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English infinitives in adverbial function and their translation counterparts
Vašková, Petra ; Brůhová, Gabriela (referee) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor)
My bachelor thesis will deal with the English infinitive in adverbial function and its translation counterparts in Czech. An infinitive in adverbial function mostly expresses purpose, effect, intention, cause or concession, in the beginning of the clause it may function as a conjunct or style disjunct. In Czech, these adverbial functions are implied mainly by a finite dependent clause. The main aim of the theoretical introduction is, firstly, to describe and analyse functions of the infinitive in English syntax. The infinitive will be presented in a broader context, i.e., within the concept of complex condensation, especially with the focus on its grammatical qualities. A comparison between English and Czech condensators will be made, as the analytical and synthetic nature of those languages, respectively, represents fertile grounds for comparison. English, with its preference of nominal constructions and reduced dynamism of the finite verb will be compared with Czech, where the lack of preference for nominal constructions can be observed. Further on, we will examine the difference between finite and non-finite verb forms in order to illustrate their properties and point out the syntactic and morphological differences between the two. Distinction between the grammatical categories will prepare the ground...
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English translation equivalents of "určitě" and "jistě": a contrastive study
Macháčková, Anežka ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee) ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor)
English adverbs as translation counterparts of the Czech adverbs určitě and jistě are of lower freguency. Jistě is translated as an adverb in 77.5% of all cases and určitě in 51% of all cases. It must be noted, with respect to this figure, that the percentage is gained only from the translated English counterparts, which decreases the number of the analyzed examples from 60 to 57 in the case of jistě and from 48 to 41 in the case of určitě. Consequently, 5% of all examples of jistě and 15% of určitě are not translated at all. However, there is a phenomenon to compensate for this left-out translation in the case of určitě by means completely different from what was the focus of this analysis. This compensation could be observed in 43% of not translated examples of určitě. The second most frequent means of translating určitě and jistě is the category Verb involved. This category, however, is strongly conditioned by the grammatical function of the English translation counterpart. Only the grammatical function of disjunct can be realized by the category Verb involved. This can be observed in 12% of all translated examples of jistě and in 37% of určitě. However, this does not mean that all disjuncts must be translated by the category Verb involved. The most frequent means of translation within the disjunct...
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Czech translation equivalents to English question tags of the opposite polarity
Chládková, Zuzana ; Malá, Markéta (referee) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor)
The aim of this thesis was to classify the question tags of the opposite polarity into pragmatic categories according to their function and to describe their Czech translation equivalents. As far as formal properties of the tag questions are concerned, the excerpted examples correspond to the situation in English described by Tottie and Hoffman in their article. 97% instances have a declarative anchor, 65% have a positive anchor and a negative tag, 35% a negative anchor and a positive tag. The most frequent tag is don't you?, the most frequent verb is do and the most frequent pronoun is you. The tag don't you occurs mostly in the confirmatory category - 13 times out of 19 occurrences (68%). The three most frequent pragmatic categories, confirmatory, attitudinal and facilitating, represent 92% of the excerpted question tags. No example belonging to the softening category was found and, on the other hand, there are three examples that did not fit into any of the categories. We have focused on the pragmatic categories and our goal was to find out how the pragmatic functions of question tags are reflected in their Czech translation equivalents. The hypothesis was that eliciting interjections would prevail in confirmatory and facilitating categories and affective interjections and adverbials would occur most...
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The noun phrase in the spoken and written academic monologue
Slówik, Ondřej ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee) ; Malá, Markéta (advisor)
Noun phrase is the most versatile type of phrase in English both in terms of its syntactic function and its complexity. Syntactically, it can serve as the realization form of any clause element except for the finite clause predicate. It can only perform the predicative function in verbless clauses (e.g. The door!), which are generally rare and stylistically marked. As far as its internal structure is concerned, the noun phrase may comprise a single word (e.g. London, I) but its complexity may increase considerably due to extensive modification (e.g. the second stunningly beautiful lady from London who arrived yesterday) The aim of this B.A. thesis is the analysis of the noun phrase structure in written and spoken academic monologue. Its task will be to prove the assumption that although the number of noun phrases in written and spoken academic monologues do not differ significantly, their structure and complexity is different. Spoken and written English differ in many aspects. Written language is usually prepared in advance whereas spoken language is always partially impromptu even if it is planned ahead of time. Generally, some kinds of linguistic structures, including complex phrasal structures, are difficult to produce in real-time circumstances. A speaker would also place himself in a complicated...
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Existential quantifier "any" in determinative and pronominal function, and its translation equivalents in Czech
Pohořálková, Pavla ; Klégr, Aleš (referee) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor)
This thesis is concerned with the existential quantifier any in determinative and pronominal function, and its translation equivalents in Czech. Its pronominal compounds anybody, anyone and anything will also be included. In nonassertive contexts in the determinative function any is used for expressing the indefinite reference and is unstressed but it also has a weak quantifying function. Stressed any expresses not only quantity but also a certain quality. Nonassertive any also occurs in indirect questions, conditional sentences, restrictive clauses and in negative complex sentences including a nominal content clause. The appearance of any in assertive contexts will also be discussed. The aim of this thesis is to gather 130 examples of any and its compounds anybody, anyone and anything and their Czech translation equivalents. A contrastive linguistic analysis and description of them will be executed. The comparison with the Czech language will be interesting because in English any and its compounds have different functions and distribution than in Czech. The parallel texts that will be used as sources for the analysis are Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling, The Holy Thief by Ellis Peters, Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood, A Widow for One Year by John Irving, and Choke by Chuck...
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Existential quantifier "some" in determinative and pronominal functions, and its translation equivalents in Czech
Řenčová, Andrea ; Quinn Novotná, Veronika (referee) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor)
This thesis deals with existential quantifier some and its compound forms someone, somebody and something. The English pronoun some has two basic functions: pronominal and determinative. In Czech the grammatical category of definiteness is missing. The lack of the category of definiteness is reflected in the use of the translation equivalents that are manifold. In many cases there are no explicit correlates. The pronunciation of some in determinative or pronominal function is also the subject of this paper as well as the occurence of some in assertive or non-assertive contexts. The use of someone and somebody differs stylistically. The English pronominal compounds are also compared with the Czech translation correlates. By means of ParaConc, a parallel concordance software, the total number of 105 examples of some, 30 examples of something, 30 examples of someone and 9 instances of somebody was gathered. The collected material is based on both American and British English, the main sources being A Widow for One Year by John Irving and The Holy Thief by Ellis Peters.
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Czech translation equivalents of English question tags of the same polarity
Vaňková, Lenka ; Malá, Markéta (referee) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor)
The present study deals with English question tags of the same polarity and their Czech translation equivalents. It focuses on question tags from the point of view of their structure, formation, polarity and intonation and describes their various discourse functions. Since English question tags do not have an analogous construction in Czech, they provide an interesting construction for comparison. The discourse functions of the question tags differ according to the type of the main clause to which they are appended, i.e. declarative, imperative, interrogative or incomplete. These functions, together with the focus on the means of their translation into Czech, are analysed in detail in the empirical part of the study. As the question tags of the same polarity are not very frequent linguistic phenomenon, seventeen texts and their translations were needed to gather 102 instances by means of ParaConc, a parallel concordance software, and The British National Corpus.
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Eventive objects after the verbs "have/take" ("have/take a little look") and their translation equivalents
Křístková, Jana ; Brůhová, Gabriela (referee) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor)
This thesis analyzes one English syntactic construction which does not exist in Czech, i.e. the eventive object construction which consists of a light verb, in the case of this thesis have and take, which is complemented by an eventive object having the form of a deverbal noun morphologically identical with a simple verb. Although the construction is bipartite from the syntactic perspective, it represents one semantic unit which can be proved by a possible paraphrase in which the object replaces the construction as the verb of the clause without a change of meaning. The use of this construction modifies affects the aspectual features of the verb, which is reflected in Czech translation equivalents. Furthermore, the construction allows for easier modification and qualification. The kind and presence of determiner and modifier has an influence on the Czech translation, most importantly the aspect. Modifiers usually translate as adverbs or adjectives modifying a syntactic object, if the translation equivalent in Czech is a verbo-nominal construction. The thesis comprises on the one hand a theoretical survey of information on the topic, and on the other hand provides linguistic description of 140 examples of the construction from three English texts written by contemporary native speakers of English, as well as...
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Translation counterparts of English exclamative sentences ("how and what")
Škardová, Zuzana ; Brůhová, Gabriela (referee) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor)
This thesis deals with English exclamative sentences with how and what and their Czech translation counterparts. In English, these sentences constitute a specific sentence type, as they have a particular syntactic structure as well as discourse function (exclamation) in respect to the communicative intention of the speaker. Their specific structure distinguishes the sentences with how and what from other sentences that convey exclamation, but belong to a different sentence type. In Czech, exclamative sentences do not have specific structure and therefore they do not constitute an independent sentence type. However, exclamation can be expressed e.g. by intonation and in written language with the help of punctuation (exclamation mark) and lexical means that intensify the phrase concerned. Analogical translation of English exclamative sentences sounds rather formal in Czech. The communicative function of English exclamative sentences is conveyed in Czech with a relatively fixed repertoire of expressions. The first part explores the matter of English and Czech exclamative sentences theoretically. This is followed by the analysis of 132 examples of English exclamative sentences (including elliptic clauses) as well as their Czech counterparts. The data was acquired with the help of ParaConc, a program that...
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The past perfect - its functions and translation equivalents
Křiklánová, Tereza ; Quinn Novotná, Veronika (referee) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor)
The aim of this thesis was to observe the functions and translation equivalents of the English pluperfect. This thesis worked with 120 examples of the pluperfect excerpted with the help of ParaConc, using a parallel Czech-English corpus. Examples of the pluperfect found in the corpus were compared and analysed with regards to the differences of Czech and English language systems and the different devices that these two languages use to express anteriority and related meanings. Theoretical Background provides a systematic survey of the descriptions concerning the pluperfect provided by linguists till this time. Basic means of expressing anteriority in Czech and English are also presented there. In the practical part, Analysis, the examples of the pluperfect were analysed and compared to their Czech equivalents. The examples were dividend into several groups. The primary criterion for classification were the semantic relations for the examples of the past perfect found in the main clauses and simple sentences. For the broad grouping of examples found in dependent clauses syntax was taken as the decisive criterion and only after the semantics. Telic/atelic verbs in English, perfective/imperfective aspect of Czech verbs, the correspondence between these two phenomena and adverbials accompanying verbs in the...
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