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Tagging a spoken learner corpus
Gillová, Lucie ; Gráf, Tomáš (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
The aim of the thesis is to propose a tagging system for a learner corpus of spoken English which would, apart from tagging errors, focus also on the features specific for spoken language. Theoretical part, therefore, introduces basic concepts including learner language, the development of learner corpora in the last 20 years and both classical and computer-aided error analysis. Features typical of spoken language are described in the theoretical part as well since these are the focus of the research part of the thesis. The Louvain tagging system used for error-tagging of a leaner corpus of written language is used as the basis for the tagging system proposed in this thesis. Based on the analysis of 20 transcriptions taken from the Czech part of spoken learner corpus LINDSEI, modifications of the categories taken from the Louvain error-tagging system are proposed and new categories necessary for a better description of spoken language are introduced. The tagging system proposed in this thesis should make further analysis of the tagged corpus easier.
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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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The "be/have" variation with Intransitive (mutative) verbs: the development of the construction in PDE
Křenková, Zuzana ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
So far the perfective construction of intransitive verbs, which apart from the dominant auxiliary verb have occurred in the past also the auxiliary be, has been analysed especially from the diachronic point of view focusing on the period between the 17th and 19th centuries, when the majority of verbs ceased to be used with the be marker. The present study deals with the occurrence of the be perfective construction in the contemporary English, i.e. the 20th century English. Drawing on grammars and previous studies, the theoretical part of the thesis provides an overview of the present approaches to the issue, presents the conclusions drawn from the analyses of the diachronic material as well as overview of important terms. The research project consists of two parts: drawing from the corpora search the first part assembled the evidence for a group of intransitive verbs and also attested under what conditions a labile verb might acquire the perfective reading. As the be perfective might be considered a fairly rare construction, not only the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English were used but also the web corpus of a considerably larger size. The collected database was used for further analysis related to genre categories, co-occurrence patterns and language variety.
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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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Morphological Analyser of Old English
Tichý, Ondřej ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Petkevič, Vladimír (referee) ; Kučera, Karel (referee)
The paper describes the construction and testing of an electronic application for automatic morphological analysis of Old English. It introduces resources and methodologies at our disposal based on the state of the art in the field of electronic analysis of Old English and on an overview of Old English morphology. A detailed account of the chosen methodology is offered and a specific description of the implementation is provided: from the acquisition and preparation of the input data and choice of technology to the programming and testing of the results. The resulting recall of 95% can be seen as a success of the project, however, the paper also shows how the recall may be improved. It also discusses further use of the analyser, especially the disambiguation of its results. The paper makes a future semi-automatic morphological tagging of Old English texts a real possibility. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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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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Gender-neutral and gender-marked language
Zahradníková, Šárka ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
The present thesis deals with the issue of gender-neutral language. The initial part centres around the origin and development of this issue, which has caused a series of language changes in lexis and grammar. An object of long-term criticism is the natural inclination of the English language towards the default use of the masculine gender, which is reflected especially in areas such as traditional occupations, proverbs and collocations. The theoretical part also focuses on the classification and detailed description of grammatical and lexical means of expressing gender and explains the key terms. The practical part is carried out on the basis of the data from the corpus COCA, in which the distribution of premodifying gender markers with specific dual gender nouns was examined. The project primarily maps these linguistic means in contemporary American English.
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Corpus based description of attitudes to native language in the Middle English period
Puršová, Alena ; Tichý, Ondřej (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
Middle English is a form of English that was spoken between the late 12th and the late 15th century, which corresponds to the historical High Middle Ages in England. The term 'Middle' reflects its position between two very different stages of English development, the earlier Old English period, and the later Early Modern English period. At the beginning of the Middle English period English is an almost impenetrable West Germanic language that must be learned, whereas at the end the language used is very close to Modern English. Even though later stages of English development are very thoroughly described by the contemporary speakers, it is harder to find any textual reference about the language of the Middle English period. Therefore, the focus of this work was to find such references that would reveal additional information about the state and attitudes towards the English language at that time. Using previous studies done by historical linguists as the main resource, the theoretical part introduces Middle English, its structure and external historical context. It serves as an informative background for the practical part that follows. The research was conducted by examining a corpus of Middle English texts using a corpus management software. The program enables keyword-based search in the corpus...
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Lexical and word-formation differences between the New Testament translation by John Purvey (1388) and the translators of the Douay-Rheims Bible (1582) against the background of the historical development of the English language
Hauck, Nikol ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
The main objective of the present thesis is to characterize lexical and word-formation differences in the New Testament translation by John Purvey (also known as the second version of the Wycliffite Bible, 1388) and the translators of the Douay-Rheims Bible (1582), with the focus on the differences which are believed to be influenced by the objective changes in the language. For this reason, the very analysis is preceded by two chapters, the first one identifying the subjective strategies of the translators and the second one describing the objective changes that occurred in the language during the two hundred years that separate the two Bibles. The comparison of the Wycliffite and Douay-Rheims Bible, which is also a contribution to a word-formation and lexical-semantic development from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, is based on four books of the New Testament, namely the Gospel of Mark, Acts of the Apostles, the Second Epistle to the Corinthians and the Book of Revelation. The thesis also aims to assess the attitude of the translators towards their common source, the Latin Vulgate, but leaves aside the circumstances of religious controversy and its impact on the motivation and strategy of the translators. Another objective is to assess both translations as certain milestones in the...
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