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Subject - Verb Concord and pronominal reference after collective nouns in British and American English
Outratová, Tereza ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
This thesis is concerned with subject-verb agreement with collective nouns in British and American English. The thesis deals with verbal as well as with pronominal agreement. The first part of the thesis gives theoretical background of concord with collective nouns with respect to differences between the two major varieties of English. The second part of the thesis describes the sampling method by which 4 samples have been excerpted from British National Corpus (representing British English) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (representing American English). Sample 1.containing 25 instances of the collective noun FAMILY and sample 2. containing 25 instances of the collective noun STAFF have been excerpted from BNC. Following the same method, two samples have been excerpted from COCA - sample 3. containing 25 instances of the collective noun FAMILY and sample 4. containing 25 instances of the collective noun STAFF. The analytical part includes description and analysis of individual samples. The samples of British English have shown that the collective noun FAMILY is used in the singular or in the plural depending on whether individual members or the whole group is regarded. On the contrary, the collective noun STAFF occurred more frequently in plural constructions. In American English the...
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Syntactic, semantic and FSP aspects of ditransitive complementation: a study of blame and provide
Balcarová, Adéla ; Brůhová, Gabriela (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
The present thesis is concerned with the syntactic, semantic and FSP aspects of ditransitive complementation. All these aspects are discussed not only theoretically, but mainly practically in an analysis of two ditransitive verbs: blame and provide. For the purpose of the present analysis, 200 sentences (100 for each of the analyzed verbs) were excerpted from the British National Corpus. The analyzed verbs enter into two possible sentence structures. The first construction includes a subject and verb as well as a direct object and a prepositional object (SVOdOprep); the alternative construction includes a subject and verb as well as an indirect object and a prepositional object (SVOiOprep). One of the points of analysis is a quantitative formulation of the number of occurrences of each of the respective sentence structures for the analyzed verbs within the excerpted material. Within the ditransitive construction we may sometimes encounter object omission of either of the objects (more commonly the indirect object). The analysis concentrates on the possibilities of object omission within ditransitive constructions with the two analyzed verbs. Part-of-speech representation of both objects is also a matter of analysis; there are altogether four possible part-of-speech patterns depending on whether...
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The meaning and Czech equivalents of "should" in subordinate nominal content clauses after evaluative and directive expressions
Hráská, Michaela ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
This diploma thesis examines functions of the modal verb should in nominal content clauses introduced by the conjunction that. The Czech counterparts of the English sentences are considered as well. The research focuses on the so-called putative should which occurs after main clauses with directive, epistemic, attitudinal, evaluative and volitional expressions. Should expressing intrinsic (root) modality (expressing permission, obligation or ability) is left out of account. The work pays attention to the basic classification of nominal content clauses deriving from a verbal form alternating with putative should. Two kinds of putative should will be dealt with, namely should after directive and volitional expressions which could have its alternative form in the present subjunctive and should after epistemic, attitudinal and evaluative expressions which could possibly alternate with the indicative. The work examines these verbal forms in relation to the intentional modality of the sentence in an independent form (e.g. declarative, interrogative or imperative sentence). The work is divided into two parts: theoretical and practical. The theoretical part of the work describes the basic classification of all central modal verbs in English and putative should in terms of its relation towards the...
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The Indefinite Article as a Signal of the Countable Use of Uncountable Nouns
Hradecká, Markéta ; Brůhová, Gabriela (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
The Indefinite Article as a Signal of Countable Use of Uncountable Nouns The present thesis deals with the role of premodification in the countability of nouns. More specifically, it concentrates on the dual class nouns, i.e. nous that are used both countably and uncountably. The aim of the thesis is to determine whether the presence of premodification results in the countable use of dual class nouns. Also, the semantics of the premodifiers is taken into account. The theoretical part of the thesis summarizes information from grammar books and describes the category of countability. All of the types of nouns, i.e. countable, uncountable and dual class, are characterized. Semantic classification of adjectives is included, too, as adjectives are the most frequent noun class in terms of premodification. The empirical part of the thesis concentrates on the analysis of specific examples and aims to decide the impact of the presence of premodification on the dual class nouns. For these purposes, three nouns were chosen (difference, interest, language) and fifty instances of each noun were excerpted from the British national corpus. Each of the instances was assessed in terms of countability, in the case of difference the semantics of premodifiers was determined (this step was eliminated in the case of the...
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Aspiration of English plosives in Czech students of English studies
Pospíšilová, Andrea ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
Voice onset time (VOT) was shown to provide an effective basis on which to differentiate individual plosives in English. This thesis carries out an analysis of recordings of university students to determine whether specific phonetic in- struction improves pronunciation of non-native speakers of English with focus on aspiration of plosives and VOT. In the first part, a theoretical background is provided with definitions of plosives, VOT and its use and measurement. It also reviews the factors that have been shown to affect the VOT values. In addition, a brief overview of second language acquisition is given, with focus on English pronunciation. The second, empirical part describes the material and method used in the analysis and provides figures and results of statistical tests that were run. The results suggest a significant increase in VOT values as a result of one semester of Phonetics and Phonology course. Furthermore, individual plosives and positions in a word were examined sep- arately to determine whether there are any differences as suggested by the theoretical overview. Keywords: voice onset time, aspiration, Czech English, second language acquisition
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The relations between syntactic structure and functional sentence perspective as reflected in a parallel Early New and Modern English text: a study of developmental tendencies
Popelíková, Jiřina ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The aim of this paper is to describe the different ways in which syntactic means may be employed to serve as indicators of information structure and to trace the historical development these means underwent from the Early Modern English period up to the present. The research is based on a comparative approach to textual analysis, using two different English translations of Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy, one published in the early 17th century, the other near the end of the 20th . Both versions are analyzed in terms of the ways in which they express the same semantic content through different syntactic means, a special focus being placed on the sphere of individual clauses. Formal disparities between parallel syntactic units are investigated both from the grammatical and communicative perspective, mapping the effect of the differences in syntactic choices on the level of the functional sentence perspective. The study thus attempts to identify the extent to which the standardization of syntactic structures may be viewed as having exercised an influence over the communicative aspects of the language in the period between the grammatical systematization of the 16th and 17th centuries and the Present-day English standards.
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Noun phrase complexity in academic written English
Kratochvílová, Pavla ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
The diploma thesis analyses written academic text. Academic prose is frequently characterized as a highly complex style which is structurally elaborated, contains a large number of subordinate clauses and expresses meaning relations explicitly. However, new research (e.g. Biber & Gray, 2010) shows that complexity of academic writing occurs on the level of noun phrases which often contain extensive premodification and/or postmodification. The thesis studies noun phrase structure in research articles from two disciplines: medicine and sociology. Two articles from each discipline were selected, each yielding 50 complex noun phrases. These 200 examples were analysed with respect to their modification, its form and levels of embedding. The results were compared for both disciplines. The aim of the thesis was to describe complex noun phrase structure and identify its relation to the type of academic discipline. Key words: noun phrase, modification, academic text, sociology, medicine
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Characteristics of the context differentiating homonyms of the same word class (e.g. "bank"," palm") in written language
Šefčík, Dominik ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
Homonyms present considerable difficulties not only for the theoretician of language but also for any lexicographer who aims to adequately represent the state of lexical relations within a language. Mapping the principal causes of fuzziness in understanding homonymy, the present thesis first seeks to systematize the usage of the concept by discussing the two poles that characterize each homonymic pair: the notion of sameness on the one hand and the notion of difference on the other. The theoretical part of the thesis concludes with a brief disputation over the usual practice of subsuming homonymy under the heading of ambiguity. The research project uses ambiguity as a springboard for a detailed three-tier analysis of the homonyms bank and palm. Since the point of convergence of almost any treatment of homonymy is the disambiguating role attributed to context, the principal points that are analysed are all to do with context albeit on various levels of abstraction. The first tier looks at the structure of the noun phrases that contain the analysed homonyms. The second tier expands the understanding of context in order to embrace the whole clause with a view to discovering systemic variation in the type of clause element the examined homonyms tend to occur in. Finally, the third tier analyses the...
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Rhythmic differences between Welsh English and the British standard
Hejná, Michaela ; Volín, Jan (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
The present thesis deals with rhythmic differences between Welsh English and the British Standard. It focuses on the varieties spoken in Cardiff and Aberystwyth in particular. The first part of the theoretical chapter summarises the approaches towards rhythm from the physiological, acoustic, perceptual, and phonological perspectives. The second part provides a basic description of the British Standard, Welsh, and Welsh English. It concerns itself with the existing information related to the subject matter especially as regards Welsh varieties of English. The last, third part, serves as an overview of the most common approaches towards the search of the acoustic correlates of rhythm (%V, ∆C, ∆V, PVI, varco, RR, YARD). The following chapters of the thesis present a material based study of the data obtained for the purposes of the thesis. The segmentation was carried out according to the principles proposed by Machač and Skarnitzl 2009. Rhythm was measured for four respondents for each selected location of Wales. The age span was 35-39 years for the group from Cardiff and 29-39 for that from Aberystwyth. The values measured were compared with the research of Volín and Pollák from 2009, which, among other things, provided the results of the rhythmic values for %V and ∆C for the British Standard on the...
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Syntactic, semantic and FSP aspects of ditransitive complementation: a study of give, lend, send, offer and show
Brůhová, Gabriela ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Hajičová, Eva (referee) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
The subject of the present study is an analysis of five ditransitive verbs: give, lend, send, offer and show. The study focuses on the position of the two objects and on the factors that have an impact on the object ordering. An attempt is here made to provide a systematic overview of the position of the two objects with respect to their realization (i.e. substantival or pronominal). As regards the realization of the two objects, four types are distinguished: i. both Oi /Oprep and Od realized by nouns; ii. both Oi /Oprep and Od realized by pronouns; iii. Oi /Oprep realized by a noun and Od by a pronoun; iv. Oi /Oprep realized by a pronoun and Od by a noun. The position of the objects is assumed to be associated with the distribution of communicative dynamism or in other words with the principle of end-focus, i.e. that given information tends to precede new information. The second principle that operates in the ordering the two objects is the principle of end-weight. Of the three (or four, including intonation) factors whose interplay determines the FSP function of a clause element, in the case of ditransitive complementation the most important role is played by the contextual factor. Therefore, particular attention is paid to the context-dependence / independence of the two objects. The present...
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