We used to think of grammar as the bones of the language and vocabulary as the flesh to be added given that language consisted largely of life generated chunks of lexis. This “skeleton image” has been proverbially used to refer to that central feature of lexis named collocation- an idea that for the first 15 years of language study and analysis gave a moment‟s thought to English classroom material and methodology.
The work of John Sinclair, Dave Willis, Ron Carter, Michael McCarthy, Michael Lewis, and many others have all contributed to the way teachers today approach the area of lexis and what it means in the teaching/learning process of the language. This also seems to have incorporated lexical ideas into the teaching mechanism and highlighted that the present knowledge of the nature of English lexis and collocation in particular raises a set of important issues for teachers in the first place. Such issues are:
1. Given that grammar still rules the sentence, lexis should be one of the principle organizing parts of the syllabus;
2. The need for different strategies for vocabulary learning at different stages of learning, both in and outside the classroom;
3. The need for more developed techniques that would help the students record and store lexis in ways that could enable them to retrieve and revise the proper words for examinations, i.e., lead them to become „lexis collectors‟.
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4. The need for a fresh look at bilingual dictionaries every now and then given that conventional dictionaries cannot give all the information necessary about collocation.
5. Lexis is an area where literal translation is often impossible; a collocation in English may be totally different in Spanish or German and thus the implication of translation should not be discarded as it is essential in English. (The translation skills of the non-native speaking teachers must be recognized in this area.)
6. The two main components of language (grammar and vocabulary) merge into one another and the dividing line is much less clear cut than teachers and textbooks often operate; yet accuracy must be treated as a late-acquired skill.
English, like any other language, has a number of such discourse markers including well, yes, surely, on the contrary, so and nevertheless. They are lexical items or grammatical forms typically serve to relate one utterance to another in discourse.
Discourse markers are considered as cues or signals for the reader or the hearer that make cohesion and coherence, In fact, these markers are found in various grammatical forms such as interjections, linking adverbials, greetings and farewells….etc. Discourse markers. Play a very important role, not only in conversation, but in written text as well.
One of the main aims of Metrical Phonology Theory (MTT) is to provide the stress of poetry on the syllable, the foot, and the phonological word levels. Analyzing poetry embodies one of the most prominent and controversial metrical issues as the subsumed number and types of syllables, feet, and meters are balanced compared to other literary texts. The MTT saw the light during the late seventies (1975) and (1977) by Liberman and Prince, who produced it as part of non-linear phonology. Its roots originated in prosody, which studies poetic meter and versification. The basis of the metrical analysis is the prosodic analysis developed in London by Firth and his students in 1950. This study aims to identify the values of five metri
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Lexicography, the art and craft of dictionary-making, is as old as writing. Since its very early stages several thousands of years ago, it has helped to serve basically the every-day needs of written communication among individuals in communities speaking different languages or different varieties of the same language. Two general approaches are distinguished in the craft of dictionary-making: the semasiological and the onomasiological. The former is represented by usually-alphabetical dictionaries as such, i.e. their being inventories of the lexicon, while the latter is manifested in thesauruses. English and Arabic have made use of both approaches in the preparation of their dictionaries, each having a distinct aim ahead. Wit
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Modal verbs are also called auxiliary verbs, helping verbs and modal auxiliaries. They are special auxiliary verbs that express the degree /of certainty of the action in the sentence, attitude or opinion of the writer concerning the action. These auxiliary verbs are can, could ,may, might, must, ought to, shall, should, will, would and had better. Modality is one of the most difficult aspects of learning English, because the form of modals does not follow the conventional rules of grammar, and there are so many meanings of modals that students often get confused about which modal to use. Also, many EFL learners face difficulty in choosing the proper modal verb that fit certain situations because each modal verb has many functions. The pr
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Reading is one of the essential components of the English language. Countries that use English as a second language (ESL) sometimes have difficulties in reading and comprehension. According to many researches, mother tongue has proved some interferences with learning a second language. This study investigated the results of reading difficulties of young second language learners in terms of accuracy, comprehension, and rate using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability test. The study was carried out in one of the High Schools for Boys in Hyderabad, India and included Grade five, aged 10-12 years. In order to understand the reading difficulties of English as a second language, a qualitative approach was employed. Interview, reading tes
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This paper investigates the collocational use of irreversible food binomials in the lexicons of English (UK) and Arabic (Iraq), their word-order motivations, cultural background, and how they compare. Data consisted in sixteen pairs in English, versus fifteen in Arabic. Data analysis has shown their word order is largely motivated by logical sequencing of precedence; the semantically bigger or better item comes first and the phonologically longer word goes last. These apply in a cline of decreasing functionality: logical form first, semantic importance second, phonological form last. In competition, the member higher in this cline wins first membership. While the entries in each list clearly reflect culturally preferred food meals in the UK
... Show MoreNominal ellipsis is a linguistic phenomenon found in English and Arabic .It is
based on leaving out a part of a nominal construction or more for the sake of good
style , compactness and connectedness .This phenomenon is found in the language of
the Glorious Qur’an .The study in hand is concerned with how translators handle
translating Qur’anic verses which contain ellipted nouns , i ,e. , to what extent the
translated Qur’anic verses are close to the original ones , and to what extent their
translations serve understanding the meanings of the glorious verses while at the
same time maintaining their beauty in style. The study aims at shedding light on
nominal ellipsis in English and Arabic .The study undertak
This paper presents the syntactic dimension of ditransitive verbs in terms of the universal theory of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). This theory is syntactic in nature, but it also covers the semantic as well as the pragmatic aspects of any linguistic phenomenon. It assumes a universal framework through which syntactic constructions can be analyzed. However, the morphological structure that each language enjoys renders the universal treatment more complicated and can question the universal nature of such a theory. In this paper, an attempt is made to check if the universal tenet of the theory is maintained over two typologically different languages: English and Arabic in respect of the way that double-object constructions (DOCs)
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QJ Rashid, IH Abdul-Abbas, MR Younus, PalArch's Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology, 2021 - Cited by 4