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 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 in a sentence.
• Parallelism: Repeating syntactic structures or large groups of words.
• Chiasmus: Crossing syntactic structures.
• Asyndeton: Omitting conjunctions between terms.
• 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 one, creating an image. The real term may be omitted.
• Metonymy: Identifying a real term with a figurative one when their relationship is not based on similarity.
• Synesthesia: Combining 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 elements of the same grammatical category.
• Antithesis: Contrasting opposite terms.
• Paradox: Presenting contradictory ideas with deep meaning.
• Rhetorical Question: Asking a question without expecting an answer.
• Irony: Saying the opposite of what is meant, often humorously.
• Etopeya: Describing a person’s moral character.
• Prosopography: Describing a person’s physical appearance.
• Portrait: Combining moral and physical descriptions.
• Caricature: Exaggerating a person’s features to create a distorted portrait.

Syllable Count and Verses

• Verses are classified by their syllable count:
• Arte mayor: 9 or more syllables.
• Arte menor: 8 or fewer syllables.
• To calculate syllables, consider the last word of the verse:
• If it’s flat, count as is.
• If it’s acute, add a syllable.
• If it’s esdrújula, subtract a syllable.

Rhyme

• Rhyme is 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 vowels match.

Stanzas

Stanzas are sets of verses, classified by the number of verses.

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 includes simple forms (one verb) and compound forms (two verbs, one auxiliary).

Verb conjugation has three moods:

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

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 spelling requires em-) can also be added.

Verb Form

Verb forms consist of lexemes and morphemes. The lexeme is the infinitive without the -ar, -er, or -ir ending.

The lexeme 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. Number indicates whether the subject is singular or plural.

Classification of Verbal Forms

Verbal forms are divided into:

• Impersonal forms: These don’t express grammatical person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) or number, tense, or mood. They include the infinitive, gerund, and participle.
• Personal forms: These include all indicative, subjunctive, and imperative forms with inflections for person, number, tense, mood, and aspect. They can be simple or compound.

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 sharing the same lexeme.

Acronyms are words formed from the initials of other words, used to shorten long concepts or 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 sharing some meaning features while differing in others. Examples: colors (red, yellow, etc.).

Hypernym

A word whose meaning includes the meaning of another word.

Hyponym

A word whose meaning is included in the meaning of another word.

Synonymy and its Causes

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

• Total synonyms: Interchangeable in all contexts (e.g., oculista-ophthalmologist).
• Partial synonyms: Not always interchangeable (e.g., avaro-ruin-saver-miser).

Causes of synonymy:

• One term is technical, the other isn’t (e.g., amígdalas-angina).
• One term is literary, the other isn’t (e.g., cabello-hair).
• One term is colloquial, the other isn’t (e.g., pela-money).
• One term is dialectal, the other isn’t (e.g., gocho-pig).
• One term is archaic, the other isn’t (e.g., sayo-shirt).
• One term is foreign, the other isn’t (e.g., parking-aparcamiento).

Denotation and Connotation

Denotation is the basic, objective meaning of a word as found in the dictionary.

Connotation is the set of subjective meanings (positive or negative) a word acquires due to context or individual interpretation.

Monosemy

The property of words having only one meaning, characteristic of scientific terms.

Polysemy

The property of words having multiple meanings.

Taboo and Euphemism

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

Euphemism is substituting a taboo word with a more acceptable one.

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

Slang

Some words acquire specialized meanings within specific language communities.

Antonymy

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

• Gradual antonymy: Intermediate grades exist between two opposite terms (e.g., cold-warm-hot).
• Complementary antonymy: No intermediate grades exist (e.g., legal-illegal).
• Relational antonymy: Words imply each other (e.g., buy-sell).

Antonyms are formed by:

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

Homonymy

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

• Homophones: Same sound, different spelling (e.g., ola-hola).
• Homographs: Same pronunciation and spelling. To distinguish between polysemy and homonymy, consider the grammatical category. If it’s the same, it’s polysemy; if it’s different, it’s homonymy.

Semantics

The Noun

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

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

Nominalization

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

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

A special case is nominalizing adjectives with the neuter article lo, which gives them an abstract meaning.

Abstract Nouns

Nouns can be concrete (referring to tangible things perceived by the senses) or abstract (referring to intangible concepts).

Many abstract nouns are derived from adjectives, indicating qualities.

Abstract nouns derived from verbs usually indicate actions.

Idioms

An idiom is a phrase whose meaning is not the sum of its individual words but has a fixed, consolidated meaning acquired over time.

Compound Words

Compound words are formed using elements from Latin or Greek. Many of these learned words are 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 Spanish, some Latin words resulted in two Spanish words: one that evolved significantly (patrimonial word) and one that remained close to the original Latin (cultism).

This dual evolution process created doublets: pairs of words (one cultism and one patrimonial word) derived from the same Latin word.