Language Arts Notes
Language Arts
Figures of Speech
We call the various literary devices an author uses to make language more expressive, enhance the content of their message, and draw attention to the author’s style “figures of speech”.
They are classified into:
- Phonetic Resources: These have to do with the sounds of words.
- Alliteration: It consists of repeating a sound with the intention of producing sensory effects.
- Paronomasia: Consists of using two words next to each other with very similar pronunciation but with very different meanings.
- Morphosyntactic Resources: These relate to the structure and arrangement of words.
- Anaphora: Repetition of a word at the beginning of two or more lines or sentences.
- Epiphora: Repeating a word at the end of two or more lines or sentences.
- Anadiplosis: Repeat the last word of a verse at the beginning of the next.
- Epanadiplosis: Repeating a word at the beginning and end of a verse.
- Concatenation: Continuing Anadiplosis repeatedly.
- Hyperbaton: Altering the usual order of words within a sentence.
- Parallelism: Repetition of the same syntactic structures or large groups of words.
- Chiasm: Cross-organization of syntactic structures.
- Asyndeton: Omission of conjunctions between several terms that should carry them.
- Polysyndeton: It consists of using unnecessary conjunctions.
- Ellipsis: Omission of some element of a sentence.
- Semantic Resources: These relate to the meaning of words.
- Simile: It is the comparison between two elements, one real and one figurative, when the relationship between them is similar.
- Epithet: Adjectives that express an implicit quality of the noun.
- Metaphor: A real term is identified with an image or figurative term. Sometimes the real term is not explicitly stated.
- Metonymy: Identifying a real term with another figurative one when their relationship is not of similarity.
- Synesthesia: Combining two realities that are perceived by different senses.
- Personification: It consists in attributing qualities of people to other beings.
- Animalization: Attributing characteristics of animals to people. It produces a degrading effect.
- Cosidification: Attaches properties of things to people.
- Hyperbole: Disproportionate exaggeration, normally for humorous purposes.
- Dilogía: It consists of using a polysemous word in a message that evokes two or more of its meanings. It is used mainly in advertising.
- Enumeration: Consists of citing various elements of reality belonging to the same grammatical category.
- Antithesis: It consists of contrasting two opposite terms.
- Paradox: Proposes contradictory ideas that have a deeper meaning.
- Rhetorical Question: This is a question that does not expect an answer.
- Irony: It consists of saying the contrary to what you think, often with a humorous tone.
- Etopeya: Moral description of a person.
- Prosopography: Physical description of a person.
- Portrait: A mixture of moral and physical description.
- Caricature: A portrait in which you try to disfigure the person you are speaking of by exaggerating their features.
Verse Classification
Verses are classified by their number of syllables:
| Syllables | Name |
|---|---|
| 1 | Monosílabo |
| 2 | Bisílabo |
| 3 | Trisílabo |
| 4 | Tetrasílabo |
| 5 | Pentasílabo |
| 6 | Hexasílabo |
| 7 | Heptasílabo |
| 8 | Octosílabo |
| 9 | Eneasílabo |
| 10 | Decasílabo |
| 11 | Endecasílabo |
| 12 | Dodecasílabo |
| 13 | Tridecasílabo |
| 14 | Alejandrino |
| 15 | Pentadecasílabo |
| 16 | Octonario |
- Arte mayor: If it has 9 or more syllables.
- Arte menor: If it has 8 or fewer syllables.
For the exact calculation of syllables, we look at the last word of the verse (accents or not):
- If it is flat: It is left as it is.
- If it is acute: It adds a syllable.
- If it is esdrújula: Subtract one syllable.
Rhyme
Rhyme refers to the matching of letters and sounds among the last words of the verses, counting from the last accent.
- Consonant Rhyme: The coincidence of all the phonemes from the last accent.
- Assonance Rhyme: Matching only the vowels.
Stanzas
Stanzas are a set of verses. They are classified according to the number of verses.
| Verses | Name | Characteristics |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Pareado | Rhyme between themselves |
| 2 | Dístico | Do not rhyme |
| 3 | Terceto | 11A 11B 11A / 11A 11B 11B |
| 3 | Tercerillo | 8a 8b 8a / 8a 8b 8b |
| 4 | Cuarteto | 11A 11B 11B 11A |
| 4 | Serventesio | 11A 11B 11A 11B |
| 4 | Redondilla | Arte menor octosyllabic 8a 8b 8b 8a |
| 5 | Quinteto | Arte mayor endecasílabas |
| 5 | Quintillo | Arte menor octosílabas |
| 6 | Sexteto | Arte mayor endecasílabas / alejandrinos |
| 6 | Sextilla | Arte menor octosílabas |
| 8 | Octava real | Arte mayor endecasílabas |
| 10 | Decima | Arte mayor endecasílabas |
Compositions Not Strophic
- Romance: 8 – 8a 8 – 8a
- Ballad: 7 – 7a 7 – 7a
- Romance Dirge: 9 – 9a 9 – 9a
- Romance Heroic: 10 – 10a 10 – 10a
Word
Verb Conjugation
In Spanish, there are three verb conjugations:
- Verbs ending in -ar.
- Verbs ending in -er.
- Verbs ending in -ir.
Verb conjugation consists of simple forms (only one verb) and composite forms (which have two verbs, one auxiliary).
In the conjugation of a verb, there are three moods:
- Indicative Mood: The action is real.
- Subjunctive Mood: The action is represented as uncertain or unlikely.
- Imperative Mood: Expresses a command or a plea.
Verb Formation
Verbs can be formed by adding the suffixes -ar, -ear, -ecer, -ificar, and -izar to nouns or adjectives. Also, in some cases, prefixes such as a- or en- can be added (if required by spelling).
The Form of the Verb
Verb forms can be segmented into lexemes and morphemes. The lexeme is its infinitive, subtracting the ending -ar, -er, or -ir.
The lexeme gives the meaning of the verb, and the inflectional morpheme expresses person, number, tense, mood, aspect, and voice.
The Person and the Number
The person indicates whether the subject is the first, second, or third person, and the number expresses whether the subject is singular or plural.
Classification of Verbal Forms
The verb forms are divided into:
- Impersonal Forms: They are called this way because they do not express grammatical person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd person) and also lack number, tense, and mood. They are the infinitive, the gerund, and the participle.
- Personal Forms: These are all forms of the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative tenses that present the inflections of person, number, tense, mood, and aspect. They are divided into simple and compound forms.
Monemes
Words are units of writing separated by spaces.
Monemes are smaller linguistic units.
Lexemes are monemes that possess lexical meaning.
A lexical family is a set of words that share the same lexeme.
Acronyms are words formed from the initials of other words. They serve to shorten and summarize long concepts and words.
Abbreviations are words formed with different letters or syllables of other words (not initials of other words).
Semantics
Semantic Field
A semantic field is a set of words that share some feature of their meanings while having other different features.
Examples:
- Colors: Red, yellow, etc.
Hypernym
A word whose meaning includes the meaning of another word.
Hyponym
A word whose meaning is included in the meaning of another word.
Synonymy and its Causes
Synonymy is the semantic relationship that exists between words with similar meanings. Usually, we distinguish between:
- Total Synonyms: Interchangeable in all contexts.
Example: Oculista – ophthalmologist - Partial Synonyms: They cannot always substitute for each other.
Example: Avaro – ruin – saver – miser
The causes of synonymy are varied:
- One term is technical, and the other is not.
Example: Amígdalas – angina - One term is literary, and the other is not.
Example: Cabello – hair - One term is colloquial, and the other is not.
Example: Pasta – money - One term is dialectal, and the other is not.
Example: Gocho – pig - One term is archaic, and the other is not.
Example: Sayo – shirt - One term is foreign, and the other is not.
Example: Parking – aparcamiento
Denotation and Connotation
Denotation is the basic meaning and purpose of each word as it appears in the dictionary.
Connotation is the set of meanings (positive or negative) that words acquire for subjective reasons or by the use of a particular context.
Monosemy
It is the property of some words to have only one meaning. It is a characteristic of scientific terms.
Polysemy
It is the property of words to have different meanings.
Taboo and Euphemism
Taboo refers to words or expressions that are considered crude, vulgar, or uncomfortable.
Euphemism is the substitution of taboo words with more appropriate ones.
Dysphemism is a humorous or distorted substitution of a taboo word.
Slang
The meanings of some words are specialized in certain language areas.
Antonymy
It is the opposition of two words in terms of their meaning. There are three types:
- Gradual: Between two opposite terms, there are words that indicate intermediate grades.
Example: Frío (cold) – (templado – warm) – caliente (hot) - Complementary: These opposites do not allow intermediate grades.
Example: Lícito (legal) – ilícito (illegal) - Reciprocal: The words imply each other. One does not exist without the other.
Example: Comprar (buy) – vender (sell)
Antonyms are constructed in two ways:
- With negative prefixes (in-, des-, a-…).
- By changing the word completely.
Homonymy
Homonymy occurs when two words have the same or similar pronunciation. They can be:
- Homophones: If they match in sound but have different spellings.
Example: Ola (wave) – hola (hello) - Homographs: If they match both in pronunciation and writing. To find out if they are polysemous or homographs, we look at the grammatical category. If they are the same, they are polysemous; if they are different, they are homographs.
Semantics
The Noun
The noun is a kind of word that has gender and number and is used to describe people, animals, or things. They have implicit notions of gender and number. Its core function is as the head of a noun phrase.
It is recognized because it can be preceded by an article or a determiner adjective and accompanied by a descriptive adjective.
Substantivization
Substantivization means that any class or category of speech can function as a noun in a given context. Any grammatical category can be substantivized:
- An adjective
- An adverb
- A conjunction
- A preposition
- An interjection
- A verb
- A prepositional phrase
A special case is the substantivization of adjectives with the neuter article “lo”; they acquire an abstract meaning.
Abstract Nouns
Nouns can be concrete or abstract. Concrete nouns refer to specific entities that are perceived by the senses, and abstract nouns name things not perceived by the senses.
Many abstract nouns are words derived from adjectives, as they indicate qualities.
Abstract nouns derived from verbs usually indicate actions.
Set Phrases
A set phrase is a group of words whose meaning is not the sum of the different meanings of the words that constitute it, but they acquire meaning as a unit, consolidated by its use over time.
Compound Words
Compound words are also formed by means of combining forms from Latin or Greek. Many of these words of learned origin are widely used in scientific and humanistic disciplines.
Examples:
- Cosmo- (universe) + Geo- (land) + -metry (measure)
- Topo- (place) + -logy (study, treated)
- Hydro- (water) + -phobia (fear)
- Phono- (sound) + -scope (instrument for viewing)
- Bio- (life) + -cracy (government)
- Photo- (light) + -graph (writing)
- Xeno- (foreign) + -meter (measure)
- Zoo- (animal) + -cycle (wheel)
- Micro- (tiny) + -syllabic (syllable)
- Demo- (people) + -meter (measure)
- Kilo- (thousand) + -archy (power)
- Tri- (three) + -logo (study)
- Endeca- (eleven) + -gram (drawing, representation)
- Thermo- (temperature) + -ship (ship, vehicle)
- Mono- (one) + Ophthalmo- (eye)
- Tele- (distance) + Miria- (thousand)
Cultisms and Patrimonial Words
In the passage from Latin to Castilian, it has sometimes happened that a Latin word has resulted in two Castilian words: one that has evolved significantly and is very different from its origin (patrimonial word) and another that has undergone very little change from the Latin word from which it derives (cultism).
As a result of this dual process of evolution, we have what are called doublets in Castilian: a pair of words, one a cultism and the other a patrimonial word, derived from the same Latin word.