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Vague meaning and its empirical modelling - the case of vague scalar modifiers in Czech
Ocelák, Radek ; Lehečková, Eva (advisor) ; Adam, Robert (referee)
This bachelor's thesis is concemed with the topic of linguistic (semantic) vagueness. In the beginning of the first, theoretica! part I define this phenomenon in contrast to other types of semantic indeterminacy (such as ambiguity or underspecification). Then I give a brief summary ofthe early 1970's works by Rosch, Lakoffand Labov, through which the Iinguistic vagueness has been established as a major theme in linguistics. After that, I ana1yze various aspects of the subject from several points of view: from the perspective of the prototype theory and its criticism (the categorization problem), (post)ana!ytical philosophy (relation of vagueness to meaning and structure), and forma1logic (problems of treating vagueness in exact tenns). The second, empirical part of the thesis deals with the semantics of a specific type of vague terms - the vague sca1ar modifiers in contemporary Czech (e. g. celkem, docela, velmi). I argue that there is a need for describing their semantics on an empirica1 basis, the introspective description not being satisfactOlY. I propose a method of exploiting large amounts of p1ain text in order to get enough empirica1 data for this kind of semantic description. Having applied this method, I present the technique and results of my own empirica1 research on semantic relations among 8...
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Clause order in contemporary Czech
Chudobová, Martina ; Lehečková, Eva (advisor) ; Zikánová, Šárka (referee)
My thesis deals with the word order in the contemporary Czech language. The aim is to discover the principles that control the clause order within sentences and to find out to what extent the position of the main and subordinate clauses is fixed. The first section summarizes the work of Czech and Slovak linguists and introduces the principles that apply to the clause order in particular sentences. It defines types of sentences with fixed, usual and loose order. At the end of this part there is an overview of the positions of different types of clauses, which became the springboard for the empirical part. The second section deals with the clause order of selected subordinate sentences. I have chosen a representative sample of connecting expressions. Using materials of the Czech National Corpus I try to outline the contemporary Czech clause order of the most frequent types of clauses following these expressions.
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Syntactic approach to agreement (with a special view to agreement of predicate with subject)
Klimešová, Petra ; Lehečková, Eva (advisor) ; Adam, Robert (referee)
This thesis deals with syntactic relation of subject-predicate agreement in Czech, concentrating on special cases. The theoretical part describes the term "agreement" in terms of the traditional dependency approach, presents the definition of the term and specifies its width. It describes the subject-predicate agreement from from other theoretical perspectives, too (for example generative grammar analysis etc.). The main part of this theoretical chapter contains particular cases of subject-predicate agreement, as described in Czech grammars and textbooks. However, this description does not take into account all options and variants of agreement used in everyday conversation. Therefore, we investigate the problem of agreement through an empirical survey, which serves us to identify more complex cases (multiple subject with disjunctive, adversative and compared relation between its constituents; based on the cases found in the Czech National Corpus). Another source of data comes from a questionnaire, which maps how complex agreement structures are acquired by users of the language (students of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University). The data found in Czech National Corpus enable us to specify tendencies of agreement in more complicated cases; these tendencies should be included in the grammatical...
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The constituent negation and ways to express it in contemporary Czech
Veselovská, Kateřina ; Lehečková, Eva (referee) ; Medová, Lucie (advisor)
The thesis is focused on constituent negation and ways of its expressing in contemporary Czech, or more precisely in Czech National Corpus (SYN2005) and Prague Dependency Treebank (version 2.0). In most of the Czech linguistic handbooks, constituent negation was treated as such a negation that does not operate on predicate. The author offers a new definition of constituent negation in Czech, based on data research and study of relevant literature concerning syntactic negation. Further, the author proposes a formalization of the structure of constituent negation within the framework of construction grammar and she also explores the possibility to express the findings in PDT.
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Semantic analysis of selected Czech verbal prefixes
Lehoučková, Zuzana ; Vaňková, Irena (advisor) ; Lehečková, Eva (referee)
Cognitive linguistics differs from other linguistic approaches in its assumption that linguistic relations and processes reflect conceptual relations and proceses. Cognitive linguists are interested especially in the conceptual background of language structure. This paper is an attempt to describe and explain semantic characteristics of Czech verbal prefixes (of prefix vy- in particular) taking cognitive principles into account, such as categorization, prototype, profiling, embodiment, construal, conceptual integration, metaphor. This approach should be able to identify previously unnoticed semantic relations and show diverse realizations of the prefix as extensions from a single core meaning. Langacker's cognitive grammar is used as the most importatnt theoretical basis.
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Communication in language class
Koulová, Ilona ; Šebesta, Karel (advisor) ; Lehečková, Eva (referee)
This master thesis is concerned with an analysis of communication in the classroom, in which the Czech language is being taught as a foreign language. In the first introductory theoretical part of the thesis, the specifics of educational communication are delimited and afterwards expanded to include communication in the foreign language classroom. This part also examines the most genuine principles in foreign language teaching, points at the so-called communicative approach in education, and accents the importance of the concept of interaction in the technique of teaching. The next section of the thesis specifies all requisites related to the system of analysis discussed in the communicative discourse of authors J. McH. Sinclair and R. M. Coulthard from 1975, who divided the discourse into several types of units, the smallest of which was established as the act. From the acts on, the thesis is based on their analysis. It examines the types of acts, their linguistic (eventually para-linguistic realizations), and their modifications with respect to the educational goal of class/activity. Finally, besides the discourse on acts, the thesis is concerned with the question of crossing the target/mother/ mediate language and the influence of these interferences on the negotiation of meaning.
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Epistemologic limits of selected approaches to language
Beneš, Martin ; Lehečková, Eva (referee) ; Macurová, Alena (advisor)
The aim of this text is to comment and critically evaluate the epistemology of selected approaches to language: namely European structuralism (Saussure, Hjelmslev, Prague School), generative grammar, the linguistics of la parole and text linguistics and cognitive approaches to language. In particular, the aim is to comment epistemological limits of these approaches with regards to the two basic facts. Firstly, with regard to the fact that what these approaches define as their object field is in fact only a partial section of the whole subject field of linguistics (looked upon through the purposes of this work as a specifically structured communication model). Secondly, this text will investigate the relations between these approaches and an important claim of the philosopher of science T. S. Kuhn. Kuhn in his widely known book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions says: "There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like ‚really there'." (Kuhn, 1970, p. 206). That means whether claims based on epistemology of particular approaches describe objective reality or only give us a description of their own theoretical constructs.
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International prefixoids with quantitatively-intensifying meaning in current Czech language
Podruhová, Eva ; Lehečková, Eva (referee) ; Saicová Římalová, Lucie (advisor)
The words composed using quantitatively-intensifying prefixoids are appearing more and more often in current Czech vocabulary. The prefixoids have come into Czech language with foreign words whose parts they used to be. These language elements are mostly international, most of them come from Latin, Greek, French and more and more often from English. In our thesis, we analyze these components: super- (supra-), maxi-, extra-, ultra-, hyper-, mega- (megalo-) giga- (giganto-), makro-, monstr-, turbo-, top-, big-¸ mini-, mikroand nano-. The words composed of these prefixoids can be divided into two main groups: 1) the sphere of professional language, where they function as scientific terms, professional words or as slang words; 2) the large sphere of occasional words which are especially used in the journalistic style and in common communication (mostly in expressive contexts). Most of these components are polysemic in the current language. Namely we focus on the quantitatively-intesifying prefixoids which often compete with each other. We closely look at meanings like: "big, the biggest, oversized, extraordinary, significant"; "very, extra, extremely, rarely"; "little, the least, unnecessary" etc. All explanations are supplied with representative examples which cover the latest layer of Czech neologic lexicum...
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Vocabulary of Czech sci-fi short stories
Mráčková, Michaela ; Bozděchová, Ivana (advisor) ; Lehečková, Eva (referee)
The presented Bachelor thesis, Vocabulary of Czech sci-fi short stories, is focused on describing lexicological and morphological means used in a sample of words used in a Czech sci-fi magazine XB-1. The analysed words have been categorized by their terminological, neological, proper noun and slang nature. This served as the basis of structure of this thesis. In the semantic part, this thesis deals with real objects typical for the described literary genre (space travel devices, technical inventions, unusual science fields, etc.) and thus confronts the real and fictional worlds. The thesis summarizes the word-forming means where authors need to create new words for new objects and the thesis describes some of their common trends. Last but not least, this thesis assessed the function of these word-forming means in such a specific literary genre. The analysed expressions (more than 600 entries) are included as a table attachment with notes. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Nonverbal Communication in TV Broadcasting for Children and Young People
Bayerová, Petra ; Saicová Římalová, Lucie (advisor) ; Lehečková, Eva (referee)
The bachelor's paper focuses on the chosen tools of non-verbal communication in Czech television programmes meant for children of different age. The paper's goal is to analyse the chosen non-verbal tools, to assess their form and function and to try to capture the differences between programmes meant for audiences of different age. Programmes Kouzelná školka and Planeta Yó made in production for the Czech TV and a programme Alliho parťáci by FTV Prima have been chosen for the purposes of this paper. Selected examples from the programmes were transcribed in accordance with the rules of the corpus DIALOG and transcripts of gestures were further added. The analysis is focused mainly on mimic and gesture expressions. The analysis results have shown that mimic and gesture expression adapt to the age of the child viewer.
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