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The subjunctive versus the "should"-construction and the indicative in dependent imperative clauses
Vlčková, Barbora ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
English dependent imperative clauses allow three possible forms of the verb phrase in the predicate: the subjunctive, the should-construction and the indicative. The present study deals with these paradigmatic variants and aims to examine their distribution in British English in a synchronic as well as a diachronic perspective. Drawing on grammars and previous studies, the theoretical part of the thesis provides an overview of the present issue and describes important terms. It is to serve mainly as background for the research part, which follows. The research project consists of two parts: a diachronic and a synchronic one. While the diachronic part focuses on the development of the distribution of the variants in dependent impererative clauses from the second half of the 20th century to the present, the synchronic part attempts to define some factors which may influnce the use of these variants in contemporary English. The study uses various corpora of British English as primary material for the research. Excerpted examples were analyzed and results were produced, on the basis of which conclusions were drawn.
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The use of lexical oppositeness in English internet advertising
Betincová, Barbora ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
The thesis deals with the relation of semantic opposition in the discourse of advertising. The aim of the thesis is to identify the techniques of advertising language based on the use of antonymy and describe their manipulative strategies. The thesis consists of two parts. The first is theoretical. It introduces the topics of advertising language and antonymy. It presents the views on definition of advertising, describes the influence of media on the language of advertising and summarizes the ba- sic advertising principles. Further, it defines antonymy and presents basic classification systems of opposites. Second part starts with the description of the research methodology and the database of advertisements created for the sake of the thesis. The following chapter analyses dis- tribution of classes of antonymy and describes individual advertising techniques and their manipulative force.
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Communicative strategies of politicians in interaction.
Lokajová, Jana ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
Abstract. The aim of this M.A. thesis is to apply on the sample of five transcribed interviews with American politicians the typology of strategies devised by social psychologists P. Bull and K. Mayer (1993) for 'non-replies' of British politicians in the genre of a political interview and to determine whether this typology could be qualitatively correlated to specific linguistic means (the use of passive, pronominal shifts, hedges). The responses of politicians are examined within the CDA method also in relation to the macro-principles of evasion (dissimulation), coercion, legitimation and delegitimation, which are claimed to be valid in political discourse by P. Chilton (2004) in order to discover whether Bull and Mayer's social typology could be related to these principles and to the strategies of face-management (Brown and Levinson 1987). It is expected that politicians will boost their positive image in the interview and coerce the public in the agenda shift (Clayman, Heritage 2002) through every response in the interview. A question which according to Bull and Elliott (1996) consists of face threat is also expected to be attacked; quantitative results are presented which verify this assumption. In addition, as thirty strategies were observed to have been employed by Mrs Thatcher and Neil Kinnock in...
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Anticipatory "it" objects
Filipová, Anežka ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
The present study focuses on object extraposition in English based on an analysis of corpus findings. The construction in question comprises a monotransitive verb complemented by it which anticipates an object nominal content clause introduced by the conjunctions that, when or if/whether, immediately juxtaposed to the anticipatory it. The aim of the study is to determine the types and frequency of verbs which occur with object it extraposition and to describe what factors influence the use of anticipatory it. The study first provides a review of the relevant topics and outlines a summary of possible factors influencing the occurrence of the construction under study. It focuses on the properties of the verb and complements, the nature of object extraposition in English and the realisations of the object function, and lastly, it outlines the possible factors leading to the use of anticipatory it object. The research part of the study consists of two parts. The first one deals with the selection of material and methodology, while the second presents the description and analysis of the findings. The primary main part of the research was conducted on the data containing 836 sentences that were drawn from the British National Corpus. The research shows that the most frequent verbs occurring with...
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English past perfect in translation from Czech
Křiklánová, Tereza ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor) ; Brůhová, Gabriela (referee)
This thesis dealt with the English pluperfect in the Czech-English direction of translation. The aim of this thesis was to identify indices/motives leading to the use of the past perfect in the English translation, which could be found in the underlying Czech clauses. 200 examples and their English translational equivalents were analysed. Intercorp was used for excerption. It is an online parallel corpus tool made and run by Český národní korpus (Czech National Corpus). After the examples were excerpted, the complete parts of the Czech texts (used for excerption) were analysed. I tried to assess the constructions that should be translated by the past perfect myself. This should help to identify the Czech indices/motives leading to the use of the pluperfect in the English translation. My accuraccy in assessing the Czech constructions translated by the pluperfect was 38.5% (I managed to identify 77 out 200 examples found in the corpus). The examples found in the corpus were later classified according to the supposed reason for the use of the past perfect in the English translation, found in the Czech original. The groups were as follows: An adverbial or another lexical device contributing to specification of temporal relations (72 examples, 36%), Hypothetical past meaning (11 examples, 5.5%),...
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Intertextuality in academic writing: citation in soft and hard sciences
Štěpánková, Jana ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
Based on a corpus analysis of 72 research articles, this thesis examines citation practices in four academic disciplines, two soft (linguistics and art history) and two hard (biology and astronomy). The first part provides quantitative results for the usage of two basic types, integral and non-integral citation. The non-integral type is preferred mainly in biology (91%), whereas astronomy and linguistics do not show such strong preference. In art history, both types are used with similar frequencies. The second part is focused on integral citation and examines instances of its sub-types (verb-controlling, naming and non-citation). The third part analyses the distribution of citations in the individual sections of research articles which shows to be dependent on the structural organization of the article. In general, two tendencies have been found: in articles with IMRD structure (biology and linguistics), citations occur mainly in the introduction and discussion. In astronomy and art history, citations are almost evenly distributed across the text. The last part of this thesis is focused on reporting verbs and their semantic classification (research, cognitive and discourse acts). Astronomy shows strong preference for research acts verbs, whilst biology employs this type only slightly more often...
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English cleft sentence "it is/was...that" and its Czech counterparts
Staňková, Barbora ; Brůhová, Gabriela (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
The subject of the present thesis is the analysis of English cleft sentence it is/was…that and its Czech translation counterparts. The aim of the thesis is to define and describe the category of cleft sentence and also to study the ways by which the English cleft sentences are translated into Czech. The cleft construction enables the speaker to focus on any clause element except for the predicate and subject complement. The basic function of the cleft sentence is to highlight the rheme which is placed in contrast to the other thematic elements. The present thesis consists of two main parts, the theoretical part and the analysis which is carried out on 100 English cleft sentences and their Czech translation equivalents, excerpted from the InterCorp, parallel English-Czech corpora provided through the web pages of the Czech National Corpora.
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Specific grammatical features in Irish English
Mudrochová, Aneta ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor) ; Gráf, Tomáš (referee)
The theoretical part of this thesis deals with the description of specific morphological and syntactic features of Irish English. The list of non-standard features is based on contemporary literature and is comprehensive in number. The aim of this part is to provide a synchronic account of contemporary non-standard features which occur in the Republic of Ireland. The frequency of selected features is proved via the Irish branch of the International Corpus of English. The British National Corpus is used occasionally as a means of comparison with British English. In the practical part the non-standard features are traced in use. The list of specific features found in three plays by contemporary Irish dramatists is provided with a brief commentary. The specificity of these features is verified via works established in the field of the grammar of English.
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English modal verbs - EMSA update
Škardová, Zuzana ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
This diploma thesis aims to contribute to the proposed project concerning the update of the multi-media application EMSA (Elektronická mluvnice současné angličtiny, The electronic grammar of contemporary English). This project is based on the text of Mluvnice současné angličtiny na pozadí češtiny [Grammar of contemporary English against the background of Czech] by Professor PhDr. Libuše Dušková, DrSc. et al., which was digitalized and can be accessed at the website www.mluvniceanglictiny.cz. In the future, this application aims to contain supplementary texts, relevant bibliographic information, exercises, authentic examples acquired from electronic corpora, etc. The particular task of this diploma thesis is the critical revision of chapter 8.4 Modal verbs. The first step was the survey of relevant literature and identification of parts which are not explicitly covered by Dušková's original text. These findings are presented in the theoretical part of the thesis (chapter 1.); they are concerned mainly with theoretical definitions (e.g. the delimitation of central and marginal modals or kinds of modality) and information concerning the distribution and recent developments of modal verbs. The second main step was to compile these findings into texts which would be suitable for the use in the project...
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Determiners used with proper nouns - problematic cases
Balcarová, Adéla ; Brůhová, Gabriela (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
The present thesis is concemed with determination of proper nouns. While the theoretical part presents a summary of what has already been written about this topic in representative grammars, the analysis concentrates on problematic cases that have not been previously covered. Similarly to common nouns referring to a single object that is unambiguously deterrnined in discourse, proper nouns expres s nongeneric, specific reference. The two basic means of determination of proper nouns are the definite article and the null article (which must be distinguished from the zero article). The use of both of these determiners tends to vary. The aim of this thesis is to describe this variation. It is to be determined, whether it is caused by simply lingusitic factors or by extralinguistic factors as well. The analysis concentrates mainly on the following groups of proper nouns: bridges, waterfalls, cars and musical compositions - proper nouns that have not, so far, been included in any of the representative grammars. Apart from these groups, the focus of the analysis is also on determination of proper nouns previously classified from the point of article usage. Certain cases of variation shall be pointed out and discussed. Lastly, a chapter is dedicated to newly created proper nouns and deterrniners used with them....
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