cleft sentence
A cleft sentence is one in which a word or
phrase has been highlighted by being given its own verb, thus producing a
two-part or divided sentence. Clefting usually involves the formulas:
It is/was X who/that…
What (sentence) is/was…
and it permits
us to highlight any part of the sentence except the verb. If we examine a
sentence like:
Sally slipped
on the ice last Sunday.
we can use clefting to produce:
It was Sally who
slipped on the ice last Sunday.
It was on the ice that Sally slipped last
Sunday. It was last Sunday that
Sally slipped on the ice.
Pronouns can also be emphasised
this way so that:
She started
it.
can become:
It was she who started it.
although such clefting is less
common than:
She was the
one who started it.
Cleft sentences using the second
formula usually focus on non-human subjects or objects so that sentences such
as:
I fancy a
long, cool drink.
That legacy
will be really useful.
can become:
What I fancy is a long,
cool drink.
What will be really useful is that legacy.
See: foregrounding.
cliché
The term cliché is from the French word for a
stereotype printing plate composed of movable type. A cliché is a trite, hackneyed word or phrase, once perhaps
expressing insight, novelty or wisdom but now stale from overuse, Clichés take
a number of forms:
1 single
words or morphemes:
nice
situation
-wise (e.g. pricewise)
2 phrases:
at this moment/point in time cool, calm and
collected foregone conclusion
3 metaphors:
at death’s door bamboo/iron curtain
make a mountain out of a
molehill
4 formulas:
as far as I can see mark my words
to be perfectly frank
5
nicknames:
John Bull (UK)
Rocky (heavyweight boxer)
Uncle Sam (USA)
6
quotations (often inaccurate):
a lean and hungry look (Shakespeare)
a little
learning is a dangerous thing (Alexander Pope) (often misquoted as ‘a little
knowledge’)
tomorrow to
fresh woods and pastures new (John Milton) (often misquoted as ‘fresh fields’)
7 catch phrases:
a catch-22 situation by and large
keep a low profile
8
foreign phrases:
par excellence (beyond comparison) persona non
grata (unacceptable person) verb.
sap. (a word is enough to the wise)
Clichés
require little reflection on the part of the user or the recipient. They tend
to express stock ideas and evoke stock responses. This automatic, unthinking
response to clichés means that they can be useful in propaganda and it is because of this that many people have
condemned them. George Orwell expressed his views on the use of clichés in this way:
A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance
towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out
of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing
his words for himself.
‘Politics
and the English Language’ (1946)
There are no
objective criteria by which we can say ‘This is a cliché’ any more than there
are objective criteria for defining a work of art. If a word or phrase is
frequently used, however, so that it has lost most of its original power, then
it has one of the properties of a cliché. Many clichés involve aids to memory
such as alliteration or assonance:
cold comfort free and easy
suggesting that
some, at least, are relics of an oral culture. Some of the original value of a
cliché may be realised by a non-native user of English who may find phrases
such as:
an iron hand in a velvet glove gilding the lily
evocative and
even poetic. Moreover, some languages require for-mulaic references to indicate
respect or solemnity, and an inexperienced user of English may mistakenly
substitute clichés for such formulas, sometimes with surprising results, as in
an Indian student’s letter announcing his mother’s death:
Sadly, I have to inform you, sir, that the hand that rocks the cradle
has kicked the bucket.
See: address and reference, catch
phrase, fad words, phatic communion, propaganda.
clipping
A dipping is a type of word formation in which a shorter word
or phrase is made from a longer one. Clipped words are normally colloquial and
are more often spoken than written. Thus we find:
amp<ampere
Dip Ed<Diploma in Education
but not:
* univ<university
* trans<translated
which are
unspoken abbreviations. Clipped
forms may be based on pronunciation:
nuke<nuclear weapon/power
pram<perambulator
and because
they are used as full words, they take the same morphological endings as other
English words:
phone phones
phoning phoned
1
Clipped forms are often part of an in-group vocabulary:
exam lab prof vac (students) goalie pro ref sub (football)
disco EP fan pop (music)
Because of
their usefulness, some clippings have become part of our everyday vocabulary:
bus<omnibus
cab/taxi<taxicab gas<gasoline sport<disport
Others
coexist alongside their more formal sources:
auto
automobile
photo
photograph plane aero/airplane specs spectacles
2
Clipping of compounds and phrases also
occurs, although this tendency is limited by the need to have within the
expression a word that is unlikely to occur in many other contexts:
car<motor car
inter-city<inter-city train transistor<transistor radio typo<typographical error video<video recorder
3
As with other subdivisions of language,
clippings are not a totally discrete category. Some involve the clipping of
more than one English word:
perm<permanent wave or of a
Latin phrase:
infra dig<infra dignitatem (beneath one’s dignity)
mob<mobile vulgus (unstable crowd) or the
conjoining of two clippings:
hifi<high fidelity
and others
may change as the items they describe become more familiar:
stereophonic record player>stereo
record player>stereo television
set>TV>telly
4 Clipped
forms may vary between the UK and the USA:
UK USA
advert, ad ad (advertisement)
Chips French fries (chipped/fried potatoes)
maths math (mathematics)
See: abbreviation, acronym, contraction, word formation.
clothes
The terms for
some items of clothing differ between the UK and the USA, even though many of
the items are essentially the same. The reason for this is probably that dress
has changed radically since the political separation between UK and US
speakers, and both groups have introduced their own terms for the new garments.
The commonest differences are:
UK US
Anorak parka
Braces suspenders dinner
jacket tuxedo dressing gown bathrobe duffel coat pea jacket handbag purse
press stud snap
Purse change purse
pyjamas pajamas suspenders garters Tights pantyhose
trousers pants, slacks
underpants (under)shorts Vest undershirt
waistcoat vest
See: Americanism,
Anglicism, UK and US words, UK English, US English.
codes
Codes are generally thought of as a
means of restricting intelligibility to those who know how to interpret them.
However, there are also codes, like the systems of semaphore, sign languages
and morse, designed to promote intelligibility over obstacles such as deafness
or distance. One such system is particularly useful in overcoming not only
distance and interference but the potential ambiguity of the names of English
letters. (‘AC’, for example, is barely distinguishable from ‘SE’.) The spelling
code is used by the police and armed forces, in international and civil
aviation and marine communication:
A Alfa B Bravo C Charlie D Delta E Echo F Foxtrot
G Golf H Hotel I India J Juliett K Kilo L Lima M Mike
N November O Oscar P Papa Q
Quebec R Romeo S Sierra T Tango U
Uniform V Victor W Whiskey X Xray Y Yankee
Z Zulu
and the numbers 5 and 9 are pronounced fife and niner.
The term code is used by
sociolinguists to describe a variety of language and code- switching refers to a speaker’s ability to move from one
variety of language or even from one language to another in response to people
or events.
Basil Bernstein used the terms ‘restricted’ and ‘elaborated codes’ in
his discussion of the language used by children from different social
backgrounds. A restricted code was said to be marked by inexplicitness, simple
vocabulary and syntax and by references to the here and now. Elaborated codes
were thought to be explicit, well-organised, unrestricted with reference to
time and place, and making use of precise vocabulary and the grammatical
patterns of the standard language.
See: semiotics.
cognate
The term cognate refers to languages or units of
languages which derive from the same source. Irish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton are
cognate languages, all deriving in part at least from a Proto-Celtic language.
Words like Latin mater, English mother and Gaelic mathair are cognate words deriving from a common Indo-European root.
When the
subject, predicate or object in a sentence are lexically related as in:
A life has to be lived to
the full.
He now treats the treatment seriously.
We can talk
about a cognate subject, cognate predicate or cognate object.
See: analogue, core vocabulary.
cognitive
Cognitive meaning refers to those
aspects of meaning which do not involve a subjective or emotional response. To
say ‘One plus one equals two’ is obviously true and unlikely to evoke a strong
positive or negative reaction. Other words are not so semantically neutral,
however. The easiest way to illustrate the emotional content of some items is
to contrast words which are almost synonymous:
artisan workman politician statesman
resolute stubborn
Each pair
comprehends essentially the same cognitive
meaning but our choice of one word rather than the other would imply an
involvement. To describe someone as ‘resolute’, for example, is to suggest
approval, whereas to describe the same person as ‘stubborn’ implies criticism.
See: cliché,
connotation, denotation, synonym.
cohesion
Cohesion implies unity. When the term is
applied to a word in English, it means that the word cannot take an infix:
unmanly
but not:
*munan or *malyn
When the term
is applied to a sentence, it means that no constituent in the sentence is
obviously inappropriate or wrongly positioned:
She seemed to
love everyone.
but not:
*She love to
seemed everyone.
Cohesion is
most frequently applied above the level of sentence to a text which is a
unified whole and not just a collection of words or unrelated sentences.
Cohesion often manifests itself in terms of anaphora:
John Smith
walked in. He was tall and handsome.
as well as in consistency of vocabulary,
tense and subject matter.
See: anaphora,
discourse analysis, linkage.
coinage
A coinage is a new word formed according
to the phonological possibilities of the language. Because of the many methods
of word formation available to English users, coining is relatively rare,
except in advertising and in the creation of trade names. Monosyllabic coinages
tend to exploit hitherto unused slots in the language. For example, there are a
number of monosyllabic words consisting of a consonant+-id:
bid did hid kid lid
but
not all possibilities are used:
*cid fid gid jid
A coinage could
thus be created by using one of these vacant slots. Such a word would be
analogous in form with other -id words but it would also be novel.
Polysyllabic
coinages tend to combine novel elements with conventional morphemes, so that
the roots of decombubelise and spifflicate are novel but the affixes
are regular.
A number of coinages such as:
fun pun quiz
slang snob
have entered
the language and, because they do not break any morphological rules, are
indistinguishable from other words. Trade names such as Kleenex and Sqezy deliberately
break the conventional rules of spelling but are in accord with the normal
patterns of pronunciation.
