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Middle English adjectival innovations of native origin (1200-1400) formed by prefixation
Ortutayová, Dominika ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to analyse and describe the Middle English adjectival innovations of native origin coming into existence by prefixation in the period of 1200-1400. The formations are described from the point of view of their word-formation and semantics, the individual word- formation patterns are identified and analysed in terms of their productivity. In the theoretical part we present three points of view - social, typological and word-formational - which allow us to formulate our hypothesis consisting in the assumption that the native prefixation will exhibit gradual signs of decreasing productivity, brought about both by the language-external and language-internal causes - the language being overwhelmed by the an influx of foreign elements due to political and social situation at the time; as well as gradual phonological and semantic non- transparency of the native prefixes. The empirical part is based on the analysis of the 219 adjectives retrieved from the Oxford English Dictionary. Our results show that 7 out of 13 prefixes are decreasing in productivity or unproductive, yet the situation is not homogeneous and we were able to identify eight possible scenarios of development in productivity patterns. Our hypothesis is thus confirmed only partially - both the extra and...
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International insolvency law
Čermák, Jan ; Brodec, Jan (advisor) ; Růžička, Květoslav (referee)
This diploma thesis deals with the topic of international insolvency law, in particular with certain areas of European insolvency law, with an emphasis on the matters of international jurisdiction for opening of main and territorial insolvency proceedings and international jurisdiction to hear actions related to insolvency proceedings. Furthermore, this diploma thesis is aimed at evaluation of the Czech legislation regarding cross-border insolvencies. The legal framework for European insolvency law was incorporated into the Insolvency regulation in 2002. Due to disagreements between certain member states of the EU regarding some of the important institutes of cross-border insolvencies the Insolvency regulation often contains vague provisions. It, therefore, fell to the Court of Justice of the European Union to provide interpretation of such ambiguous clauses. In 2012 the European commission created a report on the application of the Insolvency regulation and simultaneously presented a long awaited proposal for modernisation of the European insolvency law in the form of the Insolvency regulation recast. The aim of the Insolvency regulation recast is to promote cooperation between member states in the matter of cross-border insolvency proceedings. Additionally, it codifies a substantial part of the...
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Uncomplemented postnominal adjectives
Mervová, Lenka ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The thesis provides a quantitative survey and a detailed description of noun postmodification by single uncomplemented adjectives, i.e. cases where a modifying adjective phrase represented only by an adjective follows a head noun. The theoretical background of this thesis is based mainly on Randolph Quirk et al.'s A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985). The data for empirical corpus based research have been drawn from the British National Corpus by the means of a corpus query extracting the sequence noun+adjective+verb. This query returned 6,413 concordance lines out of which, after manual assessment, the resultant sample of 4,627 examples was compiled. The data obtained were further examined and categorized, revealing that up to eleven categories are needed to account for the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic factors, and other communicative implications and lexicalized conventions that motivate the use the postnominal position.
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Antonymous adjectives in children's and adult literature
Najberková, Tereza ; Čermáková, Anna (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The topic of this thesis are adjectival antonyms in child-directed fiction. The primary aim of the thesis is to compare the usage of antonyms in adult fiction and child-directed fiction on the basis of a contextual co-occurrence of antonyms. The two areas of focus are the discourse functions of antonymy and the canonicity of antonyms. The thesis presents an analysis of antonyms identified in the context of 51 most frequent adjectives in a corpus of fiction written for children. The thesis is structured into three major parts. The first part provides a theoretical framework which summarizes the research of the discourse functions of antonymy and reviews the methods of measuring antonym canonicity. The second, methodological part, explains the methodology and describes the data used for the purposes of this study. The selection of data relies mostly on manual classification of the concordance lines. The third, analytical part, analyses and classifies the antonyms found in the corpus of child-directed fiction and compares them with selective samples extracted from adult fiction. A comparison of the most frequent adjectives in both corpora is also provided. Keywords: antonymy, discourse functions, antonym canonicity, ancillary antonymy, coordinated antonymy
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Variation in expressing the past in "The Proceedings of the Old Bailey"
Irwin, Zuzana ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
(in English) This thesis explores relationships among the tenses that express the past in the English language. Among these tenses are: past simple, past continuous, present perfect, present perfect continuous, past perfect, and past perfect continuous. The research focuses on the variation between the past simple (which also includes past continuous) and the present perfect (which also includes progressive constructions). The researched variation is the use of the past simple in the context of the present perfect in which the Present-Day English (PDE) would use the present perfect, and vice versa. Three decades (1731-1740, 1791-1800, and 1861-1870) were chosen from the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The findings were compared to the PDE situation. The material was collected from an online database called The Proceeding of the Old Bailey, which is believed to be one of the most reliable sources that are representative of the spoken language of the day. It was thought that the variation would be observed best in spontaneous spoken language. The aim was to study spoken language that was influenced by the grammatical prescriptivism of the age only marginally. There was an expectation that the occurrence of the past simple in the context of the present perfect would gradually decrease...
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Detection options of drenage and ameliorate channels using remote sensing data
Čermák, Jan ; Potůčková, Markéta (advisor) ; Štych, Přemysl (referee)
The purpose of this work is to explore detection options of subsurface drainage systems using remote sensing data. Drainage drains soggy soil and increases its fertility, but also allows transport of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosporus into waterways. Location of drainage systems is often unknown because of missing or inacurrate project documentation. Theoretical part is mostly devoted to the description of remote and ground methods of drainage detection. Then objectives of the work are solved. Drainage indications are described in specialized aerial photographs of visible and infrared part of the spectrum. These indications are compared with historical project plans. Methods aimed to improve indication of drainage including Laplacian filter and NDVI are applied and evaluated. Main output is binary raster expressing location of drains. Accuracy of results is evaluated in relation to vectorized indication of drainage from the source images.
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English counterparts of the Czech instrumental case
Sláma, Jakub ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
1 Abstract The present thesis deals with English translation counterparts of Czech non-prepositional instrumental case forms of nouns. The theoretical part briefly describes the Czech case system and the status of the instrumental case, both non-prepositional and prepositional, within this system, and also discusses certain (especially morphological) aspects of the instrumental case. Subsequently, syntactic functions and semantic roles of non-prepositional instrumental case forms are characterized, which serves as a basis for attempting to describe the possible English counterparts of non-prepositional instrumental case forms, especially with respect to the semantics. The methodological section of the thesis includes arguments for a primarily semantic approach (rather than an all-syntactic one). The analysis is based on a sample of 110 non-prepositional instrumental case forms and their English counterparts, i.e. 10 examples for each of the delineated semantic specifications (viz. agent, direction or path, manner, accompanying circumstances, the phasal instrumental case, instrument, material, means, actional means, viewpoint, cause) excerpted from the parallel corpus InterCorp v8. The analysis aims to identify the primary realization form for each semantic specification and to describe semantic and...
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Reciprocal pronouns "each other" and "one another"
Maratová, Magdalena ; Brůhová, Gabriela (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The subject of this thesis are English reciprocal pronouns each other and one another. There are many approaches to the issue of reciprocity in English (such as generative, typological or transformational) nonetheless; this study attempts to approach the issue from the general perspective. The thesis is a corpus based study and the primary corpus chosen for this analysis is the British National Corpus, from which 100 examples were extracted (i.e. 50 examples on the pronoun each other and 50 instances on the pronoun one another). The main goal of this thesis was to map the immediate environment of the pronouns - in depth analysis was especially paid to the issue of the pronouns' antecedents, which concerns the number of participants in the reciprocal action (meaning whether they refer to two participants, to a group of three and more or whether they pertain to an unspecified group - i.e. when making a general statement). Further, the pronouns' preference to animate or inanimate entities was discussed, the pronouns' verbal collocates, their syntactic functions within clauses and finally their stylistic distribution. Key words: reciprocal pronouns, number of participants in the reciprocal action
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The role of the mother tongue in EFL classes
Ménová, Martina ; Gráf, Tomáš (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
This thesis focuses on the use of the mother tongue in foreign language teaching and learning. Recently there has been a notable shift towards promoting the use of the mother tongue. The theoretical part of the thesis maps the attitudes to the mother tongue in current literature as well as the suggested ways of its use in the classroom. The practical part attempts to analyse the students' attitudes towards the incorporation of Czech into English learning and teaching and their experience with its use from their secondary schools. To obtain the data, an online questionnaire was employed. The respondents are first- and second-year students of English and American studies who are expected to be able to analyse both the advantages and disadvantages of using Czech. The practical part focuses on the efficiency of Czech in comparison with English, ways of presenting grammar and vocabulary, the relation between the mother tongue use and the proficiency of students, and learning strategies of the respondents. Based on the analysis, suggestions regarding the mother tongue use are presented in the conclusion.
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Using Children's Literature in Teaching English at Elementary Schools
Vraštilová, Olga ; Mánek, Bohuslav (advisor) ; Mothejzíková, Jarmila (referee) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
of the thesis The dissertation thesis deals with the problem of using children's literature in teaching foreign languages at elementary schools. It frames the topic by Czech curricular documents and constituents of the teaching-learning process, provides a historical survey and lists the genres of the children's literature. It characterizes the skill of reading in foreign language teaching and deals with the position of the literary text and lesson planning with children's literature within the foreign language teaching process. Attention is also paid to children's literature as the constituent of the pre-service teacher training. The aim of the thesis is to find out whether children's literature is used in foreign language teaching at elementary schools, whether contemporary textbooks use it, how it is perceived by in-service and pre-service teachers and last but not least what children's literature in the teaching-learning process of foreign languages has to offer. Research tools used for the purposes of the thesis were questionnaires, observations, specially prepared teaching materials based on literary texts and analysis of a textbook. The research proved that children's literature is used both by contemporary textbooks and by teachers in the foreign language education process. Since there is...
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