92. Constructing Discourse

Google Images

Exams are always complex tests in which a candidate’s skills – be they passive (comprehension) or active (production) – are measured against a scale.

Out of production skills, writing is, according to almost everybody, the most difficult – even more so when you’re asked to write something which has a particular format, treats a specific topic, and contains the necessary and sufficient number of paragraphs, ideas, and intentionality; at the same time, it should represent the adequate situational context, namely, the implicature of what is written is in consistence with the intentions of the writer, the requirements of the text, and its expected outcome.

Here is one of those models of letters of complaint that First Certificate examiners ask for at virtually all the tests in their kind all over the world.

[Adapted from Test Yourself for First Certificate by Susan Morris and Alan Stanton] 

Google Images

91. Form-Meaning Pairings

Google Images

Consider this: if there weren’t a pairing between a semantic structure and a phonological structure, we wouldn’t be able to recognize what we hear, or we wouldn’t be able to convey ideas in communication.

It is a commonplace, for instance, to see in English textbooks at least one exercise trying to explain to students than can is pronounced without a vowel, that /d/ in could is assimilated to the sound in the next word (a verb, if there is no adverb to be placed in between)...

But the best thing to do is to listen and judge for yourselves.

And, in so doing, try your listening comprehension abilities.

The following recording is related to the exercises in the previous post. It would be better to do that first, and then come back to #91.

Google Images

                     

                        

    Disaster at the stadium

90. Nothing New under the Sun

Google Images

The title of this post is far from being a newly-created phrase; it must have been reproduced hundreds of times by now, precisely because it is attested in one of the variants of the biblical text (Ecclesiastes 1:8-10):

‘8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. 9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”?’

At this point it’s absolutely necessary to say that I chose it because it is suggestive for the post, and not because I intend to start a religious commentary – a saying that has been adopted by innumerable peoples, and offering a philosophical view of life. Indeed, rather than something new, it is the human being who registers that thing as new. But how can this be? Well, I suppose that it’s a matter of generations: growing up and learning more and more makes each and every one of us a part of the Big Architecture, the evolution of the human race.    

Google Images

The World Wide Web is saturated with blogs and videos, games and exercises, you name it. What I saw as necessary for an audience starts losing momentum, and this goes hand in hand with the need for a suggestive post number. So, there’s very little that hasn’t been said about, say, modal verbs, and they are indispensable for you to develop text (understanding text as spoken or written), which is what we’re about to do.   

As I’m sure I mentioned once, it is absolutely surprising that, of all the modal verbs in English, can should be the most frequently used and, at the same time, the one whose patterns of use should be most complex and deceiving. Most pre-intermediate and intermediate students of English know that it is useful to express possibility in the Present; and, since quite a few textbooks – while trying to simplify “the bloody grammar” – call it <the present form>, as they do with any notional verb of the language, the verb with all its idiosyncratic properties is finally understood as a kind of Infinitive e.g., to play - I play; therefore *to can- I can follows naturally. Furthermore, if I play has the Simple Past tense I played, then I could [DO] cannot be but the Simple Past tense of can. Well, yes, it is: but only in one of its meanings.

First, some explanations: CAN & COULD explanations
Then, a bit of practice: CAN & COULD exercises

Of course I'll be waiting for questions, because I'm sure there are some - albeit without a voice.

Google Images

89. Cohesion and Coherence

Google Images

Now, these are two terms everybody is afraid of: how are you going to prove that your line of thought is coherent if you don’t express your ideas one after the other while following a pattern?

But wait: whose pattern is it? Is it yours, in the sense that it unfolds in the same order as in your mother tongue? Well – no. It will be – again – a superordinate rule which requires Word Order according to the rules of English (in this case) and the elements that make information meaningful. To cut a long story short: if you choose to express the ideas at random, as they occur to you through a kind of ‘automatic dictation’ disregarding what an English pattern asks for, your final text will make no sense, or it will finally mean something else than you intended to convey.

Then again, there is a kind of ‘sticking together’ of the elements you use in every sentence /utterance which makes it understandable and ensures that what you expressed at the beginning of the sentence is consistent with all the other elements. Let’s say you refer to a film you’ve seen recently. It would be, in very schematic terms, something like:

‘I’ve just seen a very good film starring Javier Bardem. It is called ‘Biutiful’, and it is the gripping story of a man living in Barcelona, the father of two children. His ability to talk to THE DEAD makes people invite him at wakes and funerals so that he may pass on messages to them from THE RECENTLY DECEASED.’

Google Images

Of course you may go on and on; or you may re-write the text taking care of each structure and expanding, or compressing it. The better you are at handling each structure, the easier it will be for you to say exactly what you mean.

Still, looking back at the paragraph above, you may notice that quite a few of the words have been highlighted. Follow the colours, or else the marking pattern and you’ll see what I mean. What enters first is resumed later at a point which makes it useful and meaningful.

On this particular occasion, let’s have a look at those small words with big meanings that represented the title of the previous post. When you have studied the table, you may pass on to practice and then check in the key:

 

Use&omission of articles

88. Small Words with Big Meanings

Google Images

I had this idea once: provided that a sheet big enough were found to take up all the structural possibilities of English, all the teaching activities would unfold as an intricate mandala – all starting from a core and creating a 3D-network. Taking the paths that are forming from the core would lead anyone to progress, and at the same time would make learning something tangible and finite. Well, the ‘good news’ is that I’m not the only one who would like to find a solution to what in fact keeps someone studying for years and years. The ‘bad news’ is that it would hardly be of any use to master structures alone – simply because the meaning of structure is relative.

Where does the structure get formed and where does lexis stop exerting an influence?

1. Harry’s doctor vs. Harry’s a doctor

Google Images

Do you recognize the combinations in the example?

Is any of them a structure? And, if so, which one?

How many differences can you find?

What are the questions you would ask so as to receive them as answers?

2. Verb Meanings

The verb strike is polysemous – a very common phenomenon in all the world's languages. In its second sense, it is close to hit, or attack somebody /something:

[adapted from Oxford Dictionary of Collocations]

a.     He struck her hard across the face.

b.    The German army struck deep into northern France.

c.     Lightning struck the old oak.

d.     The remark struck home.

Google Images

Which sentence presents /sentences present the literal meaning? Is any of them an expression that should be understood figuratively? If so, which one(s)?

3. The same verb, in its second sense, means ‘come into your mind suddenly/give an impression. What this means is that you should expect certain adverbs to appear in sentences in which this sense is used (the examples are taken from the same source):

a.     It suddenly struck me how we could improve the situation.

b.    An awful thought has just struck me.

c.     Joan was struck by the forcible silence.

d.     He struck me as being rather slow-witted.

Google Images

The thing is, how do you decide on the meaning to be applied in these sentences? What is there that directs you towards this other sense?

When you’ve read the answers, I hope you’ll see what I mean. And agree with me that you can hardly ever convey any meanings (in English, in this case) without constructing those meanings from some linguistic material arranged in a structure and having a phonological support. So, back to the starting point.    

87. 'The more the merrier'

Google Images

Who might claim that we don’t manufacture our own idealized model of ‘being’, or ‘acting’? Consciously or unconsciously, we’re constantly trying to look better, taller, more interesting; or else seem more intelligent, better prepared, richer, healthier…It’s absolutely natural to try to improve and embellish our domestic affairs and the world we’re adjusting to against our potential, while actualizing it: it’s the essence of human nature.

Hm. No sooner said than done! One needs some solid knowledge of adjective and adverb formation to do that successfully. While expressing ‘positive’ values, there doesn’t seem to be too much trouble paying attention to such…static, uninteresting affirmations as My car is bigger, faster, and more expensive than his; but in order to make the discourse unfold while you speak you must know that adjectives and adverbs are a somewhat unsettled category which shaped asymmetrically in English. 

In the first place, let's consider that there are two main categories following two different rules:

One-syllable adjectives like fat, big, and coarse - but also two-syllable adjectives ending in -y, such as easy, healthy and happy take suffixes  when forming the comparative of superiority: fatter - bigger - coarser; and easier - healthier, happier, respectively; then again their superlative forms are: the  fattest, the biggest, the coarsest and, correspondingly, the easiest, the healthiest and the happiest are their superlative forms. 

The remaining two-syllable adjectives and the multi-syllable ones follow the more/less and the most/least rules: more/less expensive; the most/least expensive.

But that's NOT all. There is a third category fluctuating between the two. Adjectives like clever, stupid, tired, shallow may appear in either of the above mentioned patterns. It’s also true that one can use I feel more tired / tireder today than yesterday (though tireder is hardly ever heard these days). Again, this should make us think about exceptions, in the first place the irregular forms.

Here they are:

good /well > better > the best
bad /ill > worse > the worst
much /many > more > the most
little > less  >the least
far > farther > the farthest (in space)
far > further > the furthest (in time)
late > later (time)// >> the latest (the most recent) 
                                        >> the last> (in a series)
      > latter (the second of two entities) < >former (the first of two entities)

And something must be said about the conflicting adjectives that have replaced adverbs in General American, like Now I want you to move real (=really) slow. Then again, a lot can be said about How are you? ~ (AmE) I’m good (BrE=fine /(very) well) or I’m trying hard – never hardly. 

Google Images

Yet there are still those trustworthy cases in which you simply can’t say *Everything is more easy today: it’s still easier that represents the established norm.      

HOW TO EXPRESS PROGRESSIVE/PARALLEL INCREASE OR DECREASE IN QUALITY OR NUMBER

A.  Progressive increase /decrease

You can express these linguistic aspects by placing the corresponding adjective or adverb after the verb – reduplicating it and uniting them by and.

It goes without saying that the use of progressive tenses is not a grammatical, but a logical, consequence:

Thomas smokes more and more.

Your niece studies less and less.

Well, that is the ideal case. It’s just that by no means are adjectives and adverbs in English so easy to transform. The ones above are special forms whose ‘positive’ variants cause a lot of trouble when you want to quantify or qualify nominals: it’s all a matter of number, i.e., singular (Singular Countable and Singular Uncountable/Quantity) and plural. ‘More’ will refer to either (Aff.) ‘a lot (of_)’ or (Neg.) and (Aff-? /Neg.-?) [not] much/many [?]. So, if you wonder what the previous affirmations look like in the positive, you’ll have to consider:

Google Images

Thomas smokes a lot / *a lot of cigarettes. (nobody says that about the default case, that is cigarettes; only if Thomas smokes cigars, or a pipe – otherwise there’ll be no mention)

Your niece studies little. (how strange that both smoke and study  should be free from expressing the Direct Object, don’t you think? Someone studies ‘something’ anyway!)

Let’s say that a schematic visualization would look like this:

adjetive[-er] and adjetive[-er]

It was getting colder and colder.

You are coming home later and later.

She’s getting fatter and fatter.

Analytic adjectives and adverbs do use more+adjective /adverb and less+adjective/adverb, respectively:

more and more + adjective less and less + adjective

The film became more and more interesting.

She was becoming less and less interested in his speech.

“What time shall we leave?” ~ ”The sooner the better.(=as soon as possible)

“What sort of box do you want? A big one?” ~ “The bigger the better”. (=as big as possible)

When you’re traveling, the less luggage you have to carry the better. (=it is best to have as little luggage as possible).

Note word order in the structure with two comparatives:

The younger you are, the easier it is to learn.

Google Images

What this means is that you aren’t allowed to leave the subject and the verb out of the expression, and that they follow the normal Word Order.

Still, the forms of to be are omitted when the correlated sentences require the same verb form:

The more expensive the hotel [is], the better the service [is].

Exercise 1. Use the Word(s) in brackets (in the correct form) to complete the sentences:

1. I like warm weather. The warmer the weather, … (feel).

2. I didn’t really like him when we first met. But the more I got to know him,… (like) him.

3. If you’re in business, you want to make a profit. The more goods you sell,… (profit/make).

4. It’s hard to concentrate when you’re tired. The more tired you are,…. (hard/to concentrate).

5. She had to wait a very long time. The longer she waited,… (impatient / become)

6. Old people are wise, or at least that’s what they say… (be old /become wise)

B.  Parallel increase/decrease

Here, it’s the lexical unit the that solves the problem. Mind you, we’re far away from the definite article; we should go back in time to important changes that took place in Middle English to know why this happened. For the present purpose, it would be easier to accept it as it is and…move it right along!

Again, the adjectives we used above will prove of great help:

The more John studies the more he learns.

Or the opposite:

The less John studies the less he learns.

(I wouldn’t discard ‘The more John studies the less he knows’)

The fatter Sam gets the uglier he becomes.

The more famous she became the sadder she seemed to be.

The less notice she takes of him the more he tries to please her. 

Make complete sentences of the following prompts:

1.      I / try/explain / her /difficult /be / convince her

2.    Old /one /get / one / little /seem / willing to change

3.    You / move / a lot /it /hurt / a lot

4.    You /lenient /become /people around you try /impose / you

5.     He /listen / her /little /she / insist / a lot

6.    Few students /there / to be /in class / often / be asked

7.     You have your say /little / often /bad / be / everybody

Google Images

8.    One / buy / little / one /save / a lot of money /

B.  Parallel increase/decrease

Here, it’s the lexical unit the that solves the problem. Mind you, we’re far away from the definite article; we should go back in time to important changes that took place in Middle English to know why this happened. For the present purpose, it would be easier to accept it as it is and…move it right along!

Again, the adjectives we used above will prove of great help:

The more John studies the more he learns.

Or the opposite:

The less John studies the less he learns.

(I wouldn’t discard ‘The more John studies the less he knows’)

The fatter Sam gets the uglier he becomes.

The more famous she became the sadder she seemed to be.

The less notice she takes of him the more he tries to please her. 
The more, the merrier (exercises)