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English Idioms of Comparison in Corpus Data
Emmer, Jaroslav ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Kopřivová, Marie (referee) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
This thesis presents a corpus-based investigation that focuses on adjectival similes. As similes are often overshadowed by metaphors, the existing research on similes using empirical evidence is relatively scarce. The presented work provides a complex account of adjectival similes in corpora using data from multiple heterogeneous sources. The methodology for mining adjectival similes from corpora is thoroughly described, along with the associated pitfalls. As every corpus requires a different approach, the CQL query designs are presented individually for each researched corpus. The corpus-based mining yielded a list of 309 unique adjectival similes. The obtained data are subjected to meticulous scrutiny in the form of both formal and content analyses. Following a statistical overview of the data collected from each corpus, the 60 most frequent similes are presented in detail, including their meanings and functions, typical targets, related similes, and frequencies. These similes are then searched in respected online dictionaries, and the findings suggest that dictionaries struggle to keep up with corpus evidence. The formal analysis shows a strong preference for monosyllabic constituting elements. Regarding their content, adjectival similes can be divided into five general ground- centred groups...
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Mathematical texts from the perspective ofdistributional phraseology
Steidlová, Lucie ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Dontcheva-Navrátilová, Olga (referee) ; Gledhill, Christopher (referee)
The thesis focuses on the distributional phraseology of mathematical research papers with the aim of providing a phraseological profile of this discourse through the description of its characteristic building blocks. It relies on inductive corpus-driven methodology, which is in accord with the exploratory character of the research. Specifically, the thesis makes use of the methodology promoted by Gledhill (2000) and Groom (e.g. 2010, 2019), which uses grammatical keywords as starting points for qualitative concordance analysis. The target discourse is represented by a corpus of mathematical research papers across three subfields which was designed and compiled for the purposes of the present study. A corpus of academic journal papers from a wide range of disciplines is used as the reference corpus. The detected keywords are used as pointers to potentially interesting phraseological units of the texts. Grounded in the framework of construction grammar, the thesis provides a detailed description of around fifty such units, i.e. the individual constructions the keywords appear in. Going one step further, the constructions are positioned in a network which represents their mutual relationships. Through the detailed descriptions on the one hand, and the relational networks on the other hand, the thesis...
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Clipping from the word-formation, word-class, stylistic/register, semantic and translational perspectives
Skala, Richard ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The analysis confirms the general findings of the authors dealing with the process of clippings. The trends which the thesis confirms are: Back-clipping is the most frequent type of clipping, the other types are rare. Clippings are mostly created from nouns. Plain clippings are mostly mono- or disyllabic and they mostly respect the syllable divisions in the base. This means that plain clippings are mostly created from the first syllable of the base. Clippings are mostly colloquial/informal. What the thesis adds is the precise expression of the proportions of the individual features and also the identification of the different motivation behind the creation of embellished clippings. In other words, the analysis shows that embellished clippings differ from plain clippings not only on formal grounds, i.e. the presence of the suffix, but also in other features: embellished clippings have more often an adjectival base, they are more often stylistically marked, more often slang, more often regionally specific and less often specific for a subject field. This shows that embellished clippings are trendy, created to attract attention, part of the substandard language and that the ingroup status is even intensified in embellished clippings. Medial clipping, as a minor type of clipping is established alongside...
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Linguistic aspects of translating informal/slang expressions in American TV series subtitles
Vaňková, Marie ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Gráf, Tomáš (referee)
The present study treats the problem of translating American slang and informal vocabulary into Czech. Its aim is to explain why this kind of vocabulary can be difficult to translate and to compare two different approaches to the task. It works with material excerpted from the subtitles of an American TV series, the official and the unofficial version of its translation. The experimental part brings information on the incidence of different types of mistakes and it identifies the main tendencies of the translators in dealing with various problems. The final part characterizes the strategies of individual translators, commenting on their strong and weak points.
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Czenglish: a basic outline of an EFL variety
Králová, Kateřina ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Sparling, Don (referee)
Czenglish, an interlanguage developed by Czech learners of English, is a specific English variety which has not been comprehensively studied yet. Not surprisingly, English differs from Czech in varying degree at all levels, starting with the pronunciation of individual sounds and writing conventions, morphology and syntax up to the textual level, pragmatics etc. These differences are due to the different character of the two languages and the different conventions. Learners transfer their linguistic habits from their mother tongue into the language they learn and as a result a modified variety of language comes into being which is neither Czech nor completely English. This is not to say that every mistake made by a Czech speaker of English IS automatically Czenglish. It seems appropriate to apply this term only to an English that systematically and repeatedly exhibits not only features that can be attributed to the influence of Czech, but also errors that rather than being due to negative transfer are common to all learners of English regardless of other nationalities, which shows them to be developmental errors typical of an interlanguage found in language acquisition. Describing such a variety is a long process and it is impossible to cover all the facts in this thesis. However, it might provide a useful...
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A comparison of progressive forms in English and Albanian
Borshi, Orkida ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
On a very general level we can say that the results of the Project Research support the claims made by the authors of the surveyed literature in the Theoretical Overview, i.e., that the progressive forms in Albanian really exist. However, our research has qualified the observations on Albanian progressive constructions in the literature in one important respect: it has, perhaps surprisingly, shown that the po-constructions (in spite of their restriction to the present and imperfect) rather than the jam + duke forms are by far the more common of these two formal means of expressing progressiveness in Albanian. The prevalence of the po-constructions over the duke ones is surprising because the present/imperfect tense restrictions of the po-constructions are not the only ones. Other tenses are not allowed to combine with the po-constructions for diverse reasons (the preterite because of its terminative nature, the future tense because of the particles do te and the impossibility of po to combine with other particles before the verb). Another limitation that appeared in both parts ofthis study is the impossibility of the progressive po particle to accompany verbs denoting repetition or habit. If we were to speculate on the reasons for the prevalence of the po-constructions over the duke ones, we suppose that it...
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Digitization of Old and Middle English dictionaries
Tichý, Ondřej ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
The aim of the paper is both to outline the methodology of digitizing Old and Middle English dictionaries as well as to describe its successful implementation. It is argued that the digitization of old dictionaries is generally desirable, because it increases accessibility of valuable resources, which may be the only way of presenting their data to a wider audience. The paper first briefly and comprehensively surveys the field of Old & Middle English lexicographical resources, comparing in greater detail the most promising candidates for digitization. Possible and desirable features of a digitized dictionary are then explored and on that basis An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary of J. Bosworth & T. N. Toller is chosen for the digitization project itself. All the phases of the digitization are then described: scanning, character recognition, hand-corrections, data preparation and application development. The current state of the Bosworth-Toller digitization project is explained and presented, while two major suggestions are made for its future development: the re-tagging of its data and the development of a morphological analyser of Old English.
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Word-formation by ablaut vs. word-formation by suffixation in diachrony
Hejná, Michaela ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
The present bachelor thesis deals with word-formation by ablaut vs. word-formation by suffixation in diachrony, namely in Old and Middle English. The reason for choosing this theme lied in its general marginalization in grammar books, in which the reader finds detailed descriptions of the grammatical function of ablaut in Old and, to a lesser extent, also in Middle English. The aim of the thesis was to describe ablaut formations during these two stages of the language in a typological perspective. The analyses focus on introflectional features of the roots of the formations and show the decrease in various combinations of the individual realizations of the roots that display ablaut with inflectional (-a, -e, -o/-u; -) and purely derivational, agglutinative, suffixes (-lic; -full; -scip; -had; -d, -t, -). The thesis further focuses on whether the various realizations of the roots are connected with the selected suffixes also semantically, i.e. whether there exist formal and/or semantic correspondences in the combinations. The analyses themselves were preceded by determining morphologically related families on the basis of the Dictionary of Old English: A-F, the most recent and detailed dictionary of Old English, which covered entries under the letters A-F when our analyses were carried out. The same was done...
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The epistemic use of "I (don't) think" and its translational equivalents in Czech and Swedish
Vaculčiaková, Jana ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Hartlová, Dagmar (referee)
Our conversations invariably involve exchange of ideas, attitudes. Nevertheless, each one of us possesses an emotional and social sense referred to as 'face', which we expect everyone else to recognize. Whenever we share our point of view on something, we constantly put our face in danger of being exposed to a possible threat. Thus we seek ways, on the one hand, to express ourselves, but on the other hand, we at the same time strive to lessen the risk of a possible threat to our expectations as much as possible. The expression I think represents a very helpful tool in this process. Consequently, speakers make an extensive use of this particular expression for various reasons, either on purpose or unconsciously. The present paper digs deeper into the complex use of I think and attempts to analyze the diverse shades of meaning of I think cross-linguistically. Technically, the following thesis consists of two main sections: the theoretical and the research part. This paper picks up the threads of the previous studies of the epistemic I think on a cross-linguistic level. Before launching my study, I want to take stock of the key concepts and terminology that appeared in the two previous studies and that will likewise be used in the present one. Consequently, in the theoretical part I will address certain...
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The word-formation process of conversion in the language of internet PC games forums and reviews
Filipová, Anežka ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
The thesis treats grammatical conversion as a word formation process. Conversion is characteristic of the English language and on the basis of the frequency of its usage, in both the formal and the informal registers, it may be suggested that this process has no limitations. The colloquial language, however, is especially prone to make use of this word formation process. Moreover, due to its relatively recent occurrence in the word formation system, it may be proposed that conversion has the potential of even wider use in the future in creating new lexicon. The thesis attempts to show that this potential is already evident in the synchronous state of the language, not only in the high productivity of conversion, but also due to its versatility.
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