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• Luis Miguel García Sánchez

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Profesores de Enseñanza Secundaria INGLÉS

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Text Analysis NEVER DO THAT TO A BOOK When I was eleven and my brother was thirteen, our parents took us to Europe. At the Hôtel d'Angleterre in Copenhagen, as he had done virtually every night of his literate life, Kim left a book facedown on the bedside table. The next afternoon, he returned to find the book closed, a piece of paper inserted to mark the page, and the following note, signed by the chambermaid, resting on its cover: SIR, YOU MUST NEVER DO THAT TO A BOOK. My brother was stunned. How could it have come to pass that he—a reader so devoted that he'd sneaked a book and a flashlight under the covers at his boarding school every night after lights-out, a crime punishable by a swat with a wooden paddle—had been branded as someone who didn’t love books? I shared his mortification. I could not imagine a more bibliolatrous family than the Fadimans. Yet, with the exception of my mother, in the eyes of the young Danish maid we would all have been found guilty of rampant book abuse. During the next thirty years I came to realize that just as there is more than one way to love a person, so is there more than one way to love a book. The chambermaid believed in courtly love. A book's physical self was sacrosanct to her, its form inseparable from its content; her duty as a lover was Platonic adoration, a noble but doomed attempt to conserve forever the state of perfect chastity in which it had left the bookseller. The Fadiman family believed in carnal love. To us, a book's words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy. Hilaire Belloc, a courtly lover, once wrote: Child! do not throw this book about; Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure. What would Belloc have thought of my father, who, in order to reduce the weight of the paperbacks he read on airplanes, tore off the chapters he had completed and threw them in the trash? What would he have thought of my husband, who reads in the sauna, where heatfissioned pages drop like petals in a storm? What would he have thought (here I am making a brazen attempt to upgrade my family by association) of Thomas Jefferson, who chopped up a priceless 1572 first edition of Plutarch's works in Greek in order to interleave its pages with an English translation? Or of my old editor Byron Dobell, who, when he was researching an article on the Grand Tour, once stayed up all night reading six volumes of Boswell's journals and, as he puts it, "sucked them like a giant mongoose"? Byron told me, "I didn't give a damn about the condition of those volumes. In order to get where I had to go, I underlined them, wrote in them, shredded them, dropped them, tore them to pieces, and did things to them that we can't discuss in public."

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Profesores de Enseñanza Secundaria INGLÉS

Byron loves books. Really, he does. So does my husband, an incorrigible book-splayer whose roommate once informed him, "George, if you ever break the spine of one of my books, I want you to know you might as well be breaking my own spine." So does Kim, who reports that despite his experience in Copenhagen, his bedside table currently supports three spreadeagled volumes. "They are ready in an instant to let me pick them up," he explains. "To use an electronics analogy, closing a book on a bookmark is like pressing the Stop button, whereas when you leave the book facedown, you've only pressed Pause." I confess to marking my place promiscuously, sometimes splaying, sometimes committing the even more grievous sin of dogearing the page. (Here I manage to be simultaneously abusive and compulsive: I turn down the upper corner for page-marking and the lower corner to identify passages I want to xerox for my commonplace book.) All courtly lovers press Stop. My Aunt Carol—who will probably claim she's no relation once she finds out how I treat my books—places reproductions of Audubon paintings horizontally to mark the exact paragraph where she left off. If the colored side is up, she was reading the lefthand page; if it's down, the right-hand page. A college classmate of mine, a lawyer, uses his business cards, spurning his wife's silver Tiffany bookmarks because they are a few microns too thick and might leave vestigial stigmata. Another classmate, an art historian, favors Paris Métro tickets or "those Inkjet-printed credit card receipts—but only in books of art criticism whose pretentiousness I wish to desecrate with something really crass and financial. I would never use those in fiction or poetry, which really are sacred." Courtly lovers always remove their bookmarks when the assignation is over; carnal lovers are likely to leave romantic mementos, often three-dimensional and messy. Birds of Yosemite and the East Slope, a volume belonging to a science writer friend, harbors an owl feather and the tip of a squirrel's tail, evidence of a crime scene near Tioga Pass. A book critic I know took The Collected Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe on a backpacking trip through the Yucatan, and whenever an interesting bug landed in it, she clapped the covers shut. She amassed such a bulging insectarium that she feared Poe might not make it through customs. (He did.)

QUESTIONS Time assigned, 1h15’ 1. Analyse genre, text type and communicative functions in 100 words. (1 point) 2. Explain and find examples in the text of compound words, derivational affixes, irregular plurals and borrowings. (1 point) 3. Find anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric references in the text. (0.5 point) 4. Analyse the following sentence from the text. [...] a reader so devoted that he'd sneaked a book and a flashlight under the covers at his board school every night after lightsout [...] (0.5 point) 5. Discuss on the British spelling words and variants in the text. (0.5 point) 6. Find inversion in the text and explain why the writer uses it. (0.5 point) 7. Explain the final sentence "He did". (0.5 point) 8. Explain the meaning of the following words according to the text: rampant, wantonly, shredded, dog-earing the page. (0.5 point)

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1. Analyse genre, text type and communicative functions in 100 words. (1 point) It is an essay, a short piece in prose where the writer expresses her reflection on the two different ways people physically treat books in the first person singular: “During the next thirty years I came to realize that…” This essay belongs to the type of reflective autobiography and look at the world through the keyhole of anecdote rather than the objective, factual type. She accounts for various experiences of her relatives with books: “my brother”, “my father”, “a college classmate of mine”. Therefore the main function in the text is expressive according to Bühler or emotive following Jakobson. The addresser’s own attitude towards the content of the message is emphasized. She compares loving books to loving people and divides readers between courtly lovers and carnal ones. The former treat physical books with respect, for them “its form is inseparable from its content”. The latter love books but do not respect their physical content. A metaphor expresses this idea well, “a book’s words were holy, but the paper, cloth […] were a mere vessel”. By means of exophoric reference “to us”, we know that the writer includes herself in the latter. We find emphatic resources in the text that convey the writer’s attitude to the topic. For instance the use of inversion, “So does Kim”; rhetorical questions, “how could it have come to pass that he […] had been branded as someone who didn’t love books?”; similes: “where heat-fissioned pages drop like petals in a storm”, “sucked them like a giant mongoose”; aside comments: “I would never use those in fiction or poetry, which really are sacred”. Moreover adjectivation is rich both in attributive form (“a noble but doomed attempt”, “a priceless 1572 edition”) and in predicative position (“to be simultaneously abusive and compulsive”). Mrs Fadiman also uses exaggeration at the end of the text “a bulging insectarium that she feared Poe might not make it through customs” in order to support the group of book abusers. At the same time there is sexual connotation in the explanation of how carnal lovers approach the action of reading. For them, it is associated to having sexual intercourse. Some examples are “Byron […] did things to them that we can’t discuss in public”, when it comes to book marking carnal lovers are prone to leave bulging objects inside books, etc. Somehow we also find referential elements both in her explanation of the two ways of loving books, and the differences in pagemarking them.

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Profesores de Enseñanza Secundaria INGLÉS

2. Explain and find examples in the text of compound words, derivational affixes, irregular plurals and borrowings. (1 point) Following Quirk we will analyze the most important word formation processes in the text. Compound words:  Noun compounds, type verb and object: bookseller, book-splayer, pagemarking, book critic, credit card, boarding school Verbless compound nouns: flashlight; chambermaid, paperbacks, airplanes, bedside table, cardboard, roommate, classmate.  Verbal compounds: upgrade, bookmark, dog-earing  Adjective compounds in the text that belong to type verb and object: backpacking (trip), heat-fissioned (pages), spread-eagled (volumes), inkjet-printed (credit card receipts). Verbless adjective compound: left-hand, right-hand, three-dimensional, commonplace.  Adverb compound: facedown. We find different derivational affixes: De-adjectival noun suffixes such as -ness forming an abstract noun: pretentiousness, and -cy in intimacy. Different denominal suffixes forming a noun -ian in historian. The form -arium (meaning “a place”) derives from an adjectival ending in Latin: insectarium. Some denominal suffixes form adjectives -y in messy, guilty, holy; - ious in grievous, and bibliolatrous (one overly devoted to books); -less (meaning “without”) in priceless and -al in financial, vestigial. Deverbal noun suffixes combine with verb bases to produce concrete count nouns to refer to professions: -er: bookseller, lawyer -or: editor. Sometimes the deverbal noun suffix forms abstract nouns as for instance -ation in assignation, mortification, translation; -ism, denoting an action or its result, in pragmatism, -ing: deverbal noun suffix in boarding. Deverbal suffixes forming adjectives are -ive: in abusive and compulsive; -able/-ible in punishable, inseparable, incorrigible, -ed in colored; and -ing in interesting and bulging. -ly is an adverb suffix added to an adjective: promiscuously, simultaneously, wantonly, horizontally. We also find it as a denominal suffix forming an adjective in likely. In some words we find prefixes denoting negation: dis- in disrespect, un- in unholy; with the meaning of subordinate under- in underline Irregular plurals: stigmata (singular form stigma) Borrowings: sauna from Finnish, insectarium from Latin, Métro from French.

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3. Find anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric references in the text. (0.5 point) Anaphoric reference where pronouns refer back to some idea mentioned before: The chambermaid believed in curtly love. A book was sacrosant to her, its form inseparable from its content; her duty as a lover was Platonic adoration […] “Her” refers to the chambermaid whereas “its” refers to a book. Cataphoric reference points forward to something mentioned later on in the text. In Never do that to a book “that” refers to the examples of book treatment accounted for in the text. Exophoric reference points out to something outside the language of the text which is understood in the context for instance: “to us” refers to both the writer and the readers, but also references to The Grand Tour, Tioga Pass, the Yucatan, Audubon. 4. Analyse the following sentence from the text. [...] a reader so devoted that he'd sneaked a book and a flashlight under the covers at his board school every night after lights-out [...] (0.5 point) Following Downing, we drew a tree to make a morpho-syntactic analysis of the noun phrase. However, we understand that the information conveyed in the graphic could also be written down in a different way. For time constrains, you may only have mentioned the Noun Group made of a determiner, the noun head and the adjectival group as a qualifier.

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sneaked

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‘d

a

book

noun a n d

conjunction a

Ind article

flashlight

noun

under

p r e p

covers

n o u n

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the

h e

Indefe article

that

lexical verb

h e a d

Noun Group

completiv e

article

operator

head

pronoun

Multiple heads

Prep Group

Noun group

determiner

A d j u n c t

Direct Object

a t

prep

hea d

h i s

pronoun

dertemin

board school

n o u n

head

Noun group

completive

PrepGroup

A d j u n c t

that he'd sneaked a book and a flashlight under the covers at his board school every night after lights-out

result finate clause

qualifier

conjunction

VGroup

Predicator

devoted

adjective

head

determ

Subject

so

adverb

modifier

Adj Group

qualifier

Subordinating

Conjunct

result finite clause

reader

noun

Indefinite article

a

head

NGroup

Profesores de Enseñanza Secundaria INGLÉS

determiner

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n i g h t

n o u n

h e a d

after

p r e p

head

lights-out

noun

H e a d

Noun Group

completive

Prep Group

Adjunc t

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every

Distributive art

determiner

Noun Group

Adjunct

Profesores de Enseñanza Secundaria INGLÉS

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5. Discuss on the British spelling words and variants in the text. (0.5 point) This text is by an American author therefore she uses American spelling in words such as “realize”, “colored” and “harbors” (“realised” “coloured” and “harbours” in BE). There are also American English expressions “classmate college” that would rather be expressed as “university classmate” in British English. However, we find British words and spellings as well such as “bedside table” instead of “nightstand” or “night table”, “spreadeagled” instead of “spreadeagled”; “facedown” instead of “face down”. The writer might be reflecting her connection with the British culture. 6. Find inversion in the text and explain why the writer uses it. (0.5 point) A. […] just as there is more than one way to love a person, so is there more than one way to love a book. B. Byron loves books. Really, he does. So does my husband […] C. So does Kim. Inversion in A, B and C is used to express agreement with previous ideas in the text as well as for emphatic purposes. 7. Explain the final sentence "He did". (0.5 point) We find anaphora in “he” referring back to the American poet Poe and on the other hand, we find ellipsis in the use of the auxiliary “did” which acquires sense by interpreting the context, i.e. it refers to being able to go through customs. Eventually the book written by Edgar Allan Poe did manage to go through customs. It’s an exaggeration of the use of books for catching insects. 8. Explain the meaning of the following words according to the text: rampant, wantonly, shredded, dog-earing the page. (0.5 point) “Rampant” is an adjective used to describe something that is spreading very quickly and in a way that is difficult to control. Rampant book abuse refers to the unrestrained habit of mistreating books. “Wantonly” is an adverb which means showing no thought or care for the rights, feelings, or safety of others, not limited or controlled. There is also a sexual connotation attached to it. “It was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated.” For the writer’s family it was no sin to treat books blatantly bad if the occasion was prompt for it. “Shredded” is a verb in the past simple tense which means to turn off a long, thin piece of paper. The writer’s editor torn off Boswell’s books, he “shredded them” in order to obtain the knowledge he wanted to extract. “Dog-earing the page” is a compound word converted into a verb followed by the object complement. It means folding down the corner of a page the same way the ears of many breeds of dog flop over. That’s one way the writer marked her way on the book she was reading.

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Profesores de Enseñanza Secundaria INGLÉS

Listening Exercise The Music in your Brain Source: ABC radio. All in the Mind. The Music in your Brain

Sunday 6 October 2013 5:00PM

From minute 2:04 to 5:38, from 6:49 to 10:35 and from 11:29 to 12:33 The time assigned for this exercise is 45 minutes including listening to the document twice.

QUESTIONS 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

Where is the "Broadmann area 47" located and what is it useful for? Why does Daniel Levitin mention "God save the Queen"? Why do people with Alzheimer and some dementia can remember songs? How does Steven Pinker call music? why? Which hormones are released when listening to music? Brief outline of the listening.

Answers 1. Broadmann Area 47 is located in the prefrontal cortex. It helps to form expectations about what is going to happen in the world. 2. “God Save the Queen” is mentioned as an example of a song that would not work in a retrieval cue because that is an anthem, the type of song you frequently hear. In a retrieval cue, neuroscientists try to pull a very particular kind of memory by using songs that are constantly played and then, disappear so that subjects can remember things they experienced a very long time ago. 3. Because of the way music is represented in the brain. Music involves a lot of different components (tempo, pitches, harmony) that are located in different regions of the brain, so when retrieving a song a lot of cues play at the same time. If you are not able to access to all of them, a few may trigger the others. 4. Music is called 'auditory cheesecake' because Mr Pinker attributes music to an accident rather than biological evolution. 5. Oxytocin, prolactin and dopamine are released.

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6. In this radio interview Daniel Levitin talks about how music works in the brain. Mr Levitin is a professor of psychology and neuroscientist who has studied Broadmann Area 47 for 15 years. This is the part of the brain that helps us to predict what is going to happen next and which is especially active when listening to music. Both musicians and composers make listeners feel different moods according to their interpretation and writing the notes in the scores. They need to strike a balance between predictable pieces and unpredictable ones so that the listeners’ expectations are rewarded or violated in interesting ways. Furthermore music is a great multi-network connector that reaches all parts of the brain. There is a strong connection between music and memory as a lot of feelings and recollections flood back when listening to some songs. The difficulty lies on retrieving experiences engraved in our memory, to find a retrieval cue that works as a fishing bait to pull things from our past. Songs that we heard a long time ago, rather than frequently heard ones, may act as a good retrieval cue because they are very specific. In fact, music is used with people suffering from Alzheimer and some form of dementia. When listening to songs they heard when they were much younger, they could remember the melody and lyrics from the past. This is so because the numerous components involved in music such as melody, rhythm, lyrics, tempo, the pitches, etc. are served by different neural networks. They are reinforcing, if some of these musical elements cannot trigger memories, other elements will. As for the role music plays in evolution, Steve Pinker considers music is an evolutionary accident. However, Daniel Levitin believes that it is music that has made evolution of the brain possible since some neurochemical systems respond to music and hormones such as oxytocin, prolactine and dopanime are released when playing or listening to music.

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