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Czech reflexive agent demotion in diachronic perspective
Pergler, Jiří ; Friedová, Mirjam (advisor) ; Berger, Tilman (referee) ; Zikánová, Šárka (referee)
The topic of this thesis is the Czech reflexive agent-demoting construction in a diachronic perspective, i.e., a construction traditionally called reflexive passive (or reflexive impersonal) in which the verb occurs in the reflexive form and the agent is demoted from the subject position. The thesis consists of two parts: theoretical and analytical. The aim of the theoretical part is to incorporate the existing knowledge about the Czech construction in question into the context of both the international literature on the issues of reflexivity or agent demotion and the theoretical linguistic literature in general. In Chapter II.2, I discuss some basic theoretical concepts (especially from the grammaticalization theory), showing how they can be applied to the area of Czech reflexivity and reflexive agent- demoting construction. In Chapter II.3, I deal with the issue of reflexivity: different approaches to the Czech reflexive marker se are compared and thereafter some comprehensive typological descriptions are summarized which allow us to demonstrate to what extent the situation in Czech corresponds to the functional distribution of reflexivity in a cross-linguistic perspective. Chapter II.4 addresses the question of agent demotion: different Czech constructions with the function of agent defocusing...
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The effect of the valency characteristics of the predicate verb on the syntactic order of adverbials
Rysová, Kateřina ; Zikánová, Šárka (advisor) ; Hošnová, Eva (referee)
The aim of the thesis is to verify the unmarked sequence of the chosen contextually unbounded adverbials (free verbal modifications) in Czech depending on, particularly, valency, semantics, form, length and the type of utterance in which they occur. The results of the thesis were gathered from linguistic analysis of more than 1, 700 utterances from the data of the Prague Dependency Treebank. It was shown that the factor of the verbal valency works stronger in the unmarked word order sequence than the influence of their semantics does (the membership in the semantic category, for example, of locus, time, manner and so on). In the basic word order in Czech, there are firstly the optional contextually unbounded adverbials and only then the obligatory ones. It is their semantics that decides the order of the optional adverbials (not expressed by the dependent clause). In contrast to the optional adverbials, the obligatory contextually unbounded adverbials also have clearly stronger tendency to appear in the role of the actual rheme in the functional sentence perspective. At the same time, optional contextually unbounded adverbials occur in both the anteposition and postposition, the obligatory ones in the postposition. However, similar behaviour as that of the obligatory adverbials may be also observed for the...
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Discourse relations in Czech and their representation in an annotated corpus of texts
Mladová, Lucie ; Hajičová, Eva (advisor) ; Zikánová, Šárka (referee)
The present thesis is a contribution to the widely discussed issue of how the syntactic structure of a sentence and the structure of discourse (text) are related. The syntactic sentence structure along with other language phenomena participates in building a coherent, comprehensible discourse. The author calls the syntactically motivated relations in discourse connective relations. These relations include coordinating relations and some of the subordinating relations within a sentence and, secondly, adjoining of discourse units across the sentence boundary. The explicit means of expressing connective relations are called discourse connectives. It is a group of language expressions that connect or adjoin discourse units while indicating the type of semantic relation between them, i. e. conjunctions, some subjunctions, particles and adverbials, and marginally also some other parts-of-speech. The present thesis describes the semantic category of discourse connectives in Czech on the basis of language data and their syntactic annotation in the Prague Dependency Treebank, and thus aims to contribute to the design of a language corpus annotation scenario capturing the discourse relations in Czech.
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Coreferential chains with non-specific and generic reference in Czech
Pergler, Jiří ; Lehečková, Eva (advisor) ; Zikánová, Šárka (referee)
The thesis dwells on the coreference relations in the text and their classification based on the reference types. In Chapter 2, I quote the main principles of the annotation of the textual coreference in the Prague Dependency Treebank, focusing especially on the division of the types of the coreferential relations, the type 0 and the type NR. In Chapter 3, I point out some problems connected with this division, which result particularly from the too broad definition of the type NR. In Chapters 4 and 5, I introduce some of the important literature in the field of reference and genericity. In Chapter 6, I propose my own typology of the referential relations which consists of four types based on the criterion of genericity (individual and generic reference) and the criterion of specificity (specific and non-specific reference). I also deal with the possibility of the referential expressions to participate in the coreferential relations and demonstrate that the proposed scheme is more suitable for the description of some complicated phenomena than the scheme employed in the Prague Dependency Treebank. In Chapter 7, I show how the proposed scheme can be used by the analysis of the coreferential relations in several texts.
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Syntax of the legal texts in diachronic point of view
Frausová, Lenka ; Hošnová, Eva (advisor) ; Zikánová, Šárka (referee)
The thesis deals with the language of legal documents and i t provides i ts readers wi th a description of i ts syntactic ::levelopment since 1918 up to now. On the background of the nethod by M . Těšitelová et al. Three text form three periods ~re analysed (about the years 1920, 1960 and 2000); their total range being 27000 word. The research results in the finding that the style of legal texts had its specific features at the beginning of the examined period allready. The sentences as a unit of predication gets longer. Further, the 1umber of nominal construction grows as one of the basic :haracteristics of the legal language. In the texts dated 2000 3. wider scale of analytic predicates is used. The vocabulary )f nonverbal clauses is impowerished. On the other hand, the 1umber of uses of postponed adj ecti ves grows considerabely, Lnfluencing the length of nominal groups. The thesis also )ffers a surwey of means of expressing intrinsic modality.
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Syntax in Bohumil Hrabal's prosaic works
Hobstová, Alžběta ; Hošnová, Eva (advisor) ; Zikánová, Šárka (referee)
This study is an analysis ofthe syntax in Bohumil Hrabal's prosaic works. It looks into the way Hrabal's syntax deviates from the "Czech norm", and the way his style evolved over time. For the purposes ofthe analysis, Hrabal's creative life has been divided into three chronological parts - early, middle and late. This periodization is essential for conceptualizing Bohumil Hrabal' s syntax usage and its evolution. Methodologically the study is based on a statistical analysis of observed traits in Hrabal' s syntax compared with the findings ofM. Těšitelová in Kvantitativní charakteristika současné češtiny - a quantitative research on the present-day Czech language. Against the backdrop ofwhat is considered the "Czech norm" the differences between Hrabal's creative periods become more obvious. To a certain degree these differences can be attributed to the use of different text models in each period-while most of the works from the early period were written as classic narratives, the later ones were more likely to be modem narratives. The most notable shift in Hrabal's syntax occurred between the early period and the later ones-more frequent use of longer compound and complex sentences consisting of greater number ofunits; more elaborate sentence structure, especially in terms of expanding. That is why in the...
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Word order in Czech subordinate clauses
Sedláček, Miroslav ; Hošnová, Eva (advisor) ; Zikánová, Šárka (referee)
This diploma essay contributes to the studies of the Czech word order. Its theoretical background is provided by the findings of the Czech school of functional sentence perspective (FSP), represented by Jan Firbas and Aleš Svoboda. Based on the material excerpted from the present-day Czech corpora SYN 2005, this paper presents a broad scale of word order varieties in Czech subordinate clauses. Special attention is paid to the word order position of the theme elements and the most common adverbial complements. In comparison to primary clause some differences are pointed out: The transit centre (or transit proper or theme proper) position in front of the theme centre and rheme is a characteristical feature of subordinate clause, whereas in the primary clauses it applies to rather limited number of clauses. The emotional (subjective) word order is often caused by unfitting allocation of information instead of emotional movement. The initial theme in the subordinate clause seems to be of higher degree of communicational dynamism (CD) compared to the primary clause. It proved useful to differentiate premedial theme (in front of transit centre), which has higher degree of CD than postmedial theme (behind transit centre). Influenced by the spoken language, final theme also occurs. The tension between FSP and...
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Verbal Forms Expressing the Past in 14th-Century Czech
Zdeňková, Jana ; Dittmann, Robert (advisor) ; Kučera, Karel (referee) ; Zikánová, Šárka (referee)
Mgr. Jana Zdeňková Slovesné formy pro vyjádření minulosti v češtině 14. století Verbal Forms Expressing the Past in 14th-Century Czech Abstract The topic of the present dissertation is the use of verbal forms for expressing the past in 14th-century Czech. In this period, the Old Czech system of past tenses underwent far- reaching changes: the original Slavic periphrastic perfect was spreading into contexts typical for the past tense, and as a result, the simple past tenses, i.e. the aorist and the imperfect, were gradually disappearing. In the theoretical part of the thesis, we describe the Old Czech verbal forms for expressing the past tense meanings and discuss the ongoing changes not only within Old Czech proper but also in broader typological and areal perspectives. In the analytical part, we present results of a research into the use of past tenses in 14th-century Czech, based on our own collection of nearly four thousand examples from Old Czech texts. In the analysis, we focus on phenomena that testify to the ongoing language change. We deal with the functional distinction between the simple past tenses and the original periphrastic perfect, with specifics of recession of the aorists and imperfects, with distribution of past tenses in relation to the aspect and to certain semantic/functional...
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The ongoing changes in the category of identification in contemporary standard and non-standard Czech
Dobiáš, Daniel ; Čermák, František (advisor) ; Zikánová, Šárka (referee)
While the category of in/definiteness in Czech and other Slavonic languages (except Bulgarian and Macedonian, cf. Corbett - Comrie, 2002) is not expressed by articles, the present paper is concerned with the observation that in contemporary spoken nonstandard Czech a) the demonstrative pronoun ten is developing functions of a definite article, and b) the indefinite pronoun nějaký is developing functions of an indefinite article (alongside with the numeral jeden). On the basis of quantitative analysis, I will demonstrate that this development is ongoing predominantly in spoken non-standard Czech, in which speakers mark identification even if it is obvious from other means (e.g. functional sentence perspective), whereas in standard Czech this tendency is still avoided. Methodologically this paper starts from grammaticalisation theory, according to which frequently used expressions are in certain contexts syntactically and morphological1y reanalyzed, and after having grammaticalised, they continue to develop new grammatical functions (cf. Traugott 1995). The general trend in the field of grammaticalisation is that new means are first very productive in spoken language and pervade standard language only after that. As will be shown later, the development of ten / nějaký in Czech is at a stage in which these...
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