Daftar Blog Saya
Daftar Blog Saya
Senin, 04 Agustus 2014
FUNCTION WORDS AND CATEGORIES OF MEANING
(1)
lexical or open class words and
(2) function or closed class words.
Lexical words typically carry
intonational emphasis or stress, while function words are generally unstressed.
Therefore function words are prone to contraction--for example, the auxiliary have
in I've seen it. . The distinction between function and lexical words
has been very fruitful for linguistic description. So-called analytical
languages, such as Chinese, are characterized by an abundance of function
words. In contrast, function words are typically lacking in the speech of young
children, certain kinds of aphasia, and telegraphic speech. It is also well
known that languages rarely borrow function words from other languages or make
up new ones (hence their status as closed class). Most recent innovations in
the English vocabulary, such as pizza, angst, fax, e-mail, phat, AIDS,
website, browser, screenager, to surf, Nethead, and techno-babble
are lexical rather than functional in nature (see, for example, the journal American
Speech for lists of new words).
Function words add mainly grammatical
information, which means that they are defined above all by their syntactic
behavior. Most traditional grammars assumed (and their descendents continue to
assume) that the structure of sentences and phrases is determined mainly by
lexical words. Function words were regarded as mere additions to lexical
phrases. Thus, the sentence The rabbit will see the fox was
analysed as a noun phrase the rabbit, followed by a verb phrase will
see the fox. The determiner the was thus an addition to the noun phrase,
and the auxiliary will was added to the verb phrase.
Function words are words
that exist to explain or create grammatical or structural relationships into
which the content words may fit. Words
like "of," "the," "to," they have little meaning
on their own. They are much fewer in
number and generally do not change as English adds and omits content
words. Therefore, we refer to function
words as a "closed" class
Research
in the late 1980s and 1990s revolved around the question of exactly which functional
projections a sentence may contain. Each function word expressing a grammatical
function was soon regarded as a main structural building block of the sentence.
The increasing importance of function words in linguistic theories went
hand-in-hand with an increasingly abstract description of sentence structure.
This shift provided many empirical and theoretical advantages.
Function
words and lexical words are not sharply distinct categories but rather form a
continuum. Certain classes of words can thus share features with both
prototypical lexical words and prototypical function words. The English
preposition is a case in point: some prepositions have lexical meaning, such as
location (behind) and direction (toward); others have little
meaning (of or to). Many are used to introduce sentences (after,
for, like) and are therefore similar to prototypical function words, namely
complementizers.The kinds of
functional word are:
1. TENSES
AND MODALITY
Meaning of modality are:
a.
Modality is a category that is closely associated with tense and aspect in that all three
categories are categories of the clause and are generally,
but not always, marked within the verbal complex. In notional terms
all three are, in some way, concerned with the event or situation that is
reported by the utterance. (Frank Robert Palmer, Mood
and Modality, 2nd ed. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001)
b.
Modality is what makes the difference between a factual assertion like unicorns
never existed, and a more guarded view, such as it seems likely that
unicorns could ever have existed--or a bolder claim like the existence
of unicorns must always have been a myth. Modality, then, is a resource speakers and writers use when they
are staking claims to knowledge: it allows them to formulate different kinds of
claims (e.g., assertions, opinions, hypotheses, speculations) and indicate how
committed they are to those claims. (Deborah Cameron, The Teacher's Guide to
Grammar. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007)
c.
Modality is concerned with the
status of the proposition that describes the event. Modality differs from tense and aspect in that it
does not refer directly to any characteristic of the event, but simply to the
status of the proposition.It is concerned with the speaker's assessment of, or attitude towards,
the potentiality of a state of affairs. Modality therefore relates to different
worlds. Assessments of potentiality, as in You must be right, relate to
the world of knowledge and reasoning
d.
Modality can
also be expressed through auxiliary verbs such as modal auxiliaries (may,must,should); modal verbs (order,assume,allow); modal adverbs (possibily,certainly) or (in some language) through affixes attached to verbs or nouns.
Meaning of Tense: rather obviously,
is concerned with the time of the event, while aspect is concerned with the
nature of the event (person and
number). Tense as a semantic category , affect meaning of sentence. It affect
the whole sentence since the tenses of the verb determines the time reference
of the entire clause.The category of tense refer to both words meaning and
sentence meaning. Tense is usually the major part of discussion about the
grammar of a language which we do need to disscuss here.
Types of
Modality :
a.
Epistemic modality, modal attitudes apply to
the world of things and social interaction
b.
Root
modality, modality comprises three subtypes: deontic modality, intrinsic modality
and disposition modality.
1.
Deontic modality is concerned with the
speaker's directive attitude towards an action to be carried out, as in the
obligation You must go now.
2.
Intrinsic modality is concerned with
potentialities arising from intrinsic qualities of a thing or circumstances, as
in The meeting can be cancelled, i.e. 'it is possible for the meeting to
be cancelled.
3.
Disposition
modality is concerned with a thing's or a person's intrinsic potential
of being actualised; in particular abilities. Modal adverbs such as possibly, and modal verbs
such as must. Modal verbs have a special status among modal expressions:
they ground a situation in potential reality. (Günter Radden and René
Dirven, Cognitive English Grammar. John Benjamins, 2007)
Examples:
a)
“She is
probably visited her grandma by now”. (Possibility)
“She’s left the town by now”. (Assertion of truth)
The two
sentence above heve epistemic modality because
the first show possibility andthe
second shows an assertion of truth.
b)
“Shintsmust
go with you next Sunday” (Obligation)
“You should see a dentist”. (Suggestion)
“She mustn’t bring her sister to the party”. (Permission)
The
sentence above contain deontic modality
(They contain modals: must,should.mustn’t) because they either express obligation,suggestion,or permission.
The two
types of modality are interrelated because of the fact that the same word or
modal such as “may” can denote both types (possibily or permission).Some other
modals may have both types of modality.
2. REFERENCE
1.
Reference is
semantic category through which we provide information (such as “definiteness”)
about the relationship between noun phrases and their referents.
2.
Reference is
relation ship between the English expression this page and the thing you can
hold between your finger and thumb (part of the world)
3.
Reference is a relation that
obtains between expressions and what speakers use expressions to talk about.
Examples:
a) Reference is: A President of the USA (George Bush
senior) and the two Senses are:
- The husband of Barbara Bush; and
- The man who became President after Ronald Reagan.
b)
“The man
visited her yesterday”
“A man visited her yesterday”
The articles “the’ and “a” show different reference.The first belong to a
“derfinite” man , while second refer to an “indefinite’ man.
3.
DEIXIS
Deixis is an important field of language study in its own right, but it also has some relevance to the analysis of conversations and pragmatics. It is often and best described as “verbal pointing”, that is to say pointing by means of language. The linguistic forms of this pointing are called deictic expressions, deictic markers or deictic words; they are also sometimes called indexicals. Deictic expressions fall into four categories, there are:
a.
Personal Deixis (I,you,us etc)
Personal
deixis concerns itself with the grammatical persons involved in an utterance,
(1) those directly involved (e.g. the speaker, the addressee), (2) those not
directly involved (e.g. overhearers—those who hear the utterance but who are
not being directly addressed), and (3) those mentioned in the utterance. In English, the
distinctions are generally indicated by pronouns.
Example:
I am going to the movies.
(speaker)
Would you like
to have dinner? (listener)
They tried to hurt me, (plural)
but he came to
the rescue. (singular)
She (female)
He (male)
You (ordinary people)
Your majesty ( very important people such as king,queen etc)
Aku (adressed to someone with the same or lower status)
Dalem (adressedto someone with higher status)
In many languages, the third-person
masculine pronoun is often used as a default when using "it" is
inappropriate, but the gender of its antecedent is unknown or inapplicable.
b.
Spatial Deixis ( here,there)
Spatial deixis or Place
deixis, also known as space deixis, concerns itself with the spatial locations
relevant to an utterance. Similarly to person deixis, the locations may be
either those of the speaker and addressee or those of persons or objects being
referred to. The most salient English examples are the adverbs “here” and “there” and the demonstratives
“this”
and “that” although those are far from being the only deictic
words.
The location, from the speaker’s
perspective, can be fixed mentally as well as physically. Speakers temporally
away from their home location will often continue to use here to mean the home location, as if they still were in that
location. It is described as deictic projection and we can make more use of its
possibilities when technology allows us to manipulate location. If here means the place of the speaker’s
utterance, and now means the time of
this utterance, a sentence like: “I am not here now” on an aswering machine
should be nonsense.
Examples:
I
enjoy living in this city.
Here is where we will place the statue.
She
was sitting over there.
Unless otherwise specified, place
deictic terms are generally understood to be relative to the location of the
speaker, as in :
The
shop is across the street.
where “across the
street” is understood to mean “across the street from where I am right now.”It is interesting to note
that while “here” and “there” are often used to refer to locations near to and
far from the speaker, respectively, “there” can also refer to the location of
the addressee, if they are not in the same location as the speaker.
c.
Temporal Dexis (now,then)
Time, or temporal, deixis concerns itself with the various times
involved in and referred to in an utterance. This includes time adverbs like
"now", "then", "soon", and so forth, and also
different tenses. A good example is the word tomorrow,
which denotes the consecutive next day after every day. The
"tomorrow" of a day last year was a different day from the
"tomorrow" of a day next week. Time adverbs can be relative to the
time when an utterance is made (what Fillmore calls the "encoding
time") or when the utterance is heard (Fillmore’s "decoding
time"). While
these are frequently the same time, they can differ, as in the case of
prerecorded broadcasts or correspondence.
Example:
It is raining now,
but I hope when you read this it will be sunny.
Tenses are generally
separated into absolute (deictic) and relative tenses. So, for example, simple
English past tense is absolute The present
tense is considered the proximal form and the past tense the distal form.
Something that took place in the past, or that is extremely unlikely from the
speaker’s current situation is marked via the distal (past tense).
Example:
a) I live in Santa Maria (presently).
I lived in Cruz Alta (in the past).
I lived in Cruz Alta (in the past).
b) We went there last week (in the past)
She is
a dancer (presently)
d.
Textual Deixis
Discourse deixis, also referred to as textual deixis, refers to the use
of expressions within an utterance to refer to parts of the discourse
that contains the utterance - including the utterance itself. It usually called discourse analysis.
Example:
This is a great story.
“this” refers to an upcoming portion
of the discourse,
That was an amazing day.
“that” refers to a prior portion of
the discourse.
Distinction must
be made between discourse deixis and anaphora, which is when an expression
makes reference to the same referent as a prior term, as in
Matthew
is an incredible athlete; he came in first in the race.
Lyons points out
that it is possible for an expression to be both deictic and anaphoric at the
same time. In his example
I
was born in London and I have lived here/there all my life.
“here” or “there”
function anaphorically in their reference to London, and deictically in that
the choice between “here” or “there” indicates whether the speaker is or is not
currently in London.
The rule of thumb
to distinguish the two phenomena is as follows: when an expression refers to
another linguistic expression or a piece of discourse, it is discourse deictic.
When that expression refers to the same item as a prior linguistic expression,
it is anap
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