In English grammar, a determiner is a word that comes before a noun to clarify its meaning by specifying which one, how many, whose, or how much.
Definition
According to A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Randolph Quirk and his co-authors: A determiner is a class of words that limit or determine the reference of a noun phrase.
W.B. Yeats has thought and written much about the theory and practice of his own poetic art. For a full understanding of his poems, it is necessary to have some knowledge of his theory of poetry. He believed in the theory of "Art for art's sake" during the early stage of his poetic career. But actually, his genius was lyrical. It penetrated his essentially lyrical dreams. In the 1919s in his early career, he became the advocate of "art for art's sake". He began writing "pure poetry" under the influence of the French symbolists and the English Aesthetes. He divested such poetry of all the exterior decorations.
Romanticism was a movement emphasizing emotion, individualism, imagination, and a deep connection with nature, emerging in Europe in the late 18th century.
It is not easy to define romanticism. Like many other literary terms, this word has been used in different ages in widely different senses. Goethe placed it against Classicism: "Romanticism is disease; Classicism is health."
William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 at Cockermouth in Cumbria. His boyhood was happy; he could roam among the fields of his beloved countryside, in company with Nature and the books he loved (see The Prelude). Both Wordsworth's parents died before he was 15, and he and his four siblings were left in the care of different relatives. Sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, 1787. As a young man, Wordsworth developed a love of nature, a theme reflected in many of his poems.
A modifier is a word or phrase or clause which modifies other words in a sentence. It is either an adjective or an adverb. The adjectives modify the nouns, and the adverbs modify the verbs or the adjectives or the other adverbs.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was one of the most influential figures in American literature, widely recognized for his mastery of Gothic fiction, horror, and detective stories. He was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old. He was taken in by the Allan family (John and Frances Allan) as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia, and adopted the name as his middle name. However, his relationship with his foster father was often strained. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and, later, to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave university when Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts.
Christina Rossetti (1830–1894):
Christina Georgina Rossetti was one of the most important Victorian poets of England. She was born on December 5, 1830, in London into a highly literary family. Her father was the poet Gabriele, and her brothers, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti, were founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This artistic movement emphasized emotional sincerity, medieval symbolism, and intense imagery.
An elegy is a poem of sorrow or mourning for the dead; also, a reflective poem in a solemn or sorrowful mood. The adjective ‘elegiac’ is used to describe poetry that exhibits the characteristics of an elegy.
Well-known elegies lamenting the death of a particular
person include John Milton's Lycidas (Edward King), P.B.
Shelley's Adonais (John Keats), Alfred Lord Tennyson's In
Memoriam (Arthur H. Hallam), and Walt Whitman's When Lilacs Last
in the Dooryard Bloom'd (Abraham Lincoln). Perhaps the most famous
elegy, Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, is a
solemn, meditative poem mourning not the death of a person, but the passing of
a way of life. Closely related terms of elegy are monody, threnody, and dirge.
The main characteristics of the
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, used to represent the full form. It is a broad term that encompasses acronyms (e.g., NASA, SCUBA) and initialisms (e.g., FBI, CIA), although common usage often uses "abbreviation" to encompass all forms of shortening.
Shakespeare wrote a long sonnet-sequence consisting of 154 pieces. These sonnets were written over a number of years and, though there are several strands to impart to them a unity of sorts, they do not have the kind of continuity which one might expect from a collection which has been called a sequence. These sonnets were written during thé years 1592 and 1597 or 1598; but they were not published until 1609, only seven years before Shakespeare's death. They were not published by Shakespeare himself. The publisher was a man called Thomas Thorpe, a literary-minded man who had previously published a number of famous plays, particularly those written by Ben Jonson and Chapman, and who had also published Marlowe's translation of Lucan. Now, this Thomas Thorpe had obtained the manuscripts of the sonnets from one Mr. W.H. but nobody really knows who this Mr. W.H. was.
The literary form of 'sonnet' is a foreign importation in English literature. The sonnet, as a literary form, in fact, appeared in England as one of the distinct and immediate effects of the Renaissance. A sonnet is a fixed poetic form that originated in Italy in the 13th century. The word sonnet comes from the Italian sonetto, meaning “a little song.” Traditionally, a sonnet consists of 14 lines written in iambic pentameter and follows a strict rhyme scheme. Despite its brevity, the sonnet is capable of expressing deep emotions, complex ideas, and philosophical reflections.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most original poets in American literature; her genius contribution was recognized only after her death. Though she lived a quiet and secluded life, her poetry shows a powerful and intense imagination. She wrote nearly 1,800 poems, most of which were published after her death. Her work broke away from traditional poetic rules and helped shape modern poetry. When she died in 1886 at Amherst, she left behind more than a thousand unpublished poems. Very few people were aware that she had written them. Some of these poems were mere drafts or ideas written on scraps of paper, while others had been carefully revised. Dickinson had instructed that her poems be destroyed after her death. Although her sister initially began destroying her papers, she soon realized their exceptional value and preserved them. These poems were later given to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and within a few years they were published in several volumes, announcing the arrival of a unique and original American poet.
The poem 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' is the earlier production of Langston Hughes' poetic career. He was only eighteen years old and a recent graduate from high school. He wrote this poem on a train while he was going to Mexico to live with his father. When the train was crossing the Mississippi River, the sun was setting, and the poet was attracted by the beauty of the sight. He was reminded of its role in thriving and sustaining human civilization, along with its role in slavery and the slave trade in America. He had a long journey ahead of him. He took out an envelope containing his father's letter, and at the back of it he drafted the poem within ten to fifteen minutes.
I defined sociolinguistics as 'the study of language in relation to society', implying (intentionally) that sociolinguistics is part of the study of language. Thus, the value of sociolinguistics is the light which it throws on the nature of language in general, or on the characteristics of some particular language. As we might expect, students of society have found that facts about language can illuminate their understanding - after all, it is hard to think of any characteristic of a society which is as distinctive as its language, or as important for its functioning. 'The study of society in relation to language' (the converse of our definition of sociolinguistics) defines what is generally called THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE.
The poem "The Death of the Hired Man" is a dramatic narrative poem. It describes the death of an old servant (hired man) in the house of his master, Warren. Warren and his wife, Mary, have sharply divided opinions on the old servant, and their attitudes to him are diametrically opposite. It vividly describes the humane considerations of Mary, and the cruel feelings and unkind considerations of Warren, for their old servant Silas, who comes back to their house after quite a long time in a very weak condition of health, and dies there within a short time after his arrival.
First language acquisition refers to how infants and young children acquire their native language naturally, without formal teaching. It’s a universal process that happens in predictable stages, although the exact ages may vary slightly by child. Studies of linguistic development have revealed a series of crucial stages in children as they master their native languages. Though the correlation of age with the given stage can vary remarkably from child to child, the particular sequences of stages seem to be the same for all children in first language acquisition.
The syntactic process of a language refers to the way words are arranged and combined to form phrases, clauses, and sentences according to the rules of grammar. It is the mechanism that allows language to create complex and meaningful sentence structures from simple elements. There are some major syntactic processes, and these are given below:
Discontinuous constituents:
Discontinuous constituents are when a phrase or clause is
broken up by other words, yet the separated parts still form a single
grammatical unit. For example, in the English language, the phrasal verb
‘pulled down’ in the sentence ‘he pulled the thief down’ is a discontinuous
constituent separated by the ‘the thief’.
Recursion:
Recursion in syntax is the process by which a grammatical
rule can be applied to its own output, allowing structures to be nested inside
each other indefinitely. Recursion explains why human language can generate an
infinite number of sentences from a finite set of rules and words.
Concatenation:
Concatenation in syntax is the process that places words one
after another to build larger structures. For example, in the sentence ‘the boy
runs’, we see that the structure is subject ( the boy)+ verb (runs).
Conjoining:
Conjoining or coordination is the process that links two or
more units of the same type using conjugations. For example:
the scene of the movie was in Singapore.
The scene of the play was in Singapore.
The two sentences can be turned into a new sentence by the
process of conjoining: the scene of the play and the movie was in Dhaka city.
Embedding:
Embedding in syntax occurs when a subordinate clause is embedded within a superordinate or main clause, as in the example: "The boy who spoke to you is my brother."
A syllable is a phonological unit that is composed of one or more morphemes. It is a single, unbroken sound of a spoken or written word. It is a unit of pronunciation that contains one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants.
Phonologically, a syllable is defined by how vowels and
consonants combine to construct various sequences. That is, the structure of a
syllable is “consonant (s) plus vowel (s) plus consonant (s). A vowel is a compulsory
element that can alone form a syllable, whereas a consonant is an optional
element.
A syllable is a segment of speech that typically contains: a
vowel sound (central element) and optional consonants before (called onset) and
/or after (coda).
Structure
of a syllable:
A syllable has three main parts:
|
Part |
Description |
Example (in
‘bed’) |
|
Onset |
The initial
consonant (s) sound (if any) |
“b” |
|
Nucleus |
The core
vowel sound (always present) |
“e” |
|
coda |
The ending
consonant (s) sound (if any) |
“d” |
More examples:
|
Word |
Syllables |
Breakdown |
|
dog |
1 |
Dog |
|
apple |
2 |
Ap-ple |
|
banana |
3 |
Ba-na-na |
|
elephant |
3 |
El-e-phant |
Are [a:]
Or [É”:]
Err [ Ê’:]
Some other English syllables could have no onset but a
termination:
Am [ æ m]
Ought [ É”:t]
Ease [ i: z]
Finally, some English syllables could have both onset and
termination:
Run [ r Λ n]
Sat [ s æ t]
Fill [ f I l]
Importance:
1. Pronunciation: syllables help in correctly pronouncing
words.
2. Dividing words into syllables can help in spelling.
3. Syllables are key to understanding stress and intonation.
Rules of stress placement within the word
One syllable or single-syllable words, especially nouns, adjectives,
verbs and adverbs receive primary stress if they are pronounced in isolation.
But the question of placing stress on the first or the second syllable or so
arises when a learner of English as a second/foreign language has to pronounce
a word having more than one syllable. Roach (2000) propounds the following criteria
to be considered so as to decide on stress placement within the word:
a) Whether the word is morphologically simple.
b) Whether the word is complex as a result of containing one
or more affixes.
c) Whether the word is compound as a result of combining two
independent words.
d) The grammatical category to which the word belongs (noun,
adjective, verb, adverb, etc.)
e) The number of syllables in the word.
f) The phonological structure of the syllables in the word.
Simple words:
Simple words are those not composed of more than one grammatical unit and are usually either disyllabic or trisyllabic. While in case of a two-syllable word the primary stress is on either the first or the second syllable and the other syllable remains unstressed, in case of a three-syllable word the primary stress is either on the first, the second, or the third syllable,
If the second syllable of a 'two-syllable verb' has a long vowel
or diphthong or if it has more than one ending consonant, the second syllable receives stress:
Re’move
a’pply
a'rrive a’ttract
Af the second syllable of a 'two-syllable verb' has a short
vowel and one or no ending consonant, the first syllable receives stress:
'open ‘enter
'equal envy
If the second syllable of a 'two-syllable verb' contains the
diphthong / au /, the first syllable receives stress:
'follow ‘borrow
'mellow ‘hollow
These rules also apply to 'two-syllable adjectives",
excepting a few of them such as 'honest' and 'perfect':
di'vine co’rrect
'lovely ‘even
'hollow ‘mellow
'Two-syllable adverbs' and 'prepositions' are found to
behave like verbs and adjectives. However, 'two-syllable nouns' require a different
rule. If the second syllable has a short vowel, the first syllable receives the
stress. Otherwise, the second syllable is stressed:
'money ‘product
ba'llon de’sign
If the last syllable of a 'three-syllable verb' contains a
short vowel and not more than one ending consonant, the second syllable is
stressed:
de'termine en’counter
If the last syllable of a 'three-syllable verb' contains a
long vowel or diphthong or more than one consonant, the last syllable receives
primary stress and the first syllable secondary:
enter'tain resu’rrect
If the last syllable of the
'three-syllable noun' contains a short vowel or the diphthong / au/, it
receives no stress. If the second syllable has a long vowel or diphthong or
more than one ending, consonant, it is stressed:
mi'mosa di'saster
po'tato sy'nopsis
If the last syllable of the
'three-syllable noun' has a short vowel and the second syllable a short and not
more than one the consonant, the first syllable receives stress:
‘custody 'quantity
‘Emperor ‘cinema
If the last syllable of a
'three-syllable noun' contains a long vowel or diphthong and/or more than one
ending consonant, it receives secondary stress and the first syllable receives
primary stress:
'inte, llect 'alka, li
'mari,gold 'stalac,tite
This rule also applies to
'three-syllable adjectives':
'oppor,tune 'dere,lict
'inso,lent anthrou,poid
The rules discussed and
exemplified above do not cover all the simple words of the English language.
They are only related to major categories of two- and three- syllable lexical
words. However, these rules are supposed to help ESL/EFL learners substantially
to place stress on the appropriate syllables of a large number of commonly used
simple words.
Complex words:Here complex words include those words which are made from a basic stem word with the addition of an affix, that is, a prefix coming before the stem, e. g. 'in-'+'complete'-> 'incomplete', or a suffix coming after the stem, e.g. 'care' + '-less' ->'careless'. Affixes can have one of three possible effects on words stress:
First, affixes themselves receive
primary stress:
Second, affixes have no impact on
stress placement within the word:
Third, affixes influence stress,
which is shifted to a different syllable of the stem:
We have here dealt with those
prefixes and suffixes which are common and productive, and are supposed to help
ESI learners to a considerable extent.
Compound words are those ones
which are constituted of at least two independent words, for example. ‘sun’+
‘rise' 'sunrise', 'fruit' +'cake' "fruit-cake', 'battery" +
‘charger’ 'battery charger', etc.
The compound that combines two nouns receives primary stress on its first
element:’
‘sunrise 'typewriter
‘tea-cup'desk lamp, etc.
The compound that is made up of an
adjectival first element and the '-ed' morpheme at the end permits primary
stress on the second element:
bad -'tempered
heavy -'handed
black -' coloured
half -'timbered, etc.
The compound which has a number in
some form as its first element permits primary stress on the second element:
four -'wheeler
second -'class
third -'party, etc.
The compound that functions as an
adverb receives primary stress on its second part:
east -'west
down -'stream
head -'first, etc.
Lastly, the compound that contains
an adverbial first element and functions as a verb permits stress on the final
part:
ill -'treat
down -'grade
back -'pedal, etc.
