer, ayudar’; for ‘asistir a un acto’ you must use to attend; café means ‘café’ only in the sense of the place where you can have coffee (the beverage). These terms can be described as partially false friends.
euphemisms and dysphemisms
Euphemism is a linguistic mechanism consisting in naming something for which we feel some kind of fear, disgust or revulsion, by another name which seems socially more acceptable, e.g. to pass away for to die, call girl for prostitute, etc. Dysphemism, on the other hand3, consists in naming one of those terms with unpleasant connotations by another term which highlights their humorous and grotesque aspects, e.g. to kick the bucket for to die, nightbird for prostitute, etc. (see 1.2.14 and 11.2.12).
word formation
The following word formation processes are illustrated:
Affixation
Adding affixes at the beginning of a word (prefixes: un-, dis-, mis-, ex-, etc.) or at the end of it (suffixes: -ous, -ness, -en, -ly, etc.) to form derived words: unkind, to disagree, ex-minister, monotonous, whiteness, to widen, formerly, etc. You’ll find examples of prefixes in 2.2.10 and 3.2.12, and of suffixes, in 1.2.11, 4.2.10, 7.2.8, 8.2.12 and 9.2.13.
Compounding
The English language has always been prolific in forming compound words, that is combinations of two or more words which function as single words. These compound words may be spelt with a hyphen (user-friendly, ‘de fácil manejo’), in one word (dishwasher, ‘lavavajillas’), or in two (cash dispenser, ‘cajero automático’). There are no fixed rules, although if the first element is a word ending in –ing, the compound is not generally written in one word (washing machine, ‘lavadora’, time-consuming (‘que lleva mucho tiempo’); phrasal verbs are gen. spelt in two words (to warm up, ‘calentar’, to work out, ‘hacer ejercicio físico), and phrasal nouns, either hyphenated (warm-up, ‘calentamiento’) or in one word (workout, ‘ejercicio físico’). You’ll find some examples of compound words in 6.2.13, 7.2.8 and 12.3.6.
Borrowings/loanwords
Throughout its history the English language has incorporated words from many other languages: from French (antique, chef, entrée, rouge), from Italian (opera, piano, umbrella), Spanish (guerrilla, hammock, mosquito, tobacco), German (hamburger, waltz), Dutch (cruise, yacht), Russian (vodka, steppe), Norwegian (fjord, ski), etc. In 5.2.11 and 12.2.10, you’ll find examples of French borrowings (by far the more numerous), adopted into the English language after 1500, and usually keeping their French pronunciation and spelling.
Conversion
We give this name to a change in the function of a word, without altering its form, e.g. a noun becomes a verb: butter (mantequilla) → to butter (untar con mantequilla). For examples of conversion, see 4.2.10, 10.2.10, 11.2.10 and 12.2.10.
Clipping
It is an informal way of forming new words, just by removing one or more syllables from a word. The syllable or syllables removed can be at the end of a word: ad for advertisement, at the beginning: plane for aeroplane, or at both the beginning and the end: flu for influenza, etc. Sometimes slight modifications occur: fridge for refrigerator, mike for microphone, telly for television, etc. Clippings generally have a restricted colloquial use: prof for professor, doc for doctor, veg for vegetables, etc., but in some cases, the clipped form has largely displaced the original; thus practically nobody nowadays uses perambulator, public house or omnibus any more, but their respective clipped forms: pram, pub and bus. For other examples of clipping, see 6.2.13.
Blending
“A type of word formation in which two or more free morphemes are combined to form a new word which incorporates the meanings of its constituents”4, e.g. motel, from motor and hotel. The words obtained by this word-formation process are usually called blends or portmanteau words, a term invented by Lewis Carroll (1831-1898), who produced some of them in his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, e.g. to chortle = to chuckle + snort. You’ll find other examples of blends in 12.2.10.
Eponyms
We give this name to words derived from names of people, real or imaginary, e.g. macadam, named after its inventor, the Scottish engineer John Loudon MacAdam (1756-1836), or aphrodisiac, from Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty in Greek mythology. It is worth noting that some eponyms, like biro or hoover, for instance, are proprietary names or trademarks (for more examples of eponyms, see 1.2.11 and 12.2.10).
Back-formation
This happens when a word is shortened to derive an apparently primary form, e.g. babysit (hacer de canguro) from babysitter (canguro). For other examples of back- formation, see 12.2.10.
Acronyms
Acronym can be defined as a word formed from the initial letters of other words e.g. GPS (Global Positioning System) – navegador. They can be pronounced as words e.g. NATO, or as a sequence of letters, e.g. FBI. Some, like VAT (value-added tax) – IVA, can be pronounced either way. Usage may vary from English and Spanish, for example, ONU is pronounced as a word in Spanish, whereas UNO is pronounced as a sequence of letters in English. For more examples of acronyms, see 10.2.10).
differences BrE./AmE.
Although obviously the same language is spoken in the USA and in Britain, there are considerable differences affecting mainly vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation. You’ll find some of these differences in unit 6 (6.2.11), unit 9 (9.2.12) and unit 10 (10.2.13).
idioms /phrasal verbs
In every unit, you will find translated or explained the idioms and phrasal verbs appearing in the story, completed in many cases with some similar ones or with others containing the same key word: point (1.2.12a), way (8.2.13), etc., or the same verb: to take back (11.2.14).