Textual Properties and Romance Languages: Key Concepts

Posted on Feb 5, 2025 in Social sciences

Text and Properties

Linguistic competence refers to knowing the rules for building sentences. Communicative competence is the knowledge of strategies for constructing texts. A written communication unit meets a specific intention. The goal is to convince and drive full communication. It is announced in a context and has a structure.

Textual Properties

  • Suitability: The message adapts to the intention and situation, considering different factors:
    • Recipient (header)
    • Situation (context item)
    • Item (that is)
    • Channel (oral or written)
  • Coherence: This property ensures the unity of meaning of the text. It requires good selection, organization, and structuring.

Theme and Rheme

  • Theme: Known information; that which is spoken; the starting point of the idea.
  • Rheme: New information; what is said about the item; the contribution of information to the subject.

Because ideas are developed consistently, the text should be divided into thematic progression:

  • Linear progression (an item is taken up by the previous rheme)
  • Constant progression (the opening theme is picked up and completed)
  • Derived theme progression (partial aspects are derived from a big topic)

Structuring of the Text

Ideas expressed in paragraphs allow for better visualization of the text. Ideas flow differently and have different structures:

  • Inductive structure (including a thesis exhibition)
  • Deductive structure (causes and consequences)
  • Loop structure (synthesis of deductive and inductive)
  • Successive structure (made in chronological order)

Cohesion

The text must be a unit with links between sentences and words.

Connection and Lexical Semantics

Replace words by synonymy, hypernymy, periphrasis, tropes, etc. Hyponymy is also dealt with.

Connection Grammar

  • Deixis: Elements with an extra-linguistic situation, time, and person.
  • Anaphora: Breaking an item that appeared before in the text.
  • Pronominal Anaphora: A privileged case of anaphora.
  • Adverbs: Occasional significance.
  • Cataphora: Relation between one item and another that appears later.
  • Ellipse: Elimination of an element that appeared before and is known.
  • Textual Connectors: These have two main functions:
    • Structuring the text
    • Structuring ideas

Two cohesive devices are definition and updating.

Romania and Romance Languages

Romania initially had a political and linguistic meaning. Today, Romania refers to a land that was part of the Roman Empire and now speaks a language derived from Latin, that is, a Romance language. New Romania is the land where Latin was lost and where languages are spoken without Roman invasion.

Romance Languages

Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, etc.

Embryonic Languages

Aragonese, Gascon, Asturian-Leonese, etc.

Vulgar Latin

Used in colloquial fieldwork, it was permeable to Germanic innovations and deviated from the standard of classical Latin.

Factors of Fragmentation in Romania

  • Substrate (language before the Romans)
  • Origin of the settlers (differences between them)
  • Intensity of Romanization (not equal in all areas)
  • Superstrate (later linguistic contributions)

Division of Romania

  • Western: Gallo-Romance (Catalan, French), Ibero-Romance (Spanish, Portuguese)
  • East: (Italian, Romanian)

Expository Text

An expository text conveys information related to an aspect of reality or fiction. It is characterized by being clear, orderly, objective, educational, understandable, and without personal ratings. It presents the causes and consequences of the text.

Types

  • Informative Exhibition Texts: Reports with understandable language on a general issue, addressed to a broad audience.
  • Specialized Exhibition Texts: Reports on issues that require higher skills.

Structure

  • Introduction (presentation)
  • Development (information)
  • Conclusion (rating)

Or, depending on the ratio of the information:

  • Cause and effect (the fact and consequences)
  • Chronology (temporary order)

Language Resources

  • Vocabulary (monosemic words, selection of vocabulary, neologisms)
  • Morphosyntax (third person, attributive prayers)
  • Connectors (order, contrast, addition, cause/condition/purpose, reformulators, examples)