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QUESTIONS
Time assigned, 1h15
1. Analyse genre, text type and communicative functions in 100 words. (1 point)
2. Explain and find examples in the text of compound words, derivational affixes, irregular
plurals and borrowings. (1 point)
3. Find anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric references in the text. (0.5 point)
4. Analyse the following sentence from the text. [...] a reader so devoted that he'd sneaked
a book and a flashlight under the covers at his board school every night after lightsout [...] (0.5 point)
5. Discuss on the British spelling words and variants in the text. (0.5 point)
6. Find inversion in the text and explain why the writer uses it. (0.5 point)
7. Explain the final sentence "He did". (0.5 point)
8. Explain the meaning of the following words according to the text: rampant, wantonly,
shredded, dog-earing the page. (0.5 point)
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9.
1. Analyse genre, text type and communicative functions in 100 words. (1 point)
It is an essay, a short piece in prose where the writer expresses her reflection on the two
different ways people physically treat books in the first person singular: During the next thirty
years I came to realize that This essay belongs to the type of reflective autobiography and
looks at the world through the keyhole of anecdote rather than the objective, factual type. She
accounts for various experiences of her relatives with books: my brother, my father, a
college classmate of mine.
Therefore the main function in the text is expressive, according to Bhler, or emotive, following
Jakobson. The addressers humorous attitude towards the content of the message is
emphasized. She compares loving books to loving people and divides readers between courtly
lovers and carnal ones. The former treat physical books with respect, for them its form is
inseparable from its content. The latter love books but do not respect their physical content. A
metaphor expresses this idea well, a books words were holy, but the paper, cloth [] were a
mere vessel. By means of exophoric reference to us, we know that the writer includes herself
in the latter.
We find emphatic resources in the text that convey the writers half-jokingly attitude to the topic.
For instance, the use of inversion, So does Kim; rhetorical questions, how could it have come
to pass that he [] had been branded as someone who didnt love books?; similes: where
heat-fissioned pages drop like petals in a storm, sucked them like a giant mongoose; aside
comments: I would never use those in fiction or poetry, which really are sacred. Moreover
adjectivation is rich both in attributive form (a noble but doomed attempt, a priceless 1572
edition) and in predicative position (to be simultaneously abusive and compulsive). Mrs
Fadiman also uses hyperbole at the end of the text a bulging insectarium that she feared Poe
might not make it through customs in order to support the group of book abusers. At the same
time there is sexual connotation in the explanation of how carnal lovers approach the action of
reading. For them, it is associated to having sexual intercourse. Some examples are Byron []
did things to them that we cant discuss in public, when it comes to book marking carnal lovers
are prone to leave bulging objects inside books, etc.
Metalinguistic function is present in the fact that the writer provides a personal definition of
the two type of readers according to the way they treat books. Besides readers cant avoid
identifying themselves somewhere between those two different ways of treating books, we may
say then that conative function is also present in the text.
Somehow we also find referential elements both in her explanation of the two ways of loving
books, and the differences in pagemarking them.
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2. Explain and find examples in the text of compound words, derivational affixes,
irregular plurals and borrowings. (1 point)
Following Quirk, we will analyze the most important word formation processes in the text.
Compound words:
Noun compounds, type verb and object: bookseller, book-splayer, pagemarking,
book critic, credit card, boarding school
Verbless compound nouns: flashlight; chambermaid, paperbacks, airplanes,
bedside table, cardboard, roommate, classmate.
Verbal compounds: upgrade, bookmark, dog-earing
Adjective compounds in the text that belong to type verb and object: backpacking
(trip), heat-fissioned (pages), spread-eagled (volumes), inkjet-printed (credit card
receipts).
Verbless adjective compound: left-hand, right-hand, three-dimensional,
commonplace.
Adverb compound: facedown.
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3. Find anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric references in the text. (0.5 point)
Anaphoric reference where pronouns refer back to some idea mentioned before:
The chambermaid believed in curtly love. A book was sacrosant to her, its form inseparable
from its content; her duty as a lover was Platonic adoration []
Her refers to the chambermaid whereas its refers to a book.
Cataphoric reference points forward to something mentioned later on in the text. In Never do
that to a book that refers to the examples of book treatment accounted for in the text.
Exophoric reference points out to something outside the language of the text which is
understood in the context for instance: to us refers to both the writer and the readers, but also
references to The Grand Tour, Tioga Pass, the Yucatan, Audubon.
4. Analyse the following sentence from the text. [...] a reader so devoted that he'd
sneaked a book and a flashlight under the covers at his board school every night after
lights-out [...] (0.5 point)
Following Downing, we drew a tree to make a morpho-syntactic analysis of the noun phrase.
However, we understand that the information conveyed in the graphic could also be written
down in a different way. For time constrains, you may only have mentioned the Noun Group
made of a determiner, the noun head and the adjectival group as a qualifier.
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NGroup
determiner
head
qualifier
Adj Group
Indefinite article
a
modifier
head
qualifier
noun
adverb
adjective
reader
so
devoted
Conjunct
Subject
Predicator
VGroup
Direct Object
Noun group
determiner
Multiple heads
A d j u n c t
A d j u n c t
Adjunct
Adjunc t
Prep Group
PrepGroup
Noun Group
Prep Group
head
hea d
determiner
head
Subordinating
completiv e
completive
h e a d
completive
Noun Group
Noun group
Noun Group
determ
h e a d
dertemin
head
H e a d
conjunction
pronoun
operator
lexical verb
Indef article
noun
conjunction
Indef article
noun
p r e p
article
n o u n
prep
pronoun
n o u n
Distributive art
n o u n
p r e p
noun
that
h e
sneaked
book
a n d
flashlight
under
the
covers
a t
h i s
board school
every
n i g h t
after
lights-out
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5. Discuss on the British spelling words and variants in the text. (0.5 point)
This text is by an American author therefore she uses American spelling in words such as
realize, colored and harbors (realised coloured and harbours in BE). There are also
American English expressions classmate college that would rather be expressed as university
classmate in British English. However, we find British words and spellings as well such as
bedside table instead of nightstand or night table, spreadeagled instead of spreadeagled; facedown instead of face down. The writer might be reflecting her connection with
the British culture.
6. Find inversion in the text and explain why the writer uses it. (0.5 point)
A. [] just as there is more than one way to love a person, so is there more than one way to
love a book.
B. Byron loves books. Really, he does. So does my husband []
C. So does Kim.
Inversion in A, B and C is used to express agreement with previous ideas in the text as well as
for emphatic purposes.
7. Explain the final sentence "He did". (0.5 point)
We find anaphora in he referring back to the American poet Poe and on the other hand, we
find ellipsis in the use of the auxiliary did which acquires sense by interpreting the context, i.e.
it refers to being able to go through customs. Eventually the book written by Edgar Allan Poe did
manage to go through customs even though it was laden with insects. The writer hyperbolically
conveys the idea that the book was used to catch a great number of insects as a show of
disregard for the book wellbeing.
8. Explain the meaning of the following words according to the text: rampant, wantonly,
shredded, dog-earing the page. (0.5 point)
Rampant is an adjective used to describe something that is spreading very quickly and in a
way that is difficult to control. Rampant book abuse refers to the unrestrained habit of
mistreating books.
Wantonly is an adverb which means showing no thought or care for the rights, feelings, or
safety of others, not limited or controlled. There is also a sexual connotation attached to it. It
was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. For the writers
family it was no sin to treat books blatantly bad if the occasion was prompt for it.
Shredded is a verb in the past simple tense which means to turn off a long, thin piece of
paper. The writers editor torn off Boswells books, he shredded them in order to obtain the
knowledge he wanted to extract.
Dog-earing the page is a compound word converted into a verb followed by the object
complement. It means folding down the corner of a page the same way the ears of many breeds
of dog flop over. That is one way the writer marked her way on the book she was reading.
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From minute 2:04 to 5:38, from 6:49 to 10:35 and from 11:29 to 12:33
The time assigned for this exercise is 45 minutes including listening to the document twice.
QUESTIONS
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
Where is the "Broadmann area 47" located and what is it useful for?
Why does Daniel Levitin mention "God save the Queen"?
Why do people with Alzheimer and some dementia can remember songs?
How does Steven Pinker call music? why?
Which hormones are released when listening to music?
Brief outline of the listening.
Answers
1. Broadmann Area 47 is located in the prefrontal cortex. It helps to form expectations
about what is going to happen in the world.
2. God Save the Queen is mentioned as an example of a song that would not work in a
retrieval cue because that is an anthem, the type of song you frequently hear. In a
retrieval cue, neuroscientists try to pull a very particular kind of memory by using songs
that are constantly played and then, disappear so that subjects can remember things
they experienced a very long time ago.
3. Because of the way music is represented in the brain. Music involves a lot of different
components (tempo, pitches, harmony) that are located in different regions of the brain,
so when retrieving a song a lot of cues play at the same time. If you are not able to
access to all of them, a few may trigger the others.
4. Music is called 'auditory cheesecake' because Mr Pinker attributes music to an accident
rather than biological evolution.
5. Oxytocin, prolactin and dopamine are released.
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6. In this radio interview Daniel Levitin talks about how music works in the brain. Mr Levitin is a
professor of psychology and neuroscientist who has studied Broadmann Area 47 for 15 years.
This is the part of the brain that helps us to predict what is going to happen next and which is
especially active when listening to music. Both musicians and composers make listeners feel
different moods according to their interpretation and writing the notes in the scores respectively.
They need to strike a balance between predictable pieces and unpredictable ones so that the
listeners expectations are rewarded or violated in interesting ways.
Furthermore music is a great multi-network connector that reaches all parts of the brain. There
is a strong connection between music and memory as a lot of feelings and recollections flood
back when listening to some songs. The difficulty lies on retrieving experiences engraved in our
memory, to find a retrieval cue that works as a fishing bait to pull things from our past. Songs
that we heard a long time ago, rather than frequently heard ones, may act as a good retrieval
cue because they are very specific. In fact, music is used with people suffering from Alzheimer
and some form of dementia. When listening to songs they heard when they were much
younger, they could remember the melody and lyrics from the past. This is so because the
numerous components involved in music such as melody, rhythm, lyrics, tempo, the pitches,
etc. are served by different neural networks. They are reinforcing, if some of these musical
elements cannot trigger memories, other elements will.
As for the role music plays in evolution, Steve Pinker considers music is an evolutionary
accident. However, Daniel Levitin believes that it is music that has made evolution of the brain
possible since some neurochemical systems respond to music and hormones such as oxytocin,
prolactine and dopanime are released when playing or listening to music.
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