Syllabus (Weeks 1-5)

Spanish 317

Translating Collocations and Combinations I

Students with disabilities:

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations is requested to speak with either of us during the first two weeks of class.  All discussions will remain confidential.  Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center. Any student with a disability requiring accommodations in this course is encouraged to contact either of us after class or during office hours.

Availability:

Please feel free to contact us at home from 8:30 am to 6:30 pm (other hours only in an emergency).  You may contact us by e-mail at any time, but be advised that we don't always have time to check our e-mail in the morning before class and that we check it for the last time around 6 pm daily. Thus, an e-mail posted around midnight might not be read until after class the following day. Students are responsible for timely communications with the instructors. If a student cannot meet a deadline and wishes to talk to us about an extension, he or she must do so at least 72 hours before the deadline unless there is a medical or family emergency as defined in university policy.  Our office hours are Thursdays from 9:30 to 10:30 and are posted on our door in RH 322. Please feel free to make an appointment to see us if our office hours are not compatible with your schedules.

Prerequisites:

This course sequence is taught at the 300-level of proficiency in Spanish. Because of this, four semesters of college Spanish, placement test, or equivalent proficiency are required. Spanish and linguistics majors as well as students who have taken Spanish 315/316 The Art and Mechanics of Translation I and II are especially welcome in this course sequence, but all those who meet the requirements are qualified to enroll.

Description:   

Spanish 317 Translating Collocations and Combinations I

This is an advanced language acquisition course taught using a lexical and lexicographical approach. Students will explore the fascinating world of word combinations and collocations in English and Spanish texts in order to determine how a given part of speech undergoes semantic changes depending on the words around it. Four semesters of college Spanish, placement test; Span 315 or 316; or equivalent proficiency. Albin and Urrutibheity

Textbooks:

Koike, Kazumi (2001) Colocaciones léxicas en el español actual: estudio formal y léxico-semántico. Madrid y Tokio: Universidad de Alcalá, Takushoku University (Required. Available from the instructors on the first day of classes)

Davies, Mark (2005) A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish. New York and London: Routledge (Recommended. A copy will be placed on Reserve at Fondren Library)

Course Description / Aims

This course will build on and further develop knowledge and awareness of lexical issues in English and Spanish. Specific areas of focus will include:

•          basic terms and concepts
•          the nature of meaning
•          layers of meaning
•          meaning and context
•          lexical relations
•          style and register
•          collocations and fixed expressions
•          multi-word phrases
•          lexis and grammar
•          lexicography
•          corpora
•          frequency and range
•          types of Spanish collocations
•          collocations of Spanish verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs
•           functional, aspectual and lexical collocations in Spanish
•           morphology of the Spanish verb 
•           modifications of constituents I and II
•           consonant and vowel  extensions, vowel/diphthong alternations
•           consonant and vowel replacements
•           shortening and lengthening of constituent I
•           spelling changes of verb constituents
•           old present and past participles
•           the verbs  ser  and  estar 
•           defective and impersonal verbs

Students will explore the implications of these and other issues for teachers and learners and apply their theoretical knowledge of these areas to the compilation of a dictionary entitled Spanish-English Dictionary of Verbal Collocations (SEDVC) where their contributions to this work will be acknowledged.  The SEDVC will be published in 2008 by John Benjamins.

Learning Outcomes

The successful student will:

•    have a broad knowledge and understanding of issues in semantics that are important for translating from English and Spanish
•    have learned how to investigate word meaning and usage in reference to dictionaries and language corpora
•    be able to analyze texts and comment on how words and phrases are used and combined to create meaning
•    be able to apply his/her knowledge and understanding gained to critical analysis of lexicons and language banks
•    be able to use monolingual and bi-lingual dictionaries with a high degree of sophistication
•    be able to use language banks and concordancers with a high degree of sophistication
•    have a thorough command of all types of Spanish verb forms in the various tenses and moods
•    have a thorough command of the most frequent Spanish verbal collocations

Course Evaluation

Since this is a new course sequence, your views on the course content, teaching, activities, exercises, resources, etc., are extremely important to us. Your comments and feedback will be requested at mid-term and again at the end of the course.

Papers

Students will write two papers for this course.

First Paper: Lexicography.

Students are free to choose a topic that is of particular interest to them. Some of the topics that come to mind include the history of dictionaries, types of dictionaries, dictionaries and translation, dictionaries and language acquisition, electronic corpora, an in-depth study of one particular dictionary or type of dictionary, may chose to write a 'prologue' for the SEDVC, etc. This paper must be in essay or article form and be written with accessibility in mind. This should not be a dense academic paper but rather an interesting, well-researched, personal meditation on some aspect of lexicography. The length of this paper is entirely up to the student. For accessibility's sake, it is probably best to write a short piece rather than a long one.  For guidance in terms of style, read The Translation Journal (TJ), The Vocabula Review (TVR), Salon and similar e-magazines. Effective, fun and well-written essays/articles that match the content of translation or language e-journals such as the TJ  or TVR  may be selected by the instructors and the student encouraged to submit them for publication.

Second Paper: Lexis.

Students are free to choose a topic that is of particular interest to them. Some of the topics that come to mind include "nym" words, polysemy, metaphor, fixed expressions, idioms, similes, proverbs, sayings, collocation and chunking, translation problems, etc. This should not be a dense academic paper but rather an interesting, well-researched, personal meditation on some aspect of lexis. The length of this paper is entirely up to the student. For accessibility's sake, it is probably best to write a short piece rather than a long one. For guidance in terms of style, read The Translation Journal (TJ), The Vocabula Review (TVR), Salon and similar e-publications. Effective, fun and well-written essays/articles that match the content of translation or language e-journals such as the TJ  or TVR  may be selected by the instructors and the student encouraged to submit them for publication.

Exams

There will be two short exams in this course. More information will be forthcoming.

Compilation of the SEDVC

Students will work in pairs. Each student will be responsible for compiling the collocates for 10 Spanish verbs a week and for translating those collocations into English. In addition, each student will be responsible for editing the weekly compilation of his/her partner before presenting it in class. Students are expected to bring questions and problems to light during class time.

Text Book (Instructors will bring it to class for you to purchase)

Koike, Kazumi (2001) Colocaciones léxicas en el español actual: estudio formal y léxico- semántico. Madrid y Tokio: Universidad de Alcalá y Takushoku University.

Week  1 (Albin): Introduction

• Our Web Site in Yahoo Groups
• Methodology and Research
• Mark Davies's Corpus del español, CORDE, CREA and Logos (see Links)
• COBUILD and other English Langauge Corpora (see Links)
• Bibliography
• Reference Sources on Reserve and on the Stacks at Fondren
• Resources online
• Collocation exercises and games
• Words That Never Stray (Courtesy of Richard Lederer)

Readings

Wilkinson "Using a Specialized Corpus to Improve Translation Quality" In The Translation Journal  http://accurapid.com/journal/33corpus.htm

*Albin  (In The Translation Journal)

"On Dictionaries: A Conversation with Ilan Stavans" (April 2005)   http://accurapid.com/journal/32dictionaries.htm       

"For the Benefit and Helpe of Ladies and Gentlewomen: A Translator's Historical Review of Dictionaries and Their Eccentricities" (October 2004) http://accurapid.com/journal/30dicreview.htm

*Stavans (In our Web Site, Translated into Spanish by Verónica Albin)

Días de diccionario (In press, to be released October 2006 by UNAM)

Week 2 (Albin): Review

• Accentuation review and exercises
• Introduction to the Spanish gerund
• Introduction to Spanish regular and irregular past participles
• Introduction to the collocation of BAGS adjectives in Spanish
• Distribution of verbs in the bank

Readings

*Martínez de Sousa, José "Lexicografía práctica: Clases de diccionarios" (Available on Reserve at Fondren)

*Rodríguez, Gustavo "Clases de diccionarios" (Available in our Web Site, Links)

*Devalpala, Shalom "Typological Classification of Dictionaries" (Available in our Web Site, Links)

*Fiske, Robert H "The Decline of the Dictionary" (Available in our Web Site, courtesy of RHF)

*Fiske "The Fiske Ranking of College Dictionaries"  (Available in our Web Site, courtesy of RHF)

Questions on Devalpala (due Tuesday, week 3)

• ¿Qué es un sintagma?
• ¿Qué  es un paradigma?
• El Diccionario de uso del español de María Moliner está clasificado como un 'diccionario sintagmático'. ¿Por qué?
• ¿Qué entiendes por un 'diccionario paradigmático'? Da dos títulos de diccionarios de este tipo.
• Con base en estos dos conceptos, ¿cómo clasificarías el  Diccionario de colocaciones verbales  que vamos a escribir juntos? ¿Por qué?
• Este diccionario que vamos a escribir juntos, ¿es diacrónico o sincrónico? ¿Por qué?
• 'Nuestro diccionario', de aquí en adelante denominado SEDVC (Spanish English Dictionary of Verbal Collocations), ¿es un diccionario textual (i.e. text dictionary)?
• ¿Considerarías que el SEDVC  deber ser principalmente descriptivo o normativo? ¿Por qué?
• Da una descripción, no mayor de 1000 palabras, del futuro SEDVC, incluidas las características externas que consideras debe tener.

Week 3 (Albin):  Dictionaries - A Vital Resource

• What is a dictionary?
• What is in a dictionary?

• Different kinds of dictionaries
• Corpora and dictionaries
• Comparing and selecting dictionaries
• Using dictionaries
• Using corpora
• Discussion of Week 1 Readings
• First 20 verbs. We will work on them together in class.

Readings

*Koike, Chapter 1 

Questions on Koike (Due Tuesday, week 4)

• Alonso Ramos dice que la concurrencia de rubio con pelo está determinada por el significado de rubio porque "en su definición debe haber una mención a pelo". ¿Puedes dar otros ejemplos según el marco teórico de Ramos?

• Halliday indica que la concurrencia de unidades léxicas debe ser tratada en el nivel léxico y no en el nivel gramatical.  Propone, por ejemplo, que la gramática no es capaz de explicar los siguientes comportamientos  de los adjetivos ingleses strong y powerful.  

Strong/powerful argument

strong/*powerful tea

*strong/powerful car

• ¿Puedes dar dos ejemplos más en inglés y dos en español?

• Explica el concepto de "solidaridad léxica unilateral" de Coseriu y compáralo con el de "solidaridad léxica multilateral". Ofrece un ejemplo de cada clase.

• Según Koike, ¿cómo se diferencian las colocaciones de las locuciones?

• ¿Puedes dar 5 ejemplos de colocaciones y  5 de locuciones?

Week 4 (Albin):  Sept 19 and 21 Albin and Urrutibéheity

• Guest speakers: lexicographers West, Coggins, and Trabing

Week 5 (Albin):  Verbs - Methodology of Entries

• We will continue working together on the first 20 verbs

Week 6 (Urrutibéheity)