English Grammar : MODALS ( I/You as subject and Would you mind )

hi guys, in this section, i'm going to give some explanation to you about MODALS in English Grammar Lesson. Check it out...

INTRODUCTION>>>

MODALS or the modal auxiliaries in English Grammar are can, could, had better, may, might, must, ought to, shall, should, will and would  and etc.  the aim of modals is to express speaker's attitudes. it can express that a speaker feels something is necessary, advisable, permissible, possible and probable. in addition, they can convey the strength of those attitudes. Modals do not take a final-s, even the subject is she, he or it.

this is example of modals

MODALS of Polite Request

• Polite requests with I/You as the subject

for example :

- Can I borrow herr bike? or can you borrow her bike?  >>> is used informally to request permission ( little less polite than may and could )

- May I come to her house? or may you come to her house with me?  >>> they are equally polite whereas might is quite formal and polite, it is used much less frequently than may or could.

- Could I see her homework? or could you see her homework? >>> could used as a present or future meaning in a polite request, not a pass meaning.

• Polite request with Would You Mind

Would you...?

If you are asking other people to do things, you would normally use Would you + infinitive. Would you like to…? is also a very polite way of suggesting or requesting something, politer than Do you want to…?.

example : 

- Would you please bring your library books back today ? cause it will be need by another borrower. 

Would you mind…?

If you want to sound particularly polite, or if you think the answer may be negative, you can also use Would you mind + verb-ing as the preferred alternative to Could you…? Would you mind…? literally means: Would you object to…?

example: 

- Would you mind locking the door when you leave? ( ans: No, not at all! )

Similarly, if we use Do / Would you mind if I…? to make a request, we may be anticipating possible objections: 

- Would you mind if I put off talking to Henry until tomorrow? ~ I think that's a mistake. I think you should speak to him today

- would you mind if I turned off the TV? >>> the meaning same as may i turn off the TV? is it all right if I do it? will it cause you any trouble? is it problem to you?

THANKS FOR ATTENTION

SEMANTICS SUMMARY

semantics of course is the study of the meaning. that is a simple definition about semantics.

The word semantic (from French sémantique) was invented byMichel Bréal during the 19th century.

- According to Richmond H. Thomason " semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistics expression. The language can be natural language, such as English or Navajo, or a artificial language like a computer programming language ".

- According to The Evolution of language (2010) by W. Tecumseh Fitch " semantics is the branch of language study that consistently rubs shoulder with philosophy. this is because the study of meaning rises a host of deep problems that are the traditional stomping grounds for philosophers ".

- According to Hockett (1945) " language is a complex system from habits and the system has 5 subsystem namely Grammatical, Phonology, Morph-phonemic (morfo-fonemik), Phonetic and Semantic.

- According to Ferdinand de Saussure "  linguistics without semantics is nothing ".

this pictures will give a simple explanation about semantics.

semantics of course has roles. this is the roles of semantics

Seven Types of Meaning

Geoffrey Leech in his ‘Semantic- A Study of meaning’ (1974) breaks down meaning into seven types or ingredients giving primacy to conceptual meaning. The Seven types of meaning according to Leech are as follows.

1) Conceptual or Denotative Meaning:

Conceptual meaning is also called logical or cognitive meaning. It is the basic propositional meaning which corresponds to the primary dictionary definition. Such a meaning is stylistically neutral and objective as opposed to other kinds of associative meanings. The aim of conceptual meaning is to provide an appropriate semantic representation to a sentence or statement. A sentence is made of abstract symbols. Conceptual meaning helps us to distinguish one meaning from the meaning of other sentences. Thus, conceptual meaning is an essential part of language. A language essentially depends on conceptual meaning for communication. The conceptual meaning is the base for all the other types of meaning.

2) Connotative Meaning:

Connotative meaning is the communicative value of an expression over and above its purely conceptual content. It is something that goes beyond mere referent of a word and hints at its attributes in the real world. The boundary between conceptual and connotative seems to be analogous. Connotative meaning is regarded as incidental, comparatively unstable, in determinant, open ended, variable according to age, culture and individual, whereas conceptual meaning is not like that . It can be codified in terms of limited symbols.

3) Social Meaning:

The meaning conveyed by the piece of language about the social context of its use is called the social meaning. The decoding of a text is dependent on our knowledge of stylistics and other variations of language. We recognize some words or pronunciation as being dialectical i.e. as telling us something about the regional or social origin of the speaker. Social meaning is related to the situation in which an utterance is used.

4) Affective or Emotive Meaning:

For some linguists it refers to emotive association or effects of words evoked in the reader, listener. It is what is conveyed about the personal feelings or attitude towards the listener. E.g. ‘home’ for a sailor/soldier or expatriate and ‘mother’ for a motherless child, a married woman (esp. in Indian context) will have special effective, emotive quality. In affective meaning, language is used to express personal feelings or attitude to the listener or to the subject matter of his discourse.

5) Reflected Meaning:

Reflected meaning and collocative meaning involve interconnection

At the lexical level of language, Reflected meaning arises when a word has more than one conceptual meaning or multiple conceptual meaning. reflected meaning has great importance in the study of semantics.

6) Collocative Meaning:

Collocative meaning is the meaning which a word acquires in the company of certain words. Words collocate or co-occur with certain words only e.g. Big business not large or great.Collocative meaning refers to associations of a word because of its usual or habitual co-occurrence with certain types of words. ‘Pretty’ and‘handsome’ indicate ‘good looking’. However, they slightly differ from each other because of collocation or co-occurrence. The word ‘pretty’ collocates with –girls, woman, village, gardens, flowers, etc. Collocative meanings need to be invoked only when other categories of meaning don’t apply. Generalizations can be made in case of other meanings while collocative meaning is simply on idiosyncratic property of individual words. Collocative meaning has its importance and it is a marginal kind of category.

7) Thematic Meaning:

It refers to what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or a writer organizes the message in terms of ordering focus and emphasis .Thus active is different from passive though its conceptual meaning is the same. Various parts of the sentence also can be used as subject, object or complement to show prominence. It is done through focus, theme (topic) or emotive emphasis. Thematic meaning helps us to understand the message and its implications properly.

in simple definition of the 7 types :

1. Conceptual Meaning = Logical, cognitive or connotative content.

2. Connotative Meaning = What is communicated by virtue of what language refers

3. Social Meaning = What is communicated of the social circumstances of Language

4. Affective Meaning = What is communicated of the feelings and attitudes of the Speaker through language.

5. Reflected Meaning = What is communicated through associations with another Sense of the same world.

6. Collocative Meaning = What is communicated through associations with words which co-occur with another word.

7. Thematic Meaning = What is communicated by the way in which the message is organized in terms of order and emphasis.

this pictures will give u more explanation about semantics.

kenapa memilih semantic?

kenapa pilih semantik untuk jadi bahan pembelajaran di linguistik? emang ntar ilmunya bisa diterapin kemana aja? asiknya apa sih? emang manfaatnya apa?

pertanyaan seperti ini adalah pertanyaan yang kalau dijawab satu yang lain bakalan ikut terjawab.

kenapa saya memilih semantik? saya suka banget bermain sama makna dan suka menganalis kata. kalau bahasa anak sekarang suka kepo. tapi ini kepo yang bermanfaat. saya suka mencoba mengerti banyak persepsi. awalnya karena saya suka baca novel. kadang, kalau kita tidak cuma baca aja gampang, tapi harus ngerti perasaan penulis, harus ngerti apa yang coba disampaikan dari setiap chapternya. setiap orang pasti punya persepsi yang berbeda beda. misalnya, ada cowo yang baik banget tipenya. emang ini cowo baik banget ke cewe atau ke cowo. tapi, karena tipenya ini, para cewe suka beradu persepsi. ada yang bilang cowo itu PHp,PLAYBOY,MODUS dan lain-lain. padahal, emang ini cowo baik banget. kalau kita tidak bisa mengartikannya dengan serius, pasti akan banyak argumen negatif yang kita ciptain dipikiran kita untuk cowo baik tadi.

semantik bisa diterapin dibanyak bidang kehidupan. misalnya bidang kedokteran, untuk membaca hasil check itu perlu bantuan ilmu semantik. saya ambil contohnya lagi, misalnya dalam ilmu perpustakaan, Penerapan hubungan semantik dalam ranah ilmu perpustakaan digunakan pada kegiatan pengolahan bahan perpustakaan. Hubungan semantik berkaitan erat dengan analisis subjek dan penentuan istilah dalam pengindeksan sebagai titik akses yang bermanfaat pada proses temu-balik informasi. Oleh karena itu, hubungan dua kata atau istilah ini selanjutnya diuraikan lebih lanjut dalam berbagai bentuk kategori hubungan . dan banyak lagi contohnya.

jadi, belajar semantik ini asik banget. kita akan dilatih untuk beradu argumen dengan banyak argumen orang lain dan argumen kita sendiri. ilmunya juga tidak akan sia-sia. percaya deh. ohya, semoga nanti saya dan kalian bisa menerapkan ilmu ini disalah satu bidang yang ingin kita kuasai ya. GBU