Language Arts: Figures of Speech, Verb Conjugation, and Semantics

Posted on Oct 1, 2024 in Arts and Humanities

Language Arts

1. Figures of Speech

We use various literary devices to make language more expressive, enhance the content of a message, and draw attention to the author. These devices are classified into:

Phonetic Resources

These resources relate to the sounds of words:

• Alliteration: Repeating a sound to produce sensory effects.
• Paronomasia: Using two words with similar pronunciations but different meanings.

Morphosyntactic Resources

• Anaphora: Repeating a word at the beginning of two or more lines or sentences.
• Epiphora: Repeating a word at the end of two or more lines or sentences.
• Anadiplosis: Repeating the last word of a verse at the beginning of the next.
• Epanadiplosis: Repeating a word at the beginning and end of a verse.
• Concatenation: Continuing Anadiplosis.
• Hyperbaton: Altering the usual order of words within a sentence.
• Parallelism: Repeating the same syntactic structures or large groups of words.
• Chiasm: Organizing cross-syntactic structures.
• Asyndeton: Omitting conjunctions between several terms that should have them.
• Polysyndeton: Using unnecessary conjunctions.
• Ellipsis: Omitting an element of a sentence.

Semantic Resources

• Simile: Comparing two elements, one real and one figurative, based on similarity.
• Epithet: Using adjectives that express an implicit quality of the noun.
• Metaphor: Identifying a real term with a figurative term, sometimes without explicitly stating the figurative term.
• Metonymy: Identifying a real term with a figurative term when their relationship is not based on similarity.
• Synesthesia: Combining two realities perceived by different senses.
• Personification: Attributing human qualities to non-human entities.
• Animalization: Attributing animal characteristics to people, often with a degrading effect.
• Cosidification: Attributing properties of things to people.
• Hyperbole: Exaggerating for humorous purposes.
• Dilogía: Using a polysemous word to evoke multiple meanings, often in advertising.
• Enumeration: Listing various elements of reality belonging to the same grammatical category.
• Antithesis: Contrasting two opposite terms.
• Paradox: Presenting contradictory ideas with deep meaning.
• Rhetorical Question: Asking a question that does not require an answer.
• Irony: Saying the opposite of what is meant, often with a humorous tone.
• Etopeya: Describing a person’s moral character.
• Prosopography: Describing a person’s physical appearance.
• Portrait: Combining moral and physical descriptions of a person.
• Caricature: Exaggerating a person’s features to create a distorted portrait.

Syllable Count and Verses

Verses are classified by their number of syllables:

• Arte mayor: 9 or more syllables.
• Arte menor: 8 or fewer syllables.

To calculate syllables, consider the last word of the verse:

• If it ends in a flat vowel, the count remains the same.
• If it ends in an acute vowel, add one syllable.
• If it ends in an esdrújula vowel, subtract one syllable.

Rhyme

Rhyme refers to the matching of letters and sounds among the last words of verses, starting from the last stressed syllable.

• Consonant Rhyme: All phonemes match from the last stressed syllable.
• Assonance: Only the vowels match.

Stanzas

Stanzas are groups of verses, classified by the number of verses they contain.

Non-strophic Compositions

• Romance: 8-8a 8-8a
• Ballad: 7-7a 7-7a
• Romance dirge: 9-9a 9-9a
• Romance heroic: 10-10a 10-10a

Word

Verb Conjugation

In Spanish, there are three verb conjugations:

1. Verbs ending in -ar.
2. Verbs ending in -er.
3. Verbs ending in -ir.

Verb conjugation consists of simple forms (one verb) and compound forms (two verbs, one auxiliary).

Verb conjugation includes three moods:

• Indicative mood: The action is real.
• Subjunctive mood: The action is uncertain or unlikely.
• Imperative mood: Expresses a command or request.

Verb Formation

Verbs can be formed by adding suffixes like -ar, -ear, -ecer, -ificar, and -izar to nouns or adjectives. Prefixes like a- or en- (if required by spelling) can also be added.

Verb Form

Verb forms can be segmented into lexemes and morphemes. The lexeme is the infinitive without the ending -ar, -er, or -ir. It provides the verb’s meaning, while the inflectional morpheme expresses person, number, tense, mood, aspect, and voice.

Person and Number

Person indicates whether the subject is first, second, or third person, while number indicates whether the subject is singular or plural.

Classification of Verbal Forms

Verbal forms are divided into:

• Impersonal forms: These forms do not express grammatical person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) or number, tense, or mood. They include the infinitive, gerund, and participle.
• Personal forms: These include all forms of the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative moods that have inflections for person, number, tense, mood, and aspect. They are divided into simple and compound forms.

Monemes

Words are units of writing separated by spaces. Monemes are smaller linguistic units.

Lexemes are monemes with lexical meaning.

A lexical family is a set of words that share the same lexeme.

Acronyms are words formed from the initials of other words, used to shorten long concepts and words.

Abbreviations are words formed with different letters or syllables of other words (not just initials).

Semantics

Semantic Field

A semantic field is a set of words that share some features of their meanings while having other distinct features. Examples include colors (red, yellow, etc.).

Hyperonym and Hyponym

A hyperonym is a word whose meaning includes the meaning of another word (e.g., “color” is a hyperonym of “red”).

A hyponym is a word whose meaning is included in the meaning of another word (e.g., “red” is a hyponym of “color”).

Synonymy and its Causes

Synonymy is the semantic relationship between words with similar meanings. We can distinguish between:

• Total synonyms: Interchangeable in all contexts (e.g., “oculist” and “ophthalmologist”).
• Partial synonyms: Not always interchangeable (e.g., “avaricious,” “stingy,” “thrifty,” “miserly”).

Causes of synonymy include:

• One term is technical and the other is not (e.g., “tonsils” and “tonsillitis”).
• One term is literary and the other is not (e.g., “tresses” and “hair”).
• One term is colloquial and the other is not (e.g., “dough” and “money”).
• One term is dialectal and the other is not (e.g., “hog” and “pig”).
• One term is archaic and the other is not (e.g., “say” and “shirt”).
• One term is foreign and the other is not (e.g., “parking” and “car park”).

Denotation and Connotation

Denotation is the basic, dictionary definition of a word.

Connotation is the set of meanings (positive or negative) that words acquire due to subjective factors or context.

Monosemy and Polysemy

Monosemy is the property of words having only one meaning, characteristic of scientific terms.

Polysemy is the property of words having multiple meanings.

Taboo, Euphemism, and Dysphemism

Taboo refers to words or expressions considered crude, vulgar, or uncomfortable.

Euphemism is the substitution of taboo words with more appropriate alternatives.

Dysphemism is a humorous or distorted substitution of a taboo word.

Slang

The meanings of some words become specialized within certain language communities (e.g., slang).

Antonymy

Antonymy is the opposition of two words in meaning. There are three types:

• Gradual antonyms: Intermediate grades exist between the two opposites (e.g., “cold” – “lukewarm” – “hot”).
• Complementary antonyms: No intermediate grades exist (e.g., “legal” – “illegal”).
• Relational antonyms: The words imply each other (e.g., “buy” – “sell”).

Antonyms can be formed by:

• Adding negative prefixes (e.g., in-, des-, a-).
• Changing the word entirely.

Homonymy

Homonymy refers to two words with the same or similar pronunciation. They can be:

• Homophones: Same sound, different spelling (e.g., “wave” – “waive”).
• Homographs: Same pronunciation and spelling (e.g., “bank” – river bank or financial institution). To differentiate between polysemy and homographs, consider the grammatical category. If the same, they are polysemous; if different, they are homographs.

Semantics

The Noun

A noun is a word with gender and number, used to describe people, animals, or things. It has implicit notions of gender and number and functions as the core of a noun phrase.

Nouns can be recognized because they are preceded by an article or determiner adjective and can be accompanied by descriptive adjectives.

Substantivation

Substantivation is the process of any word class functioning as a noun in a specific context. Any grammatical category can be substantivized:

• Adjective
• Adverb
• Conjunction
• Preposition
• Interjection
• Verb
• Prepositional phrase

A special case is the substantivation of adjectives with the neuter article “lo,” which gives them an abstract meaning.

Abstract Nouns

Nouns can be concrete (referring to tangible things) or abstract (referring to intangible concepts). Many abstract nouns are derived from adjectives, indicating qualities. Abstract nouns derived from verbs usually indicate actions.

Set Phrases

A set phrase is a group of words whose meaning is not the sum of its individual words but is understood as a unit due to its consolidated use over time.

Compound Words

Compound words are formed using elements from Latin or Greek. Many of these words are widely used in scientific and humanistic disciplines.

Examples:

• Cosmo- (universe) + -metry (measure)
• Geo- (earth) + -logy (study)
• Topo- (place) + -graphy (description)
• Hydro- (water) + -phobia (fear)
• Phono- (sound) + -logy (study)
• Bio- (life) + -logy (study)
• Photo- (light) + -graphy (writing)
• Xeno- (foreign) + -phobia (fear)
• Zoo- (animal) + -logy (study)
• Micro- (small) + -scope (instrument for viewing)
• Demo- (people) + -cracy (rule)
• Kilo- (thousand) + -meter (measure)
• Tri- (three) + -angle (shape)
• Endo- (within) + -scopy (examination)
• Thermo- (heat) + -meter (measure)
• Mono- (one) + -logue (speech)
• Tele- (distance) + -vision (seeing)
• Myria- (ten thousand) + -pod (foot)

Cultisms and Patrimonial Words

During the evolution from Latin to Castilian, some Latin words resulted in two Castilian words: one that evolved significantly (patrimonial word) and another that retained much of its original form (cultism).

This dual evolution process created doublets in Castilian: pairs of words, one a cultism and the other a patrimonial word, derived from the same Latin word.