Description
Key-consonant theory is not just concerned with trying to find a meaning to consonants, but to use this information in order to facilitate learning the vocabulary of a second language (L2). Furthermore, this theory broadens the aspects of how we learn our first language (L1) because it shows deep connections between entities and what we associate to them. This understanding could potentially be applied to an L2 making it easier to recall many other new words, an unavoidable and tedious task. There are two goals for this thesis: to apply key-consonant theory to Spanish and to compare the results to English. Using my native speaker intuition, words beginning with eight consonants were categorized by semantic relationships; those categories were later put together into a metaphoric extension where a visual and stronger relationship is shown among the final categories. Within the metaphoric extension, there is one key word (in bold) and the others are sub-meanings as they branch out. These metaphoric extensions are the final results of the data that were then compared to bar-Lev's data in English. What is most interesting from the comparison, but not surprising, is the similarity between both languages, which reveals both languages' common history, the influence of Latin. As Spanish speakers learn English, and vice versa, one of the goals of such results is to encourage them to make connections on their own and be able to make an educated guess about a word?s definition instead of having to rely heavily on a dictionary. The reader should be warned that there is no concrete proof of the results; they simply try to explain the phenomenon of how we to associate one entity to another through language. It might be a concept hard to grasp, but without a doubt it is a point of view that opens up minds and possibilities. There has already been extensive research on the topic; it is not a new idea that consonants carry meaning, so I only wish to contribute results for one more language. I believe this theory also makes an attempt to portray how our mind does not solely focus on one meaning for an entity, but rather how it makes connections beyond our immediate thoughts. We are often unaware of this process and this thesis also sheds some light on its complexity.
