User:Xinoxuke

1. Why does genre play such a crucial role in translation?

The textual genre allows us to predict what kind of functional structure and communicative purpose (pragmatics) we find in the translation of a document. It is important because the same sentence could be interpreted into different ways depending on the purpose of the speaker.

For example:

In order to translate this sentence “The door is open”, we should know what kind of purpose has the speaker: it is not the same “The door is open” so, if you don’t like something, you can go; or, “The door is open” I’m cold, please, close the door.

2. Why metonymy plays such a crucial role in translation?

Metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same idealized cognitive model. In other words, it is a real relation between two entities, in which we use one of them to refer to the other one. This cognitive process is different into each language, so, to translate correctly a document it is important to know what is the meaning of this process within this document.

3. Definition and examples of schema.  A schema is a set of organized knowledge about a specific element in the world. For example, a young child may first develop a schema for a horse. She knows that a horse is large, has hair, four legs and a tail. When the little girl encounters a cow for the first time, she might initially call it a horse. After all, it fits in with her schema for the characteristics of a horse; it is a large animal that has hair, four legs and a tail. Once she is told that this is a different animal called a cow, she will modify her existing schema for a horse and create a new schema for a cow. Every language user associates different things with the word “house”, for example, but the stereotypical or encyclopedic knowledge is the same for everyone: a house has rooms, a kitchen, a front door; a roof can be leaky; a house can be bought or rented, etc

4. The importance of considering a word as a schema. Without the schema concept it is almost impossible to describe how inferences are made and how discourse is comprehended.

5. How can you explain the lexical coherence of a text? The lexical coherence of a text, involves the study of factors such as the language user’s knowledge of the world, the inferences they make and the assumptions they hold, and in particular, the way in which communication is mediated through the use of speech acts.

6. Lexical coherence or lexical cohesion? Both of them are important. Lexical cohesion is achieved by the application of abstract, general schemes, also called semantic relations. Lexical coherence is what makes a text semantically meaningful.

7. Differences between mainstream lexical cohesion and what has been explained in class.

Traditionally, Cohesion has been considered as the grammatical or lexical relationships between different elements of a text, a characteristic that makes a text a unified whole. After years of research, it seems more appropriate to speak of grammatical cohesion and lexical coherence. The reason is that it is the lexis which carries the conceptual development and the conceptual macrostructure of a text, whereas the grammatical signals of cohesion plays an additional, formal role in that conceptual structure. Cohesion only works between independent sentences, never within sentences.

8. Relationship between metonymy and the prepositional ICM. Propositional ICM: sets of predicative-argument relationship or frames. Metonymy: a variety of figurative use of language. What distinguishes a metonymic use of an expression is the relationship between its figurative meaning and its literal meaning.

9- What are ICMs and why are they so relevant in current linguistic theory? An ICM is a cognitive structure, which is idealized for the purpose of understanding and reasoning, and whose function is to represent reality from a certain perspective. The term ICM, in being all-encompassing, designates any concept on the basis of what we know about the world. They are so relevant in current linguistic theory because with them you can explain the grammatical, semantic and pragmatical phenomena.

10-Different ways of understanding “translation”. Before translating externally you have to translate internally. Internal translation: It is the ability to translate the metaphorical or metonymic meaning to the propositional. It means, that before translating, you have to understand the meaning. External translating: It is the ability to translate the metaphorical or metonymic meaning to the propositional with a functional equivalence or literally. It means that with a functional equivalence, you use a synonym to translate it and literally means that you translate using the same words.

11- Why do you think metonymy explains so much in translation theory? Metonymy is so important in translation theory because sometimes, when we are translating we do not find the word, and we have to find synonyms. For instance, if in Spain there is a kind of plant that it does not exist in other countries, you cannot translate the name of the plant (in those countries where the plan does not exist), and you have to say the name of the plant in Spanish and give a brief definition in order the other people could understand you.

12- Translation is communication. The principles of communication. Translation is a kind of communication. It follows the same principles that communication. For instance, when you translate a text has to have more or less the same length that the original one, if the original text has an irony or expressiveness you have to try to maintain it.

13- RELEVANCE THEORY AND SCHEMTATA THEORY

          - RELEVANCE THEORY

To begin with, we can say that the relevance theory is a theory based on implicature (or implicit information), which incorporate different aspects of Grice's approach in a new direction. Grice's theory focused in 4 different maxims, used as the basis of human behaviour in conversations. These are involved in the co-operative principle. The maxims of conversation are: Maxim of quantity: deals with the amount of information presented. You should make your contribution as informative as required and do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Maxim of quality: it has to do with truth-telling. Do not say what you believe to be false and do not say anything you don't know for sure. Maxim of Relation: simple and straightforward: BE RELEVANT (lo que en castellano se conoce como ir al grano). You must make a connection between the rest of the conversation. Everything you say may not have an appropriate contribution. Maxim of manner: avoid obscurity, avoid ambiguity, avoid proximity (excessive wordiness) and be orderly. But, once explained that, we must focus again on relevance theory. Relevance theorists argue that the third maxim (Relation one), when appropriately developed, can do the work of the others. And it is what they call Principle of Relevance. It can be summarized in that the principle of relevance is to give important and precise information. Moreover, it explains through an uniformal schema that the speakers make deductions and inferences from what is being said in a conversation in order to create a linguistic context where understand properly those utterances.. That's why this principle evolve the others. When you are using it properly, you are evolving telling the correct amount of words, being truthful, being relevant and being ordered and unambiguous. You are using it because inside the meaning of being relevant those maxims are included. There is no relevance with no truthful, there is no relevance with no adequate information... It is also important to say that the speaker must take account of the hearer's knowledge and the standard procedure for the hearer is to arrive until the correct interpretations. If the speaker has done his or her job properly, the first interpretation will be the correct one. There are two phases of interpreting: the first one consists of extract the explicature (what is explicit encoded) the second one is to elaborate and arrive until the correct interpretation.

             - SCHEMATA THEORY

It has always been said that comprehending simple sentences is an easy work, but it doesn't. In order to analize and to understand simple things, a considerable amount of knowledge is involved. Concepts are also likely to be related together in many varied ways (18) and reflect temporal and causal structure of the world. The most commonly structure used to organise complex knowledge is the schema. A schema is a structured cluster of abstract concepts kept in our memory. Usually, it involves generic knowledge and other times represent events, precepts, situations, relations, objects... One explained it, we can say that the schemata theory shows that inside human memory, there are schemas and nets of information. This was first tested by Bartlett, who exposed that all schemas and stereotypes that humans have, influence in how they interpret all kind of new information and how they remember previous information. That's a way of organizing in our memory all past experiences in order to remember what happened and when happened. Once said that, it is important to say that the previous knowledge of a person affects to his comprenhension. We can say that schemas have slots that need to be filled with specific information. All important gaps are filled, so, schemata theory highlight that there can be many different interpretations, but they depend on factors like sex, religion, age... Therefore, without the schema concept, it is almost impossible to describe how inferences are made and how discourse is comprenhended. Functions: Schemas are the basis for ideas. An schema leads how to focus your attention. An schema allows an inferencial elaboration. An schema allows ordered memory searches. An schema makes easy edition and summarizing. An schema allows an inferencial reconstruction. Those functions all together make possible a wider interpretation.

14- RELEVANCE THEORY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TE MOST RELEVANT PART OF THE TEXT... PLEASE ELABORATE Relevance theory tries to explain a method of communication taking into account implicit inferences. It states that the hearer/reader/audience will search for meaning in any given communication situation. Ex: Mary: How many loaves of bread do we have? - Bill: Five. Bill does not say “five loaves” or “five loaves of bread” because both are implied with his reply and are somewhat redundant. What Bill says is just enough to understand his meaning. Mary fills in the missing context-mediated information and she understands that they have five loaves of bread form Bill’s one word answer. This theory begins with some assumptions typical of pragmatic theories. It states that all utterances are encountered in some context and that utterances convey a number of implicatures. Then, people who are engaged in inferential communication have the notion of relevance in their minds. This will cause each person engaged in the interaction to arrive at the presumption of relevance, which is the notion that implicit messages are relevant enough to be worth bothering to process and the speaker will be as economical as they possible can be in communicating it. The core of the theory is the “communicative principle of relevance” which states that by the act of making an utterance, the speaker is conveying that what they have said is worth listening to.  In that way, relevance is conceived as relative or subjective, as it depends upon the state of knowledge of a hearer when they encounter an utterance. However, it is important to note that this theory does not attempt to exhaustively define the concept of “relevance” in everyday use, but tries to show an interesting and important part of human communication, in particular ostensive-inferential communication.

15- MERONYMY AND METONYMY First of all, we have to say that these two concepts are not the same. Starting with their definition, a meronymy is a semantic relation used in linguistics which denotes a constituent part of or a member of something. For example, finger is a meronym of hand because a finger is part of a hand. While a metonymy is a figure of speech and a semantic relation consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated. For example, the suits on Wall Street walked off with most of our savings, you are associating the word suit with all workers on Wall Street because most of them wear suits. However, the point where a meronymy can be confused metonymy is when talking about the different kind of metonymies. There we find the partitive one. Its definition says that an entity is part of an entity and, as we have said before, meronymy denotes a constituent part or a part from something.

19- Macrostructure and superstructure of a text.  Readers are generally able to give a summary of the topics they have just read, which can be a small text or an outline with the key aspects of the original discourse. Readers can elaborate this kind of summaries because a discourse has a structure of meaning that makes clear what does and what does not belong to the core of the content, or the gist of the discourse. This term is the opposite of microstructure. The term micro¬structure denotes the relations between sentences and sentence segments. Mac¬rostructures are formed using three macrorules. a) Deletion rule This rule eliminates those propositions that are not relevant for the interpretation of other propositions in discourse. Example: A girl in a yellow dress passed by. A girl passed by. She was wearing a dress. The dress was yellow. b. Generalization rule Using this rule series of specific propositions are converted into a more general proposition. Example: Mary was drawing a picture. Sally was skipping rope and Daniel was building something with Lego blocks. b) The children were playing. c) Construction rule By means of this rule one proposition can be constructed from a number of propositions. See the following example and the macro proposition that was constructed from it. John went to the station. He bought a ticket, started running when he saw what time it was, and was forced to conclude that his watch was wrong when he reached the platform. John missed the train. The difference between this rule and the generalization rule is that the propositions on the basis of which a general proposition can be constructed do not all have to be contained in discourse.

25. Please describe the descriptive text type. The descriptive text idiom is marked by the encoder's use of phenomenon-registering sentences in sequence (or their equivalents).

In clause expansion the descriptive text idiom is marked by the encoder's use of non-finite participle clauses, relative clauses, spatial clauses, comparative clauses and resultative clauses.

participle clause: I found Marcuse, wreathed in cigar smoke, at . work on a manuscript.

relative clause: In the piston type fountain pen a screw spindle is connected to the filling cap and engages with a screw thread with which the hollow piston rod is internally provided

spatial clause: If a thousand men and women were waiting outside jammed in the lobby and the approaches to the stairs, and if the resultant theater-line, six and eight people thick, inched up the stairs at a discouraging slow rate, there was consola�tion at the top for they were let through a narrow door, two by two, and there advanced behind a cord which ran around a third of the circular curve of the room to move forward at last onto a small dais where Mr. and Mrs. Nixon were receiving, there to be greeted indi�vidually by each of them with particular atten�tion, and on from that eminence to the center of the room where a bar was ready to give a drink and food...

comparative clause: ...but inset into the tyre's outer edge is a secound annular compartment which has a win�ter tread area overlying it. This second compartment is considerably smaller than the first.

resultative clause:The disposition of the compartments is such that if both of them are fully inflated, both of the treads will contact the ground.

In group expansion the descriptive text idiom is marked by the encoder's use of adjective premodification and postmodifica� tion by prepositional groups (of, with) or appositives in nominal groups. adjective premodification: two separate inflatable annular . compartments postmodification by

                               prepositional groups:		a file of camels.
                                                                                 

postmodification by

                               appositives:	                                Marcuse still has his office on the                             --                                                                                  campus, a vast concrete-and glass .  .                                                                                   subtend factory … 

27.Concepts usually misconceived: schema, semantic field, word family. Please elaborate. -Schema: the knowledge we have about an entity. for example "dog". that knowledge is organized or structured according the 18 general or abstract schemas. The notion of "schema" can replace the traditional one "concept". "Schema" is far richer than "concept" For instance the knowledge we have about "dog" -Semantic field:  classification of words having a common feature (in Spanish: "archilexema" ) for example "dwelling". The only relationship possible is HYPONYMY: a villa is a kind of dwelling, a flat is a kind of dwelling, etc The classification is carried out through distinguishing features: for humans, for the rich, part of building, etc. -Word family: groups of words that are sufficiently closely related to each other to form a 'family'. Words can be grouped into families in two main ways: they are similar in form: Each of these families is bounded by a common root word, although the resultant connections of meaning are also an important bonding feature. The similarity of form is often linked with a similarity of meaning, but a link of form can exist without any link of meaning. Similarities of form are of three types, all of which are very common in English: 1. Derivational morphology: involves the addition of prefixes (con-, dis-, ex-, in-, per-, pre-, pro-, re-…) or suffixes (-tion, -al, -ly…). 2. Identity: the words have identical forms. When I run (verb), the run (noun) usually lasts about half an hour. 3. Compound words: the derived word is formed by combining two root words, as in password. In terms of word families, compounds represent a marriage of two families, so password unites the families of pass (passage, passer-by, etc.) and word (wording, reword, wordy, etc.). EXAMPLE: family - familiar - unfamiliar - familiarity - familiarise …  Their meanings are related. Are based only on meaning, without the additional help provided by similarity of form. Links that are based on meaning are far richer and more extensive than those based on form. Meaning-based links are important for vocabulary growth, not just as an aid when guessing the meanings of new words, but also when consolidating existing vocabulary. Meaning-based families can be distinguished by the kind of link is in focus: 1. Synonyms: wet, damp 2. Specific meaning relations: In derivational morphology, the suffix -er signals the do-er of an action, as in speaker, 'a person who speaks'; but the same meaning relation can also be expressed in other ways - for example, the word for 'a person who steals' is not stealer, but thief. In this case the anchor word is steal, and thief can be called the 'target' word. A study of specific meaning relations goes beyond those reflected in the form of the words concerned, and explores the range of ways in which such specific meaning relations are expressed. Specific meaning relations are helpful in developing reasoning skills, since they include such features as: classification: man – cow – monkey – mammal examples: flower – violet – daffodil – rose continuum: obese – fat – plump – slim – thin – emaciated opposites: hard – easy; sensible – foolish  3. Fields: A field of meaning includes both synonyms and meaning relations, but also includes words which are related in other ways to the anchor word, as consult is to book.  EXAMPLE: big - little - size

29. Kinds of metonymy.  Agentive, Factitive, Purposive, Causative, Processual, Positioner, Material, Locative, Partitive, Container, Attributive and Hyponymy.

38. The 18 relational arcs or general abstract schemas. Definition and examples. 1. Agentive schema: an entity performs a controlled activity which is typically associated with it. A murderer kills people. 2. Factitive schema: an entity performs a controlled activity which is typically associated with it and as a result of the activity another comes into existence. A shoemaker makes shoes. 3. Purposive schema (instrumental, means-end): agentive and factitive relations between entities are sometimes conceived as mediated by an instrumental entity. A carpenter makes wood with a number of tools. 4. Resultative schema: an entity is the necessary result of a controlled activity. Ash necessarily results from burning some material. 5. Causative schema: an entity or an event is responsible for the coming about of an event. A hurricane causes destruction. 6. Processual schema: when an entity is typical seen as involved in a certain activity over which has no control. A river flows. 7. Originatory schema: when a certain entity becomes another related entity with some distinguishing features. Ice/water. Girl/woman. 8. Positioner schema: an entity is related to another entity and it is up to one of the two entities to decide whether the relation holds. A mother has a children. 9. Material schema: an entity is described as being the material of which another entity is typically made. Table/wood. Bottle/glass. 10. Container schema: an entity is described as either typically or necessarily holding another entity. Sea/water. Cup/coffe. 11. Partitive schema (part-whole, meronymy): an entity is described as consisting of other entities, some of which are necessary conditions. Head, limbs and trunk/body. 12. Locative schema: an entity is typically associated with a certain location. Ghost/castle. 13. Attributive schema: an entity is either necessary or typically adscribed a certain property. Tree/tall. Rock/hard 14. Identifying schema (synonymy): when two concepts are very similar. Wealth/fortune. Anger/ire. 15. Classifying schema (hyponymy, taxonomy, inclusion): an entity is seen as belonging to a hierarchy of hyperordinates. Bird/penguin. 16. Contrasting schema: when two concepts are seen in terms of their differences. For two concepts to be contrasted they need to belong to the same domain of reference in terms of the classifying of the partitive relations. Teacher/carpenter. 17. Opposing schema (antonymy, opposition): when one concept is incompatible with another one. Young/old. 18. Analogising schema: when a concept is seen as sharing some noteworthy characteristic with another concept, usually in terms of the other relations. Heart/pump, the heart circulates blood through the body as pump circulates liquid. This relationship is the link between propositional models of conceptual representation and the realm of metaphors. Foot (of mountain), foot (of body).

39. The cognitive function of the 18 general, abstract schemas. An ICM is a cognitive structure, which is idealized for the purpose of understanding and reasoning, and whose function is to represent reality from a certain perspective. ICMs capture the different ways in which we store world knowledge information as we construe it. Cognitive linguistics distinguishes four kinds of ICM: frames, image, schemas, metaphor and metonymy. Non-operational: Relationship between what is said and what is wanted to say. Propositional: sets of predicade-argument relationships or “frames”. Image-schematic: pre-conceptual topological representations. e.g. the container schema (we saw the bird perching in the tree), orientations (the cat climbed up the tree) Operational: No relationship between what is said and what is wanted to say. Metaphoric: mappings or sets of correspondences across conceptual domains. (love is a journey). Metonymic: mappings within a single domain. (the ham sandwich -who has ordened the sandwich- is waiting for his check).

41 What is a metonymy? How are metonymies produced?  In rhetoric, metonymy, is the substitution of one word for another word with which it is associated. In cognitive linguistics, metonymy refers to the use of a single characteristics to identify a more complex entity and is one of the basic characteristics of cognition. It is common for people to take one well-understood aspect of something and use that aspect to stand either for the thing as a whole or for some other aspect or part of it. Cognitively, metonymy is attested in cognitive process underlying language. Objects that appear strongly in a single context emerge as cognitive labels for the whole concept Dish → item of crockery (original use) → a course(in dinning) (metonymic use) The press → printing press (original use) → the news media (metonymic use) Wall Street → street in NYC (original use) → big business and economy in the USA Metonymy works by the association between two concepts.

42 What is a metaphor?  Metaphor is a figure of speech where one word may be used in place of another. It is a figure of speech that constructs an analogy between two things or ideas. Metaphor works by the similarity between two concepts. With metaphor people wish to transfer qualities from one referent to another. It is the concept of understanding one things in terms of another.

43 Differences between metonymy and metaphor? The major difference between metaphor and metonymy is that a metaphor substitutes a concept with another and a metonymy select a related term. Metaphor → substitution Metonymy → association ex: “he is a tiger in class” → Metaphor, the word tiger is used in substitution for displaying an attribute of character of the person. “the tiger called his students to the meeting room” → metonymy, no substitution, the person is associated with a tiger for his nature. Metonymy is a figure of speech that is used in rhetoric where a thing is not referred by its name but with the associated word. The association of the word is based on contiguity. It is used to define a word and uses a single characteristic for the identification of a complex entity. A metaphor is an expression that shows the similarity between two things on some aspects. Here, the substitution is based on similarity. It can be used to define the transference of relation between set of things to another.

43. Differences between metonomy and metaphor. Metaphor and metonymy are both figures of speech where one word may be used in place of another. However, especially in cognitive science and linguistics, the two figures of speech work very differently. Metonymy works by the contiguity (association) between two concepts, whereas metaphor works by the similarity between them. When people use metonymy, they do not typically wish to transfer qualities from one referent to another as they do with metaphor: there is nothing press-like about reporters or crown-like about a monarch, but "the press" and "the crown" are both common metonyms. EXAMPLE: Two examples using the term "fishing" help make the distinction clear (example drawn from Dirven, 1996). The phrase "to fish pearls" uses metonymy, drawing from "fishing" the idea of taking things from the ocean. What is carried across from "fishing fish" to "fishing pearls" is the domain of usage and the associations with the ocean and boats, but we understand the phrase in spite of rather than because of the literal meaning of fishing: we know you do not use a fishing rod or net to get pearls and we know that pearls are not, and do not originate from, fish. In contrast, the metaphorical phrase "fishing for information", transfers the concept of fishing into a new domain. If someone is "fishing" for information, we do not imagine that he or she is anywhere near the ocean, rather we transfer elements of the action of fishing (waiting, hoping to catch something that cannot be seen) into a new domain (a conversation). Thus, metonymy works by calling up a domain of usage and an array of associations (in the example above, boats, the ocean, gathering life from the sea) whereas metaphor picks a target set of meanings and transfers them to a new domain of usage. 44. Please elaborate on “Language is essentially metaphoric”

We must say that language is essentially metaphorical because in each language there are many expressions that have an idiomatic meaning and their meaning cannot be translated in a literal way. This situation takes place in everyday life while we are talking with somebody, we make use of some expressions such as “give me a hand” or “fishing for information” that they do not have their literal meaning. For this reason, translation sometimes is more difficult to achieve since maybe, the metaphorical expression we use in English, does not exist in Spanish or other languages.

45. Please elaborate on “Communication is essentially metaphoric”

46. Kinds of inference in current linguistic theory.

Connotation Conventional implicature Conversational implicature Entailment Explicature Implicature Presupposition Top-down processing

47. The seven criteria for textuality.

COHESION: Connection which results when the interpretation of a textual element is dependent on another element in the text. COHERENCE: Connection which is brought about by something outside the text, usually by knowledge which a listener or reader is assumed to possess. INTENIONALITY: Writers and speakers must have the conscious intention of achieving specific goals with their message. According to this criterion, a sequence of words can only be called a text after an authorial intention has been assigned to it. ACCEPTABILITY: A sequence of sentences has to be acceptable to the intended audience in order to qua1ify as a text. INFORMATIVENESS: Is necessary in discourse. A text must contain new information. If a reader knows everything contained in a text, then it does not qualify. Likewise, if a reader does not understand what is in a text, it also does not qua1ify as a text. SITUATIONALITY: Is essential to textua1ity.It is important to consider the situation in which the text has been produced and dealt with. Criteria c, d, and e are somewhat subjective. Recognition of intentionality, acceptability and informativeness are observer-dependent. INTERTEXTUALITY: Means that a sequence of sentences is related by form or meaning to other sequences of sentences.

50. Schemata theory and inference. SCHEMATA THEORY: A view of the means by which presuppositions are externally constructed and impose external constraints on the ways in which we understand messages. It states that all knowledge is organized into units. Within these units of knowledge, or schemata, is stored information.

INFERENCE: collective term for all possible implicit information which can be derived from a discourse. It is used to denote the phenomenon that discourse summons up knowledge or information which can be used to understand the information. Different types of inferences: Connotation, conventional implicature, conversational implicature, entailment, explicature, implicature, presupposition, top down processing, and all the metonymic and metaphoric mappings.