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Spelling Variation Trends in Early English Printed Texts
Kupková, Tatiana ; Tichý, Ondřej (advisor) ; Novotná, Alena (referee)
The introduction of the printing press to England by William Caxton is often mentioned as the main cause of spelling standardisation in Early Modern English. This claim, however, seems to lack sufficient quantitative grounds and is often contradicted by research focusing on examining the consistency of spelling in texts printed by individual printers. This thesis investigates spelling variation trends in printed texts from the introduction of the printing press to England in 1476 to the end of seventeenth century by examining the degree of spelling variation in individual texts published in this period, as well as by measuring the overall degree of spelling variation in all texts printed by individual printers and comparing the results to the overall spelling trends. The material used for the analysis comes from the EarlyPrint database that contains both original and normalised versions of texts available from the Early English Books Online (EEBO) corpus. The levels of spelling variation are calculated using weighted entropy and the trends resulting from the calculations are compared. The results show a generally downward trend throughout the decades, although the decrease is not immediate. The findings of this thesis suggest that spelling variation started to decrease more rapidly in late...
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Quantum mechanical study of the electron hoping processes of conjugated systems.
Tichý, Ondřej ; Burda, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Pittner, Jiří (referee)
In this thesis the electron hopping of selected heterocyclic compounds and selected carotenoids was studied using QM/MM simulations of excited states dynamics. Tully electron hopping and semiempirical methods OMx in combination with MRCI method was used in the simulations. Calculations were performed using Newton-X, MNDO99, MNDO2020 and Gromacs. The lifetimes of the excited states were estimated based on the simulations. The results showed that used methods correctly describes the time evolution of excited states of heterocyclic compounds. In case of carotenoids only deexcitation from first excited state was described correctly.
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The diachronic distribution of singular they, generic he, and he or she construction in English newspaper corpora.
Kim, Nelli ; Tichý, Ondřej (advisor) ; Beták, Kryštof (referee)
The primary focus of this BA thesis is the choice of the third person singular pronoun in the contexts where the gender of a singular animate referent is unknown or unspecified. Specifically, the use of singular they in this context is examined, as its distribution in the press genre of written language over the past 20 years is analysed using corpus linguistics. In the theoretical part, both grammatical and sociolinguistics factors are considered in order to trace the history of prescription for gender-neutral third person singular pronouns, focusing specifically on the development of the issue in recent years. The research part documents the singular use of pronoun they on five samples from two newspaper corpora (SiBol: Corpus of English broadsheet newspapers for years 1993-2013 and The Timestamped JSI web corpus for years 2014-2020) and analyses its development from year 1993 to 2020. The data acquired from the corpora are partially analysed with the help of artificial intelligence language model. This paper's hypothesis is that singular they grows in popularity; potential sociolinguistics reasons for that change are examined.
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Terminology of disability: A historical perspective
Půlkrabová, Kateřina ; Luef, Eva Maria (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
and key words: The aim of this bachelor thesis is an analysis of the development of disability terminology in the past three decades. It intends to find out whether the disability terms are appearing more or less frequently in the Corpora Of Contemporary American English. Additionally, it analyses the differences, over the years, in the frequency of terms that are preferred to be used in comparison to the ones that are advised to be avoided. It also comments on the usage of terms from various kinds of groups of disabilities in different genres. This thesis first presents the theoretical part, which sets the background for the upcoming chapters, results and discussion. The theory also contains an explanation of disability, its history and terminology, together with information from previous pieces of research. The data from the analysis show that disability terms' frequency is declining. The biggest declination can be seen in terms that are advised to be avoided by the original source of terms. Over the years, the individual groups showed slightly different development of frequency. When it comes to the average frequency in genres, the highest one was spotted in the academic sphere. The list of preferred words shows similar results, contrary to the second list, where the frequency was the highest in...
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Evaluative language in the idiolect of Donald Trump in the context of the 2020 US presidential election
Ďuriš, Pavel ; Šebestová, Denisa (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
This bachelor thesis aims to determine to what degree evaluative language is employed by Donald Trump in speeches made regarding the 2020 US presidential election. The objective of this work is to determine whether positive or negative evaluation is more prevalent while addressing the election. Trump's characteristic use of intensification and repetition will also be investigated in relation to the evaluation of the election. The theoretical part will introduce evaluative language on the background of Martin and White's Appraisal theory, which will later be used as a framework for analysis. Several characteristic features of Trump's language will be introduced and afterwards, the link between manipulation in rhetoric and evaluative language will be discussed. A corpus of Trump's post-election speeches will be compiled for the purposes of the analysis. The analysis will be conducted using the online corpus manager Sketch Engine. After generating a list of the corpus' most frequent tokens, those with an inherent semantic relevance to the topic of elections will be selected. Their most frequent collocates will then be searched for uses of evaluative language, focusing specifically on the adjectival and adverbial collocates, which typically express evaluative meaning. The results will be interpreted...
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An acoustic-prosodic analysis of contrastive reduplication in English
Petrechová, Sára ; Luef, Eva Maria (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
Sára Petrechová An acoustic-prosodic analysis of contrastive reduplication in English MA Thesis Prague, 2022 Abstract Contrastive reduplication (CR) is an emerging trend of spoken and written English that has been approached from many different angles, such as morphology, semantics, and pragmatics. The phonology and prosody of this phenomenon is to this date quite underresearched. The main function of contrastive reduplication is expressing contrast between the prototypical meaning of a word and its subcategories (e.g., the salad-salad, not tuna salad). This contrast between two reduplicated elements can be defined in acoustic as well as prosodic terms which emphasize the contrastive feature of CR constructions. The aim of this study is to analyze approximately 200 spoken excerpts based on a corpus of CR compiled by Ghomeshi et al. (2004), which includes written examples of CR taken from literature, radio, movies, and TV series. These written examples are manually retrieved and edited from the corresponding movies and TV series in spoken form. The spoken excerpts include primarily American English with a few examples of British English. The analysis focuses on the overall intonation pattern of constructions and differences between two reduplicants in intonation and other acoustic properties, such as overall...
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"Why not say it in Czech?": Czech Non-heterosexual Sociolect and Usage of English Loanwords in Online CMC
Máša, Filip ; Luef, Eva Maria (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
This thesis pays attention to the Czech non-heterosexual sociolect and, more precisely, the English loanwords used in otherwise entirely Czech computer-mediated communication. The term in the title: "non-heterosexual", is used to include a broader spectrum of possible respondents who consider their sexual identity different from binary homosexual and heterosexual sexual orientation. To be able to observe a real sample of this type of communication, this thesis gathers a collection of conversations from users of a popular dating app called Grindr, which is one of the most popular dating services in the world. The reasons for the tendency of using the English loanwords instead of their Czech counterparts are mainly accredited to a degree of emotional detachment that they provide. The hypothesis is that the users of this service are most likely to use English loan words instead of their Czech counterparts when discussing sexual relations as it serves as a "depersonifying" defensive tool. A follow-up questionnaire is then also proposed to the respondents in which they are supposed to pick from a selection of messages in three different contexts the one they are more likely to use themselves. If the hypothesis is correct, they are most likely to choose the message with English loanwords in the context of sex....
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An analysis of the history of French borrowings' pronunciation from Middle to Modern English on the basis of corpus data
Rosová, Daniela ; Tichý, Ondřej (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The diploma thesis An analysis of the history of French borrowings' pronunciation from Middle to Modern English on the basis of corpus data attempts to account for the influence of Old French borrowings and their pronunciation on the Middle English phonological system with respect to Modern English. The theoretical part of the thesis explains extralinguistic and intralinguistic aspects of language contact and the related lexical and phonological borrowing, which is followed by an overview of the history of the English and French phonological systems and complemented by the corresponding scribal practices. The research is carried out on a list of French loans extracted from and further studied in Oxford English Dictionary. Selected samples are looked up in a Middle English corpus and their probable pronunciation is inferred on the basis of their orthography. The analysis is concerned with five French phonemes absent in the medieval English.
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Digitization of Old and Middle English dictionaries
Tichý, Ondřej ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
The aim of the paper is both to outline the methodology of digitizing Old and Middle English dictionaries as well as to describe its successful implementation. It is argued that the digitization of old dictionaries is generally desirable, because it increases accessibility of valuable resources, which may be the only way of presenting their data to a wider audience. The paper first briefly and comprehensively surveys the field of Old & Middle English lexicographical resources, comparing in greater detail the most promising candidates for digitization. Possible and desirable features of a digitized dictionary are then explored and on that basis An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary of J. Bosworth & T. N. Toller is chosen for the digitization project itself. All the phases of the digitization are then described: scanning, character recognition, hand-corrections, data preparation and application development. The current state of the Bosworth-Toller digitization project is explained and presented, while two major suggestions are made for its future development: the re-tagging of its data and the development of a morphological analyser of Old English.
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Old English causative verbs, their formal build-up and subsequent development
Filipová, Helena ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
The present work provides a comprehensive overview of causativity - its definition, classification and characteristics - in a typological perspective. It outlines the development of causativity in English, from Indo-European to Present Day English with main emphasis on the Old English period and the factors that had led to the state of causative verbs at that time. In Research Part, it inquires into the possible competition between morphological and syntactic causatives and its future after- effects with respect to the described typology. Key words: causation, causativity, causative verb, causative opposition, morphological causative verb, syntactic causative expression, labile causative opposition, Old English
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