Understanding Textual Cohesion and Word Structure in Language
Textual Adaptation and Coherence
Adaptation
Adaptation determines whether the text suits the communicative circumstances surrounding the communicative act.
Mutual Consistency
Mutual consistency is the property of text that creates unity of meaning, ensuring the text discusses related or interconnected ideas.
Cohesion
Cohesion refers to the linguistic devices used in a text to connect its parts and create a consistent whole.
Cohesive Devices
Repetition
Repetition involves repeating linguistic elements within the same text.
Substitution
Substitution reiterates a given unit of text using pronouns, broader meaning words, phrases, and adverbs.
Ellipsis
Ellipsis omits words in a sentence, with the context providing comprehension.
Deixis
Deixis connects the text to its referents in time, place, or context. Deictic elements include demonstratives, possessives, personal pronouns, and adverbs.
Discourse Connectors and Markers
Discourse connectors and markers are words or expressions that link and organize propositions, adding content to the speech unit.
Word Structure
Form, Function, and Meaning
Form
Morphology studies isolated words: classes (nouns, adjectives, etc.), morphemes (which may have discourse functions like gender and number), and the mechanisms for combining elements to form new words. Some words have lexical meaning, while others, like articles, prepositions, and conjunctions, have only grammatical meaning to express relationships.
The Shape
Some words change their form, while others remain unchanged in speech.
A word is a unit of language with meaning that can be isolated by pauses in spoken language and spaces in written language.
Function
Syntax studies words as parts of sentences.
Meaning
Semantics explores the meaning of words.
Morphemes and Words
A morpheme is the smallest unit with meaning. Words can consist of a single morpheme (free morphemes) or several morphemes (bound morphemes).
Lexemes and Grammatical Morphemes
The morpheme that preserves the word’s core meaning is the lexeme. Grammatical morphemes (endings) modify the general meaning of the word and establish relationships between phrases and sentences.
Roots, Affixes, and Inflections
The root is the invariable part of the word that always retains its lexical meaning. Affixes are added to the root to form new words (prefixes before, suffixes after, and interfixes within the word). Endings express grammatical categories like gender, number (nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners), and person, tense, mood, and aspect (verbs).
Word Formation
- Simple words may have no endings but can have affixes.
- Derived words are formed by adding one or more affixes to a simple word’s root.
- Compound words combine two or more words to form a new one.
- Parasyntetic words combine derivation and composition.
Acronyms
Acronyms are shortened forms of words or phrases. A special case involves forming words with initial letters.
Meaning and Reference
The signifier is the external form of the linguistic sign. The meaning is what the linguistic sign evokes, perceptible only through thought. The referent is the object in external reality.
Denotative and Connotative Meaning
Denotative meaning is the objective meaning of words. Connotative meaning is subjective.
Synonyms, Antonyms, Homonyms, and Polysemy
- Polysemy: Having more than one meaning.
- Monosemy: Having a single meaning.
- Synonymy: Having several similar meanings.
- Antonymy: Opposition of meanings. Gradable antonyms allow for degrees of reality. Complementary antonyms are mutually exclusive. Reciprocal antonyms imply each other.
- Homonymy: Coincidence of form with different, unrelated meanings. Homophones are homonyms with the same sound. Homographs are homonyms with the same spelling.
Changes in Meaning
- Metaphor: Designating an object with the name of another based on resemblance.
- Metonymy: Denoting an object with the name of something related to it.
- Etymology: Popular etymology occurs when speakers perceive a relationship between similar-sounding words and confuse their meanings.
- Ellipsis can lead to changes in meaning.
- Foreign words: Rejection occurs when the language has an equivalent word. Acceptance can involve maintaining original spelling and pronunciation, adapting the pronunciation to Spanish spelling, or adapting both spelling and pronunciation.