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Syntactic constancy of the object between English and Czech in fiction and academic prose
Slunečková, Lenka ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Malá, Markéta (referee) ; Urbanová, Ludmila (referee)
The present study investigates the constancy of the syntactic function of the object between English and Czech. Syntactic constancy is understood as identical syntactic representation of lexical items in parallel texts taken from different languages. The analysis of instances of syntactic divergence is carried out in order to test the assumption that syntactic structure is hierarchically subordinate to the information structure, i.e. the universal validity of the principle of end focus. The two languages under study, English and Czech, provide typologically suitable subject matter in representing, respectively, an analytic and an inflectional language system which involve different hierarchies of the word order principles. 1 In contrast to previous research, the present treatment is based on a substantially larger corpus (1000 divergent instances) and includes two different stylistic varieties, fiction and academic prose. These two novel aspects are considered to be relevant not only for verifying or modifying the findings obtained from studies investigating other clause elements2 and/or based on fiction alone, but also, more importantly, for capturing and specifying other potential factors conducive to syntactic divergence both in different languages and in different styles.
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Epistemic and root possibility meanings of can and may in written English
Huschová, Petra ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Hornová, Magdalena (referee) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
The study is concerned with the English modal auxiliaries CAN and MAY and their morphologically past tense forms COULD and MIGHT.1 It is essentially a small-scale corpus-based investigation into possibility meanings of these modal auxiliaries in contemporary written British English, taking account of stylistic variation. The investigation focuses on assigning appropriate readings to contextualized occurrences of modal auxiliaries and is thus primarily based on discussions of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects. The study attempts to present a general account of possibility senses of CAN/COULD and MAY/MIGHT and reviews the issues relating to their use and distribution on the basis of a semantic and quantitative analysis. However, frequency of occurrence is meant to provide merely a supplementary view of the qualitative analysis, focusing on the role of context in interpreting modal meanings. Among the modal-specific questions that the treatise addresses are those concerning modal semantics, syntactic co-occurrence patterns, stylistic variation, and pragmatic inferencing. It is important to note that the study does not attempt to provide an exhaustive and systematic semantic description of CAN/COULD and MAY/MIGHT. Based on interpreting particular contextualized occurrences, it primarily investigates...
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Formy a funkce přímé řeči v žánrové struktuře novinových zpráv
Urbanová, Zuzana ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Hornová, Libuše (referee) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
Zuzana Urbanová The Function of Direct Forms of Presentation in the Generic Structure of Newspaper Reports Abstract The thesis deals with the employment of direct forms of presentation in the genre of hard news. The texts for the analysis were excerpted from the main British broadsheet newspapers. The classification of forms of presentation is based on Semino and Short (2004) and focuses on their deictic and syntactic properties, interpreted in terms of the pragmatic concepts of perspective, faithfulness claims and the role of the reported and reporting speaker. Attention is paid to various direct forms, including direct speech, free direct speech and combined forms, i.e. non-direct forms appearing with a partial direct quote. The thesis draws heavily on the work by White (1998), whose approach to genre is informed by the ideas proposed by the Sydney School and Systemic Functional Linguistics. Hard news is characterised by the orbital generic structure, consisting of the nucleus and a number of specifying satellites (White 1998). The occurrence of direct and combined forms of presentation is explained by their deictic, syntactic and pragmatic properties, the generic role and characteristic features of the nucleus and individual satellites, and the overall function of hard news. The function of hard news and...
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Syntactic, semantic and FSP aspects of ditransitive complementation: a study of give, lend, send, offer and show
Brůhová, Gabriela ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Hajičová, Eva (referee) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
The subject of the present study is an analysis of five ditransitive verbs: give, lend, send, offer and show. The study focuses on the position of the two objects and on the factors that have an impact on the object ordering. An attempt is here made to provide a systematic overview of the position of the two objects with respect to their realization (i.e. substantival or pronominal). As regards the realization of the two objects, four types are distinguished: i. both Oi /Oprep and Od realized by nouns; ii. both Oi /Oprep and Od realized by pronouns; iii. Oi /Oprep realized by a noun and Od by a pronoun; iv. Oi /Oprep realized by a pronoun and Od by a noun. The position of the objects is assumed to be associated with the distribution of communicative dynamism or in other words with the principle of end-focus, i.e. that given information tends to precede new information. The second principle that operates in the ordering the two objects is the principle of end-weight. Of the three (or four, including intonation) factors whose interplay determines the FSP function of a clause element, in the case of ditransitive complementation the most important role is played by the contextual factor. Therefore, particular attention is paid to the context-dependence / independence of the two objects. The present...
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A contrastive study of -ingly adverbials with special regard to disjuncts
Jarkovská, Martina ; Dušková, Libuše (advisor) ; Voráček, Jaroslav (referee) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
The present study is concerned with -ing participle base adverbs as one realization form of this word class and their Czech equivalents. The focus of our study is on -ingly adverbials especially in their sentence modifying function. Sentence modification is present in both languages, English and Czech; however, based on morphological and syntactic differences between the two languages, the means of Czech and English sentence modification do not always correspond. Above all, this is caused by the fact that -ingly adverbials, a productive class of disjuncts evaluating the content of the clause from the speaker's point of view, structurally more or less do not have Czech corresponding counterparts. In English -ing participle base adverbials can be regarded as condensed forms of clausal realization (surprisingly ~ it is surprising). Although in Czech such adverbial forms are structurally possible, they are not in common usage (překvapující ~ *překvapujícně). This often results in applying different means of attitudinal evalution as counterparts of -ingly disjuncts. Therefore a primary interest of this work is a comparison of morphological, syntactic and stylistic differences in the sentence modification between English and Czech. Unlike in Czech where the word order is flexible, in English the position of a...
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English causative construction make someone do something and its Czech counterparts
Švedová, Zuzana ; Vašků, Kateřina (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
The present paper is concerned with the English analytical causative construction make someone do something, its semantic subtypes and its Czech translation counterparts. In the theoretical part we outline the general aspects of causation, the English means of expressing it, the participants of a causative event and different types of causation, before moving on to the description of analytical causative constructions in English and, more specifically, the constructions with the causative auxiliary make. The practical part is based on the analysis of 200 random concordances from the parallel corpus InterCorp, English originals and its Czech translation counterpart. The translation equivalents are furthermore divided into six categories and each of them is analysed separately. The analysis is meant to corroborate or disprove the hypothesis that there exists a correlation between the specific semantic subtype of the English causative construction and the means used to translate it into Czech. This was not supported by the research material as no clear correlation could be determined and the analysis uncovered merely some general tendencies of some of the categories. Keywords: causation, analytical causative constructions, translation counterparts
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Passivization of English ditransitive verbs
Herrmannová, Tereza ; Brůhová, Gabriela (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
The present thesis will attempt to describe ditransitive verbs and their passivization. Ditransitive verbs require complementation by an indirect object and a direct object. Usually there are two passive constructions possible: the passive subject is realized by either the indirect object or the direct object. These constructions are called the first and second passive, respectively. The selection of the passive construction is affected by functional sentence perspective (FSP). The subject of the passive construction is the thematic object of the active sentence, i.e. the object with the lower degree of communicative dynamism; the remaining object is in the final position and constitutes the rheme. Passive sentences therefore usually implement the Quality Scale (communication is perspectived away from the subject). Previous studies have suggested, however, that passive constructions with ditransitive verbs may also present a new phenomenon on the scene and thus constitute the Presentation Scale in which communication is perspectived towards the subject. The aim of this thesis is to verify this hypothesis and to describe the factors that influence the selection of the passive construction (first or second passive). Focus will be on the semantics of the chosen verbs lend and offer, object deletion,...
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Cohesive devices and their counterparts in music
Hubinová, Veronika ; Gráf, Tomáš (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
This bachelor thesis deals with the similarity between a text and a short musical composition. Particularly, whether there are relationships in the musical composition that could be considered as parallels to linguistic cohesive devices. In linguistics these devices ensure the text's surface linkage and its overall connectedness. Therefore, this thesis considers the question whether musical composition contains ties that function on similar principal. The first chapters summarize the definition of cohesion and cohesive devices and subsequently demonstrate them on a textual analysis. Then the thesis discusses the similarities between text and music and by means of musical analysis attempts to find if linguistic cohesive devices are applicable to musical composition and also if they establish its overall unity. During the analysis, the obvious difference between the semantics in text and in music was observed. This resulted in many difficulties when trying to distinguish cohesion and coherence in music but also when trying to find counterparts to word functions or word classes. The analysis confirmed that not all counterparts are able to be found and also that the same quantitative overview as in a text is not possible to be done. It was stated that musical counterparts to cohesive devices do exist and that...
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English constructions with the causative and experiential verb "have" complemented by a past participle
Mikulášová, Magdalena ; Brůhová, Gabriela (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
The subject of the present paper is as analysis of periphrastic constructions consisting of the verb have followed by a past participle, which have either causative or experiential meaning. Although the structure and configuration of the constructions may seem to be identical, they differ significantly, the main dissimilarity resting in the nature of subject. The causative subject, the causer, acts as an instigator of the action expressed by the non- finite verb form, i.e. the effected verb. On the other hand, the experiential subject, the affected, merely experiences the action, being affected by it, not inciting it in any way. Even though primarily aiming at description of two have groups, the analysis revealed existence of an experiential subclass: the experiential-resultative have. Hence, the study attempts to describe and compare the three above mentioned categories in terms of their occurrence and participants, i.e. the subject, the causee, the patient, and the effect. The reaserch is conducted on a sample of 200 cases gathered from the British National Corpus. Key words: causation¸ periphrastic construction, causative have, experiential have, experiential-resultative have
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English presentation sentences with "have" and their Czech translation counterparts
Polláková, Helena ; Brůhová, Gabriela (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
This diploma thesis examines English have-presentative sentences and their Czech translational counterparts. Have-presentative sentences have a similar function to there- existentials, i.e. they introduce a new element on the scene. From the FSP point of view, the subject is context-dependent in these sentences and serves thus as a rheme, e.g. We have a long trip ahead of us (Ebeling 2000: 1) or The tree has a nest in it (Ebeling 2000: 228). The possessive meaning of have is weakened in these sentences and could be thus described as existential, which is possible to attest by the means of alternative there-construction (There's a long trip ahead of us.; There's a nest in the tree.). The theoretical part summarizes the treatment of have in various grammar books, its semantics and diverse functions. Furthermore, it briefly discusses the theory of functional sentence perspective (FSP) as defined by Firbas (1992) and explore different presentative constructions with emphasis on have- and there-presentatives. Finally, it describes the Czech verb mít - its semantics and function, and explores FSP with regard to Czech. The aim of the analysis was to gather 200 examples of have-presentatives extracted from the Czech-English parallel corpus InterCorp v10, examine its Czech translational counterparts and...
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