|
|
Linguistic representation of female and male characters in the Harry Potter series of novels by J.K. Rowling
Landová, Alexandra ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Lancová, Klára (referee)
This thesis compares the ways female and male characters are represented in the Harry Potter series of novels, exploring how particular linguistic choices can shape gendered discourses. Methodologically, the thesis relies on the approaches of corpus stylistics, working with a corpus of Rowling's Harry Potter novels (using the KonText interface), and employing frequency lists and collocations as starting points of the analysis. By examining the most typical collocations of personal possessive pronouns his and her and noun referring to body parts, as well as 5- grams containing gendered possessive personal pronouns, I look at how male and female characters are typically linguistically represented in the Harry Potter series of novels. The analysis confirms that there is a certain imbalance in the linguistic representation of male and female characters, as has been mentioned in previous studies. Keywords: gender and language, gender in literature, corpus stylistics, Harry Potter
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
Intonation of cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences in the speech of advanced Czech learners of English
Hynková, Tereza ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
The bachelor thesis examines the intonation of English cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences in the speech of advanced Czech ESL students. The aim of the thesis is to describe the tone choice in speech realisations of cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions produced by Czech ESL students. The first part scrutinizes literature and sets a theoretical framework for the small-scale research conducted in the second part of the thesis. The theoretical part describes the syntax of cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions, it focuses on the functional sentence perspective and provides basic information about intonation. In the second part, audio recordings are analysed in order to examine the Czech speakers' usage of tones when reading a meaningful conversation containing the target structures. It concludes that the falling tone is prevalent in the realisations of cleft sentences, whereas the productions of pseudo-clefts are more diverse. Moreover, the respondents are likely to realise three or more out of five cleft sentences using the same realisation type. They are likely to realize three or fewer out of five pseudo-cleft sentences using the same realisation type. The thesis sheds light on a marginal topic that is not popular among researchers. It compiles information on the intonation of clefts and pseudo-clefts...
|
|
|
Syntactic and FSP aspects of the existential construction in fiction
Drenková, Leona ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
The aim of this study is to examine the existential construction there is / there are from two viewpoints: syntactic and functional. Analytical tools devised in the framework of functional sentence perspective (FSP) are employed to explore information structure in two types of existential constructions, viz. bare existential constructions and existential constructions with adverbial(s). The study first comprehensively explains the core of the FSP theory and concepts employed in consequent FSP analyses. The analysis of bare existentials is concerned with two areas of examination. First, syntactic structure of the subject noun phrase is examined; attention is paid primarily to types of modification involved. Second, the FSP structure is identified; the main focus being placed on the structure of the notional subject. A special attention is paid to the FSP patterns the bare existential construction can implement. The problem of questions and focalizers is touched upon. The analysis of existentials with adverbial(s) focuses on the FSP role of adverbials in relation to their position in the sentence, semantics and contextual boundness. Finally the problem of potentiality is pointed out and the occurrence of other verbs than be is discussed. The outcome of the study is to identify communicative functions the...
|
|
|
English existential and existential-locative constructions (there + be) and their Czech counterparts
Rubešová, Michaela ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
The analysis of the syntactic structure of the notional subject NP confirmed the indefinite and zero articles to be the most frequent determiners. Being used to introduce the S on the scene, they occur mainly with the common nouns denoting concrete entities in the Exist and Exist-loc types. The newness of the S in Czech is implied by the word order, in which it typically occupies the end position indicating its rhematic function. The indefinite article is also the prevailing determiner of the singular count nouns in the Actional constructions, whose Czech counterparts may be subjectless verbal or nominal clauses. The Actional constructions containing notional subjects determined by a zero article are usually reflected in Czech sentences containing both the subject and predicate; the predicate reflects the subject action noun and the subject is added to the Czech structure to express the agent of the verbal action. There is a tendency for the adjectival premodifiers of the English notional subjects to become the adverbial premodifiers of the corresponding Czech predicates. Another determiner often appearing in the subject NP is the negative quantifier no. Interestingly, it has proved to be the most common means of forming negation in there constructions as opposed to the negative particle not. Again, Czech...
|
|
|
The noun phrase in the spoken and written academic monologue
Slówik, Ondřej ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
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...
|
|
|
Teacher's attitudes and beliefs regarding English grammar teaching
Čížková, Lucie ; Gráf, Tomáš (advisor) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
(in English) This diploma thesis focuses on teachers' attitudes and beliefs regarding English grammar teaching at Czech high schools. The thesis is based on the assumption that teachers' decisions and actions in ESL and EFL teaching are motivated by what teachers know, think and believe. It takes the concept of teacher cognition as a starting point. The research part ot the thesis is based on a questionnaire survey among Czech high-school teachers. It aims to observe teachers' beliefs about English grammar teaching and learning and to describe the way Engligh grammar is taught at Czech high schools. The main areas which the research focuses on are grammar teaching approaches, grammar practice, grammatical error correction, the use of L1 in teaching grammar and the use of coursebooks. Moreover, the thesis observes teachers' position towards the concept of method with respect to the recent trend discussed in ELT research - the post-method condition which redefines the relationship of 'method' and a teacher who is understood as a critical and creative strategic thinker.
|
|
|
English present perfect and its Czech translation counterparts
Losmanová, Milena ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Brůhová, Gabriela (referee)
This bachelor thesis describes the meanings of the English present perfect and the factors leading to identification of the specific meaning in a given sentence. Czech translations of English sentences are used as indicators of the meaning. The analysis is based on 100 examples of the English present perfect and their Czech translation counterparts excerpted from the InterCorp paralel corpus. The Czech counterparts have been analysed especially with respect to the verbal categories of time and aspect (vid) as well as the temporal adjuncts. Apart from the syntactic-semantic features of verbs, the context factors of the English sentences that may influence the perfect (adverbials of time, method of incorporation of the present perfect into multiple sentence etc.) have been analysed. The aim of this thesis is to answer the question posed by Vilém Mathesius whether there is a correspondence between the perfect tense and the pefective aspect in Czech. Key words: present perfect, Czech aspect
|
|
|
English first person plural imperative clauses and their Czech counterparts
Zvěřinová, Simona ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
The present thesis studies the English 1st person plural imperative clause. Specifically it focuses on outlining the various possible categories of illocutionary force expressed by it. Czech translation counterparts of the clause are used as an ancillary means of determining these categories. In the process of utilising these counterparts during the analysis, the study also identifies specific markers in the Czech language helpful in determining categories of illocutionary force of the English originals. The thesis is comprised of two main parts. The first, theoretical part focuses on describing the grammatical form of the 1st person plural imperative clause, on forming the framework of discourse function and categories of illocutionary force as utilised by the study, on summarising the distribution of the 1st person plural imperative clause across the fields of discourse and on outlining the various syntactic and/or lexical means through which the Czech language expresses the directive discourse function. The second, empirical part analyses one hundred examples of English 1st person imperative clauses and their Czech counterparts from the parallel translation corpus InterCorp.
|
guest ::
RSS feed.