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Discourse connectives in texts written by non-native speakers of English
Kubánková, Eliška ; Rysová, Magdaléna (advisor) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
The thesis discusses the topic of discourse connectives as means of textual cohesion in formal texts written by non-native speakers of English. The material used for the analysis is a corpus of 161 application emails written by students whose language proficiency corresponds to the level B2 in the Common European Framework of Reference. The aim of the thesis was to determine the frequency and kinds of connectives used by B2 speakers, and to help specify the level B2 in terms of writing. The analyzed aspects were frequency, types of connectives (one- word/multi-word, primary/secondary), their morphological and syntactic classes, scope (inter- /intra-sentential), position in the sentence; further the types of discourse arguments and semantic types of relations expressed. It was found that most connectives were one-word, primary expressions realized by conjunctions and adverbials. The most frequently occurring connective was and, followed by because and the adverbs so and also. The most frequent semantic type of relation expressed was expansion, followed by contingency (cause), which can be attributed to the text type. Some secondary structures were also found, including different modifications of the clauses The reason is and That is why. The preferred position of connectives was initial, and their...
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The duration of stressed and unstressed vowels in English speakers of Spanish
Kubánková, Eliška ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
The thesis discusses the topic of word stress in Spanish and its acoustic correlates. The fact that studies in the last decades have shown conflicting opinions regarding the subject demonstrates the complexity of the phenomenon. Stress is not only language-specific, but also bound to context. When acquiring a second language, speakers have the tendency to transmit the phonetic and phonological system of their mother tongue to the target language. The aim of the thesis is to examine the acoustic correlate of duration in the Spanish of English speakers, considering the impact of language transfer. Twelve English speakers were recorded speaking Spanish. The duration of vowels in both stressed and unstressed syllables was measured in disyllabic, trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic words with different positions of the stressed syllable. The results indicated variation across stress schemes. Overall, a longer duration of the vowel in stressed syllable was found in disyllabic and trisyllabic oxytone words, and in quadrisyllabic paroxytone words. In trisyllabic paroxytone and proparoxytone words, the relative difference of vowel durations between stressed and unstressed syllables was less significant, likely due to the tendency of final syllable lengthening, which was recorded in all word types. No significant...
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