VOCABULARY FOR AUGUST 26

AMBIGUITY - A statement with two or more meanings that may seem to exclude one another in the context. Ex: “Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I’ll never know!”
There are two types of ambiguity, lexical and structural.
LEXICAL AMBIGUITY - is by far the more common. Everyday examples include nouns like 'chip', 'pen' and 'suit', verbs like 'call', 'draw,' ‘shot’ and 'run', and adjectives like 'deep', 'dry' and 'hard'. There are various tests for ambiguity. One test is having two unrelated antonyms, as with 'hard', which has both 'soft' and 'easy' as opposites.
STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY occurs when a phrase or sentence has more than one underlying structure, such as the phrases 'Tibetan history teacher' and 'short men and women', and the sentences 'The girl hit the boy with a book' and 'Visiting relatives can be boring'. These ambiguities are said to be structural because each such phrase can be represented in two structurally different ways, e.g., '[Tibetan history] teacher' and 'Tibetan [history teacher].'
DEDUCTIVE – Deductive reasoning works from the more general to the more specific. Sometimes this is informally called a "top-down" approach. We might begin with thinking up a theory about our topic of interest. We then narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that we can test. We narrow down even further when we collect observations to address the hypotheses. This ultimately leads us to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data -- a confirmation (or not) of our original theories.
INDUCTIVE - Inductive reasoning works the other way, moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. Informally, we sometimes call this a "bottom up" approach (please note that it's "bottom up" and not "bottoms up" which is the kind of thing the bartender says to customers when he's trying to close for the night!). In inductive reasoning, we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect patterns and regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up developing some general conclusions or theories.
ANTECEDENT – The word, phrase, or clause referred to by a pronoun. The AP language exam occasionally asks for the antecedent of a given pronoun in a long, complex sentence or in a group of sentences. A question from the 2001 AP test as an example follows:
“But it is the grandeur of all truth which can occupy a very high place in human interests that it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds; it exists eternally, by way of germ of latent principle, in the lowest as in the highest, needing to be developed but never to be planted.” The antecedent of “it” (bolded) is...? [answer: “all truth”]
CHIASMUS - Repetition of ideas in inverted order. Example: "I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction's job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." (David Foster Wallace)
PARALLELISM- Also referred to as parallel construction or parallel structure, this term comes from Greek roots meaning “beside one another.” It refers to the grammatical or rhetorical framing of words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs to give structural similarity. This can involve, but is not limited to, repetition of a grammatical element such as a preposition or verbal phrase. (Again, the opening of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities is an example: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of believe, it was the epoch of incredulity....”) The effects of parallelism are numerous, but frequently they act as an organizing force to attract the reader’s attention, add emphasis and organization, or simply provide a musical rhythm.
LITOTE- (pronounced almost like “little tee”) – a form of understatement that involves making an affirmative point by denying its opposite. Litote is the opposite of hyperbole. Examples: “Not a bad idea,” “Not many,” “It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain” (Salinger, Catcher in the Rye).
ZEUGMA - When a word is used with two adjacent words in the same construction, but only makes literal sense with one of them. Example: "He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men."
(Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried)
ELLIPSIS - Omission of one or more words, which must be supplied by the listener or reader.
-"True stories deal with hunger, imaginary ones with love." (Raymond Queneau)
-"Twenty-two years old, weak, hot, frightened, not daring to acknowledge the fact that he didn't know who or what he was . . . with no past, no language, no tribe, no source, no address book, no comb, no pencil, no clock, no pocket handkerchief, no rug, no bed, no can opener, no faded postcard, no soap, no key, no tobacco pouch, no soiled underwear and nothing nothing nothing to do . . . he was sure of one thing only: the unchecked monstrosityof his hands." (Toni Morrison, Sula)

VOCABULARY FOR AUGUST 19

IRONY: expression of something which is contrary to the intended meaning; the words say one thing but mean another.
*Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
PARADOX: an assertion seemingly opposed to common sense, but that may yet have some truth in it.
*What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young. George Bernard Shaw
CLICHE: A trite expression--often a figure of speech whose effectiveness has been worn out through overuse and excessive familiarity.
[Fr. "a stereotype plate"]
-"Live and learn."
-"What goes around comes around."
EUPHEMISM: Substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.
[Gk. "use of good words"]
-"Fertilizer" for "manure"
-"Ground beef" for "ground flesh of a dead cow"
DICTION: etymology: speaking; style (from dicere, to say)definition: "The use of words in oral or written discourse" (Holman and Harmon); choice of words.
SYNTAX: etymology: to arrange together (syn + tassein --which is also the root of "tactics
definition: the order or arrangement of words in a sentence.
METAPHOR: implied comparison achieved through a figurative use of words; the word is used not in its literal sense, but in one analogous to it.
*Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. Shakespeare, Macbeth
SIMILE: an explicit comparison between two things using 'like' or 'as'.
*My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease, Shakespeare, Sonnet CXLVII
*Reason is to faith as the eye to the telescope. D. Hume [?]
ARCHAIC: ancient, old-fashioned
Her ARCHAIC computer could not handle the latest software.
ENGENDER: to produce, cause, or bring about
Laura's fear of dogs was ENGENDERED at age six, when she was bitten by one.