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Middle English adjectival innovations of native origin (1200-1400) formed by prefixation
Ortutayová, Dominika ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to analyse and describe the Middle English adjectival innovations of native origin coming into existence by prefixation in the period of 1200-1400. The formations are described from the point of view of their word-formation and semantics, the individual word- formation patterns are identified and analysed in terms of their productivity. In the theoretical part we present three points of view - social, typological and word-formational - which allow us to formulate our hypothesis consisting in the assumption that the native prefixation will exhibit gradual signs of decreasing productivity, brought about both by the language-external and language-internal causes - the language being overwhelmed by the an influx of foreign elements due to political and social situation at the time; as well as gradual phonological and semantic non- transparency of the native prefixes. The empirical part is based on the analysis of the 219 adjectives retrieved from the Oxford English Dictionary. Our results show that 7 out of 13 prefixes are decreasing in productivity or unproductive, yet the situation is not homogeneous and we were able to identify eight possible scenarios of development in productivity patterns. Our hypothesis is thus confirmed only partially - both the extra and...
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Assimilation of voicing in Slovak speakers of English
Ortutayová, Dominika ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to examine the influence of the mother tongue, more specifically Slovak, in the speech of the Slovak speakers of English and subsequent appearance of the assimilation of voicing in the environments in which it is expected in both Slovak and English and then in those which are typical only for Slovak - and the production of the assimilation of voicing in those environments in English is considered an error. In the first part we introduce and specify the process of voicing in speech in general and then in the second part we proceed with the presentation of the concept of the second language acquisition and language interference. The empirical part is based on the analysis of the material spoken by 18 students, both males and females, reading the BBC bulletins. Our results show that the assimilation of voicing is an integral part of the speech of Slovaks in English, proving that they assimilate extensively in the environments typical for the Slovak language. Those are only partially typical for English as well - and thus they simultaneously produce assimilation errors. This knowledge could be taken in account during the learning process in order to eliminate such errors as much as possible. Key words: voicing, assimilation, Slovak, English, interference
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