SUBIECTE TPL

5 capitals: Belfast (Northern Ireland), Dublin (Ireland), Douglas (Isle of Man), Edinburgh (Scotland), Cardiff (Wales).

Speech - time-bound, dynamic, transient

Writing - space-bound, static, permanent

- usually interactive (speaker usually has a - vague knowledge of the reader, if any particular addressee in mind) - spontaneity and speed little planning - allows repeated reading and close analysis looser construction, repetition, rephrasing, promotes development of careful organization and comment clauses compact expression, with intricate subjects - intonation and pause divide long utterances - punctuation and layout into manageable chunks - typically face-to face interaction facial - avoidance of deictic elements, careful selection of expression and gestures (body language) aid lexical items meaning; (often) vague lexicon, deictic expressions (this one here, right now...) - there is an opportunity to rethink an - errors and other inadequacies can be eliminated utterance while it is in progress errors, in later drafts; interruptions are invisible interruptions, overlapping. - prosody elements v. important nuances of - unique features of writing: pages, lines, intonation, contrasts of loudness, tempo, capitalisation,, spatial organization, several aspects rhythm... of punctuation. Few graphic conventions relate to prosody: question marks, underlining for emphasis, dots...

British - biscuit - block of flats - chips - full stop (punctuation) - garden - holiday

American - cookie; cracker - apartment building - French fries - period - yard; lawn - vacation

aluminium / aluminum

Mistakes multiple negation no/nae never=did not present tense verb forms paste tense verb forms double modals disjunctive questions personal pronouns acuzative instead of nominative pronoun possessive pronoun relative pron non-standard plurals omission of conjunction

Scottish dialects I ever done it = I didn*t do it I likes it. you done plenty of that, didn*t you? I might could do it is it? isn*t it? not so? no? would ye? would er/us/ m John and me hersn, ourn/ourns/oursn etc. that was the man what/which/as/at three sister go get it = go and get it

1. Language as a system
- a system of linguistic units or elements used in a particular language: sounds, morphemes, words, phrases and sentences, text. Traditional academic language studies show that language is a system of interrelated systems: phonology, morphology, syntax and linguistics.

2. The revelatory aspects of speech

- speech is one of the two basic manifestations of language, alongside writing. The specific channel used for verbal communication separates speech (air) from writing (paper). Speech is time-bound, dynamic, interactive, it usually makes use of deictic expresions like this, that one, in this very moment and so on. Speech is commonly characterised by prosody elements (intonation, contrasts of loudness, tempo, rhythm) and it is very connected to facial expression and gestures (body language).

3. Define the following: core English, potential English; accent, dialect, idiolect; historical language, national language.
- Core English is defined as an ideal language that shall be spoken by an ideal speaker (Chomsky). Actually, it is the common part of potential English that consists of a great number of idiolects. - Potential English represents all the possibilities and variations of English. Basically, potential English is that language that speakers may speak in their very own way, namely the idiolects and varieties of Core English. - Accent is a pattern of pronunciation used by English native speakers or by a community whose members learn English as a foreign language. In other words, the term denotes varieties of pronunciation.

- Dialect (gr. way of speaking) refers to a subdivision of a language that is used by a group of speakers within a certain region, society or occupation. Mutually intelligible versions of one language. - Idiolect is a variety of the potential language that each speaker uses in his or her own way. - Historical language is a language whose limits are established in the course of history, in a natural way. It is recognized as a language by its own speakers and by the speakers of other languages. - National language is an official language of a people in which they speak and learn in school (a matter of politic decision).

4. What are the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle?
- the Inner Circle refers to the areas in which English is spoken as a native or first language: Great Britain United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. - the Outer Circle refers to those regions of the world that were colonized by Britain and USA and where English is spoken as a second language: Africa, Asia and the West Indies. - the Expanding Circle refers to the areas in which English is primarily a foreign language. The diffusion of English is expressed in terms of three concentric circles (Kachru) or ENL-ESL-EFL division (Quirk).

5. What is hypercorrection?
- a conscious but erroneous adjustment of linguistic elements (grammar, lexicology, pronunciation) in order to avoid what is thought to be wrong, but is actually right. EXAMPLE: luck/look, this is from John and I (nominative instead of accusative)/John and I went to the cinema.

6. Explain what pidgins and creoles (=creole languages) are. What is decreolisation? What are acrolect, mesolect and basilect?
- A pidgin is a simplified, rudimentary language used as a (commercial; Chinese origin) contact language between people who do not share a mother tongue. This is why pidgin languages have no native speakers. - Creole languages are actually pidgins that have acquired native speakers who use them for many purposes. - Decreolization is a linguistic process by which a creole is influenced by its original source language, due to its higher prestige. Thus, the creole language gets closer, linguistically speaking, to the original language through complication and purification. - Acrolect is the variety of speech that is closest to a standard prestige language, especially in an area in which a creole is spoken. For example, Standard Jamaican English is the acrolect where Jamaican Creole is spoken. - Mesolect is any variety of language in a creole continuum that is intermediate between the basilect and the acrolect. - Basilect is the variety of speech that is most remote from the prestige variety, especially in an area where a creole is spoken. For example, in Jamaica, Jamaican Creole is the basilect whereas Standard Jamaican English is the acrolect or prestige language.

7. Demarcating the history of English

When demarcating the history of English, linguists have used various labels to denote the periods: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English and Late Modern English. Old English, also known as Anglo-Saxon, is an early form of the English language that had been spoken since the 5th century and soon after 1066. Middle English is a very important period in the history of English, due to the inflections that had begun to break down during the end of the Old English period and then became greatly reduced. This period is temporally (and also conventionally) delimited from Norman Conquest in 1066 to the arrival in Britain of printing in 1476; of course, stating that language can change in a particular year is almost impossible. Modern English has been divided into two periods: Early Modern English, which is the stage of the English language used from the beginning of the Tudor period until the English Interregnum and Restoration, and Late Modern English, which, in its turn, has been subdivided into Stabilized Modern English (1650-1800) and Present-Day English (starting around 1800).

8. The spread of English

The spread of English began with the colonization process (at the end of the 16th century), then continued with the establishment of the British Empire (18th and 19th centuries). English was imposed in the overseas territories as the language administration. After World War II United States have become the main factor that ensured the spreading.

9. A (tentative) classification of synchronic varieties of English:

diatopic, diastratic and diatypic/diaphasic varieties; dialect continuum, code shifing; sociolect; register, sublanguage; styles along the formality scale; accommodation

When speaking of variation (as process), synchronic variation is divided into three main types of variation: regional, social and stylistic. But, in terms of varieties (as product of variation), the items of classification are: diatopic variety, diastratic variety and diatypic/diaphasic variety. - Diatopic varieties refer to regional/local varieties or dialects. - Diastratic varieties refer to social-cultural varieties of a language that reflect social stratification. - Diatypic/Diaphasic varieties refer to functional-stylistic varieties of pronunciation, lexical choices and syntactic structures. In its turn, diaphasic varieties are related to content/subject matter/field (for instance, the language of Mathematics), to channel/medium (spoken and writing languages) and/or to participants/attitude (styles). - Dialect Continuum is a succession of adjacent dialects that are mutually intelligible with its neighbours, geographically speaking. - Sociolect is a variety used by a social class or occupation, also used by the people of a particular age or sex. - A register is defined as an occupational variety, for instance technical languages, the language of cook books etc. - A sublanguage is a notion that refers to a subsystem of language that is limited to a specific subject domain. - According to Joos (1967), styles along the formality scales are:

frozen (extremely distant, juridic), formal (public speeches, academic writing, business letters, job applications, official documents), consultative (no monologues, but dialogues; getting things done: shopping; ), casual (close friends and relatives), intimate (family members, lovers who do not need too many words, closest friends in privacy).

10. Variation in pronunciation

a. language change, regional variation, stylistic variation, unconditioned variation; b. the relationship between accent and social scale