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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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Intensifiers of adjectives in present-day spoken British English
Švedová, Zuzana ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
The objective of the present thesis is to provide an overview of the usage of adjectival intensifiers in present-day spoken British English. For this purpose the corpus Spoken BNC 2014 was selected as the most suitable studying material. In the theoretical part of the thesis the available information on intensifiers is summarised, both from grammar books and more recent studies. The variation in the usage of intensifiers with respect to different socio-linguistic variables is described and finally, some more detailed characteristics of a few specific intensifiers are mentioned. The practical section of the thesis follows a similar structure to that of the theoretical part. It first includes a list of the 105 most frequently used intensifiers of adjectives in the Spoken BNC 2014. Furthermore, two specific intensifiers, namely quite and pretty, were selected for closer analysis and comparison. The analysed features of the intensifiers are their syntactic environment, collocational patterns and socio-linguistic characteristics of the speakers. key words: intensification, intensifiers of adjectives, spoken British English, syntactic environment, semantic preferences, socio-linguistic characteristics
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Question tags "right" and "isn't it": a sociolinguistic study
Maratová, Magdalena ; Brůhová, Gabriela (advisor) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
This thesis examines question tags right and isn't it from pragmatic and sociolinguistic perspectives. English question tags have most frequently been analyzed from the sociolinguistic angle while at the same time completely avoiding the pragmatic aspects that represent a key factor in the sociolinguistic background. The theoretical part of the thesis introduces sociolinguistic aspects and approaches to question tags, as well as their formal aspects. This thesis is a corpus based study (British National Corpus chosen as the primary source of material) where 200 examples were extracted from the corpus and further studied (100 examples on the question tag right and 100 examples on the question tag isn't it). The study analyzes the question tags from the sociolinguistic perspective, focusing on the type of conversation (cross-gender or same-sex conversations) and relating the pragmatic functions of question tags to speakers' gender and speakers' age. Further, the analysis also inquires into what sentence types precede the two question tags. The paper also offers a revised classification of pragmatic functions of the two question tags. Key words: question tags, pragmatic functions of question tags, immediate and postponed response, speaker's gender
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Evaluation in English news discourse
Peldová, Petra ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee) ; Tomášková, Renata (referee)
The thesis deals with evaluation in English newspaper discourse. The corpora analysed were newly created for the purposes of the sub-analyses; they comprise articles from three British online newspapers - three tabloids (the Sun, the Express, the Mirror) and broadsheets (the Telegraph, the Independent, the Guardian). The classification of the thesis' core dimensions of evaluation - opinion and emotion - draws on Appraisal Theory (Martin and White, 2005). The thesis pursues answers to two fundamental questions 1) What means do British online newspapers use to express evaluation? 2) What differences (if any) are there in construing evaluation between the tabloids and the broadsheets? In order to obtain the answers, at first, a small manual analysis of six 'positive' and six 'negative' articles (one from each newspaper) is conducted. Attention is paid to the key word analysis and the word classes expressing evaluation, namely adjectives, nouns, and verbs. Based on the findings, I decided to explore evaluation conveyed by adjectives, in the second part of the study, by employing evaluative adjective lexico- grammatical patterns described by Hunston and Sinclair (2000) and further amended by Bednarek (2007b, 2009). These patterns, which are associated with the dimensions of opinion and emotion, are...
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Components of the third syntactical plan in Czech and in English: Czech expressions with the postfix "-pak" and their English translation counterparts
Šebestová, Denisa ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
The present diploma thesis examines the English translation equivalents of Czech expressions containing the postfix -pak. This postfix occurs in pronouns, pronominal adverbs, particles and interjections. It is employed as an element of the 'third syntactical plan' (Poldauf, 1963), i.e. the repertory of linguistic means which relate an utterance to the individual, expressing his concern with the content of an utterance, his stance towards its content or form. The thesis identifies and describes the English means equivalent to the postfix and uses them as markers of individual discourse functions fulfilled by the -pak expressions, thereby specifying the description of these Czech expressions. Attention is also given to the conversion of -pak expressions as well as their occurrence in idiomatic constructions. The major functions include expressing epistemic modality, voicing appeal, establishing/maintaining contact, and emotional expressivity.
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The English progressive forms in Arts and Humanities university lectures
Kváčová, Michaela ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
This thesis analyzes and describes the use of finite progressive forms in Arts and Humanities university lectures. The finite forms are explored with respect to their lexical and grammatical properties, and the results are compared to those of Ute Römer (2005), who studied the functions of finite progressive forms in spoken British English. An overview of functions of the progressive, depicted in various grammars, is included. There is also a separate chapter dedicated to the character of a lecture as a specific type of spoken academic discourse. One hundred utterances excerpted from the BASE corpus have been analyzed. An overview of the functions and purposes of the progressive found in the university lectures is given in the analytical part of this thesis. Key words: progressive verb forms, university lectures, functions of the progressive
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Adverbial intensifiers of adjectives in today's British English
Jindrová, Pavlína ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
The objective of the thesis is to describe the use and behavior of adverbial intensifiers of adjectives in today's informal spoken British English. For the lack of freely available corpora, the language of the popular television series Skins is used as the source of material. In the theoretical part of the thesis, the use of intensifiers based on their elementary syntactic and semantic functions is briefly described, and the main tendencies that influence their behavior in present-day colloquial English are characterized. The theoretical part then lists the basic features of the grammar of conversation and identifies the differences between authentic conversation and television dialogue. Finally, it gives a short description of the use and behavior of intensifiers in the language of the American sitcom Friends. The initial section of the practical part of the thesis examines the features of conversational grammar in the Skins dialogues. It subsequently provides an analysis of the use of intensifiers in the series, with a special focus on their frequency of occurrence, degree of delexicalization and collocational patterns. key words: intensification, adverbial intensifiers of adjectives, collocational patterns, grammar of conversation, colloquial English, television dialogue, authentic conversation
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Keywords and Frequent Words of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
Krajcsovicsová, Vladimíra ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
This BA thesis aims to perform a corpus-stylistic analysis of J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye. The starting point for this analysis is a list of frequent and key words of Salinger's novel which are generated on the basis of comparison of frequency information in two corpora. The reference corpus consists of five novels published between 1996 and 2014 which share some fundamental similarities with Salinger's novel (i.e. the same target audience, informal language, first person narration). The theoretical part focuses predominantly on the relevant research in the area of corpus stylistics and at the same time, it provides definitions for the basic terms which are applied in the practical part. The methodology then introduces the texts which are employed for the analysis, as well as the software used, along with its main functions. In the analytical part, top hundred keywords are sorted into three groups (proper names, grammatical and lexical words) and they are subject to further examination, focusing predominantly on their collocations and n-grams. This analysis uncovered not only the features of the idiolect of the main hero of Salinger's novel, but also some basic characteristics of teenage language in use. At the same time, this research suggests that some of these characteristics...
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Reporting clauses in English original and translated fiction
Jelínková, Marcela ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
The bachelor thesis is concerned with the means of introducing direct speech. It explores reporting clauses in English original and English translated fiction. It presents a corpus based study, focusing on the differences between English original and English translated reporting clauses and the influence of Czech reporting clauses on their English translation counterparts. The analysis is carried out on a sample of 100 reporting clauses from English original fiction and 50 reporting clauses from English translated fiction and their counterparts in the Czech original, extracted from the InterCorp parallel corpus. Reporting clauses are analysed with respect to the reporting verb and optional modification in the reporting clause. The analysis also focuses on translation shifts between Czech reporting clauses and their English translation counterparts. The findings confirm the hypothesis that English translated reporting clauses exhibit a tendency for greater diversity compared to English original reporting clauses as a result of the influence of the Czech original. Keywords: reporting clauses, reporting verbs, corpus-based study
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Unmarked personal reference forms in academic texts
Vaculíková, Juliana-Magdalena ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Brůhová, Gabriela (referee)
The present study is concerned with pronominal forms of common-gender reference in the English language. Due to the lack of an epicene third person singular pronoun in English, there is no one both grammatically and stylistically accepted method of common- gender reference. The theoretical part elaborates on various commonly used contemporary strategies, pronominal or otherwise, for example substitution of the pronoun with the definite article or repetition of the head noun. In the second part, two hundred articles published after 2009, one hundred of which was published in the United States, the other hundred having been published in either Australia or New Zealand. The articles were collected manually via the ProQuest database. The working hypothesis stated that so-called singular they would occur most frequently in Australian/New Zealand-based articles, while US authors would most often opt for generic he. Methods of generic reference were catalogued based on the choice of pronoun, internal consistency within the text, the pronoun's collocates, and journal of origin.
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