Understanding Language Context, Formality, and Word Formation
Background and Context
A text’s context and situation significantly impact its meaning:
- Context: The linguistic environment surrounding each element of the text, including the words and expressions adjacent to it.
- Extra-linguistic situation: The environment surrounding the text when it occurs, encompassing the circumstances of its creation and reception.
The situation in which communication occurs also influences language varieties, known as registers.
Formal and Informal Language
Formal Language: Planned, with pre-set speech patterns, adhering to pronunciation and grammar rules, and employing a precise and varied vocabulary.
Informal Language: Spontaneous, with alternating turns to speak without prior planning, often neglecting pronunciation and grammar, and using a simple vocabulary.
Factors Influencing Register Choice
The choice of register depends on factors such as:
- The Field: The topic in question. Informal language dominates everyday life issues, while formal language is used in scientific, social, and medical contexts.
- The Tenor: The relationship between participants. Informal language is common among those with close relationships. Greater social distance, cultural differences, or age gaps necessitate a higher degree of formality and polite expressions.
- The Mode: The selected channel of communication, whether oral or written. Written communication often involves more planning.
Sentence Elements
Circumstantial Completion (CC)
Specifies the circumstances in which the verb’s action occurs, including place, manner, time, quantity, instrument, cause, companionship, and purpose.
Adverbial Phrase (PADV)
A word or group of words with an adverb as its core.
Predicative Complement (Cpred)
Modifies both the verb and a noun functioning as the subject or direct object.
Word Division at the End of a Line
- Letters belonging to the same syllable cannot be separated.
- Two or more vowels together cannot form a diphthong or triphthong if they are on different syllables (hiatus).
- Compound words and words with prefixes can be separated according to syllable rules or by cutting elements.
- The digraphs sh, nh, lh, rh, xh, etc., cannot begin the second line.
- The first letter of a divided word cannot stand alone at the end of the line.
Neologisms
A neologism is a new word or expression in a language.
Common Procedures for Creating New Words
- Derivation and Composition: Creating new words by adding prefixes or suffixes, or by forming compound or parasynthetic words.
- Loans: Borrowing words from other languages (e.g., “internet” from English).
- Semantic Changes: Existing words acquire new meanings (e.g., “network,” “download,” “mouse”).
- Acronyms and Abbreviations: Shortening terms or concepts consisting of multiple words (e.g., P2P).
- Parasynthetic Words: Words formed through derivation and composition.