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Awareness and Knowledge of Lexical and Spelling Differences Between British and American English Among Czech Students of English
Nováková, Alena ; Matuchová, Klára (advisor) ; Bojarová, Marie (referee)
This thesis is concerned with lexical and spelling differences between British and American English. The theoretical part provides an overview of the history and development of those differences, including a list of selected high frequency items. It also focuses on the role of American culture in the world and its impact on the English language. The practical part is based on a survey and attempts to discover whether Czech upper secondary students are aware of British and American English and the differences between them, with special attention to the media dominated by American English and their influence on students' language competence. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Sociophonetic study of substitutional glottalization in native English speakers
Klánová, Aneta ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
The glottal stop, previously labelled as a heavily stigmatized feature of British English pronunciation, has become widely spread across all social classes and the majority of British dialects. Young females are believed to be instrumental in leading the spread and causing the social re-evaluation of the feature. The aim of the present study is to analyze the occurrence of T-glottaling in the speech of British English speakers in relation to sociolinguistic factors, primarily age, gender and speaking style. The theoretical part provides a description of the linguistic and social aspects of T-glottaling. Particular attention is paid to the role of social factors in the process of language change. In addition, a brief overview of previous research is presented. The material for the empirical part of this study consists of 32 recordings of British English speakers. The analysis of the results reveals that gender, age and speaking style play a significant role in the frequency of occurrence of the glottal stop. Young females are shown to be the leaders of the spread of T-glottaling, which leads to the assumption that the language change is still in progress.
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Teaching Differences between British and American English in Lower-secondary EFL Classes
Stelzerová, Pavlína ; Müller Dočkalová, Barbora (advisor) ; Matuchová, Klára (referee)
Presented thesis deals with teaching differences between British and American English. Its aim is to suggest a suitable way of teaching selected vocabulary differences between these two English varieties in EFL classes. The theoretical part of the presented thesis summarizes the knowledge background gained by studying relevant researches and professional publications. On that study the author's original teaching materials are based. The practical part consists of a brief research; original materials were used in five EFL classes, and consequently their efficiency and utility was examined. The main goal of this thesis is to propose this topic as a kind of useful enrichment of English lessons and to examine the way it could be included in a lesson plan without affecting it or burdening teachers with an extra preparation. Key words: American English, British English, differences, teaching EFL classes
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The just noticeable difference for English melodic prominence elicited on Czech listeners
Brabcová, Kateřina ; Šturm, Pavel (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
The aim of the thesis is to ascertain whether and how the modification of pitch in the acoustic signal influences what we hear, i.e. whether we perceive a difference between the original, unmodified stimulus and the one with a modified melodic contour. The theoretical part of the thesis explains terms such as: the fundamental frequency and its contour, the just noticeable difference, intonation and the structure of intonational phrases, and the difference between English and Czech intonational structure. The practical part uses recordings of Standard British English. The contour of the fundamental frequency (F0) is changed at different places of the intonation phrase (the nuclear syllable, stressed and unstressed syllables of the head) and the pitch is either lowered or raised by 1.5 semitones with respect to the original production. The main goal is (1) to determine the influence of the melodic prominence of a syllable on the pitch manipulation detection (judged by 20 listeners of Czech origin, all students of English) and (2) to find out which other factors (such as the already mentioned direction of the change) might be significant. The results are analysed and their statistical significance is evaluated.
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Rhythmic differences between Vietnamese English and the British standard
Slówik, Ondřej ; Volín, Jan (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
This thesis deals with rhythmic differences between Vietnamese English and the British Standard. As all the recorded speakers were originally from Northern Vietnam or lived there for an extensive period of time, it should be noted that the subject of analysis was in fact North Vietnamese English. The theoretical part describes the concept of rhythm in general and modern approaches to its analysing and measuring. Furthermore, the theoretical chapter describes the basics of phonetic characteristics of the Vietnamese language and the British standard of English. The last chapter of the theoretical part constitutes a bridge between theory and analysis as it explains selected features of Vietnamese English concerning mainly the realization of vowels and consonants. The next part is dedicated to methodology and it informs the reader about the criteria for selection of speakers and the means of gathering and processing material. At the end, a number of hypotheses regarding Vietnamese English are presented. In the analysis, values for rhythm metrics for Vietnamese English (%V, ΔV, ΔC, varcoV, varcoC, rPVI-V, rPVI-C, nPVI-V, nPVI-C) are calculated, compared to the rhythm metrics for British English and further evaluated in relation to gender, speakers and prosodic compactness. The results of the analysis...
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Subject - Verb Concord and pronominal reference after collective nouns in British and American English
Outratová, Tereza ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
This thesis is concerned with subject-verb agreement with collective nouns in British and American English. The thesis deals with verbal as well as with pronominal agreement. The first part of the thesis gives theoretical background of concord with collective nouns with respect to differences between the two major varieties of English. The second part of the thesis describes the sampling method by which 4 samples have been excerpted from British National Corpus (representing British English) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (representing American English). Sample 1.containing 25 instances of the collective noun FAMILY and sample 2. containing 25 instances of the collective noun STAFF have been excerpted from BNC. Following the same method, two samples have been excerpted from COCA - sample 3. containing 25 instances of the collective noun FAMILY and sample 4. containing 25 instances of the collective noun STAFF. The analytical part includes description and analysis of individual samples. The samples of British English have shown that the collective noun FAMILY is used in the singular or in the plural depending on whether individual members or the whole group is regarded. On the contrary, the collective noun STAFF occurred more frequently in plural constructions. In American English the...
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Prepositional phrases denoting time and space in British and American English
Klambotskaya, Darya ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
This bachelor thesis deals with the difference in the use of time and space prepositional phrases in British and American English. The theoretical background rests on the semantic classification of time and space prepositional phrases in Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk et al., 1985). The practical part of the thesis focuses on the analysis of three problematic areas: a) prepositions which differ only in form in the two varieties, b) the difference in the presence vs. absence of a preposition in the two varieties, e.g.: I'll do it on Monday. (BrE)/I'll do it Monday. (AmE), c) different prepositions used for expressing the same meaning in British and American English. The material was drawn from two large corpora, namely the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus. Key words: time and space prepositional phrases, British and American English, corpus-based and corpus-driven methods.
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American and British Dialectal Synonyms in Selected Lexical Fields
Kožíšek, David ; Matuchová, Klára (advisor) ; Ženíšek, Jakub (referee)
The bachelor thesis deals with lexical differences between contemporary American and British English. The thesis presents an outline of historical and sociolinguistic factors which affected the development of American English. It includes a thematic mini-dictionary of 224 commonly used British and American dialectal synonyms. With regard to the words' etymological origin, the thesis attempts to characterize the structure of selected lexical fields. The practical part presents an experiment which reflects on how Czech students of the English language incorporate individual dialectal synonyms into their active vocabulary.
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Acoustic analysis of the vowel /æ/ in the Czech pronunciation of English
Šturm, Pavel ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Marková, Petra (referee)
The subject of the thesis is acoustic analysis of the open front vowel /æ/ in the read speech of Czech students of English. The thesis deals with the differences between Czech students and native speakers of British English, as well as the differences among individual Czech speakers. The focus on this particular area in the vocalic space derives from the widespread difficulty encountered at the acquisition of the open front vowel by Czech students. Foreign accent in general is nowadays of great interest, in both general and applied research. The theoretical part of the thesis is therefore concerned not only with issues of acoustic description of vowels (formants and vocal tract resonances) and vowel systems of the languages in question (including regional differences), but also with second language acquisition. Important concepts discussed here are contrast and linguistic categories, interference of native language, and the relationship between production and perception. Since a systematic description of Czech English is yet missing, the thesis aims to contribute a more thorough investigation in this area, which could also have practical application in ESL environment.
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The choice of "have you got", "do you have" and "have you" in present-day English
JOSKOVÁ, Pavlína
This BA thesis concentrates on alternative possibilities of expressing a question with the lexical verb have in today´s English. The traditional form of have you employing simple S-V inversion has been considered to be disappearing to the point that it was largely ignored in simplified grammars and textbooks. However, this is in contrast with current authentic English texts, where questions of this type do occur. The aim of this thesis therefore is to find out which factors affect the final choice of a particular alternative. The theoretical part draws on relevant linguistic literature, the main source of examples used in the practical part is the British National Corpus. The factors considered include the semantics of the verb, the structure of the noun phrases complementing the verb, and also the semantics of the head noun. Both written and spoken texts were used as sources of the structures examined in this thesis.
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