|
|
Cajun French: mirror of the past, of the present and of the future
Bednárová, Jana ; Vacula, Richard (advisor) ; Štichauer, Jaroslav (referee)
The thesis seeks to give an overall image concerning the linguistic situation of Cajun French of Louisiana. This regional variant of French is spoken by a minority group of speakers in this state. Given that the paper was created in the Czech academic community where Cajun French is virtually unknown, it tries to spark more interest in this topic. The first chapter presents the theoretical input to the outlined problem and Czech works dealing with Cajun French. The second chapter shows the basic facts about Louisiana, as well as the key events in its history. It examines the creation of Cajun French and characterizes its specific features. It also includes a mention of Cajun French reference books. The third chapter examines the legal status of the French language in Louisiana. Furthermore, the work sheds light on its French language policy, carried out mainly by a state agency called CODOFIL (the abbreviation comes from Council for the Development of French in Louisiana).The thesis later explains what the adherence to Francophonie would mean for this state. This is followed by an account of the relations entertained with Francophonie. The thesis later outlines the current linguistic situation and describes the possibilities of studying French in Louisiana.The presence of French on signage and in...
|
|
|
English translation counterparts of Czech pronominal dative objects
Fišerová, Helena ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
The objective of the present thesis is to analyse Czech pronominal dative objects and their English translation counterparts. The Czech dative case occurs both in an attached and in a non-attached syntactic variant and has several different semantic functions, which results in a variety of possible counterparts. This thesis focuses only on divergent counterparts, i.e. it excludes translations by means of a corresponding pronominal object or a to-phrase. The possible translation counterparts include the shift of the participant into subject, possessive pronouns, prepositional phrases introduced by for, on and other prepositions, omission, and other means of translation. The analysis was performed on one hundred examples, which were obtained from the Czech-English parallel corpus InterCorp. The examples are divided into categories according to the type of counterpart used, and analysed especially with regard to semantics.
|
|
|
Teaching English to Deaf Students
Kalivodová, Tereza ; Matuchová, Klára (advisor) ; Bojarová, Marie (referee)
This bachelor thesis focuses on the process of teaching the English language to students who are deaf. The objective of the theoretical part is to present possible differences in the process of teaching a foreign language that result from the different identity of deaf students and to illustrate the situation of teaching a foreign language to deaf students. The practical part aims to present various methods that may assist during the process of teaching. It also describes the observed lessons of English at schools for the hearing impaired.
|
|
|
Text-based Computer mediated communication: forms, characteristics & influence on peripheral English vocabulary
Buršík, Ondřej ; Vít, Radek (advisor) ; Dvořák, Bohuslav (referee)
This B.A. Thesis introduces main forms of text-based Computer mediated communication in order to demonstrate that they differ in the level to which they motivate user's employment of new English peripheral vocabulary. General characteristics of the forms as well as results of their influence on English peripheral lexicon are discussed to provide better understanding of the issue. The work also addresses potential threats of utilization of computer mediated communication to the English language. The final conclusion is that there certainly are differences between forms of computer mediated communication in terms of employment of new specific lexicon and also that this new vocabulary does not represent a significant threat to the English language.
|
|
| |
|
|
Second language acquisition (English) based on mother tongue (Czech) - connections to the theory of children's language picture of the world
Lopatová, Lucie ; Pacovská, Jasňa (advisor) ; Filippová, Eva (referee)
This thesis engages in the language acquistion of the mother tongue (czech) and the second language (English) in preschool age and discribes the development of child language competence in both languages based on available theories, results of illustrative research and one-year observation in kindergarten with bilingual education program. In the beginning, there are defined theories which engaged in past and engage today (from 20th century till the present day) in study of language acquisition. In addition of these theories we focus factors which influence on the language development of children and consideration even theory of children's linguistic picture of the world. We compare the development of language competence (phonetic-phonological, semantic, grammatical, communication, pragmatic and vocabulary) in first language (czech) which are defined in agreement with available theories with empirical discoveries which indicate the development of those competence in second language (English) and we discribe partial methodological processes.
|
|
|
Relationship between the strength of foreign accent and the presence of glottalization
Moravcová, Jana ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Weingartová, Lenka (referee)
In this paper, we are interested in what the part of glottalization is in a foreign accent. We focus on Czech speakers of English and an evaluation of their utterances. Those speakers analyzed for the purposes of this paper were evaluated in advance by a perceptual test. In accordance with the results of the test, they were divided into three groups: A, containing those speakers with an English close to the native standard; C, containing speakers with a strong Czech accent; and B, containing speakers with a detectable foreign accent which, however, is not evaluated as a Czech one. The aim of this paper is to determine in what way speakers of each group use glottalization and whether the use is identical to the assumptions of the previous studies.
|
|
|
The occurrence of word-initial glottalization in Slovak English
Uhrinová, Mária ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
The occurrence of word-initial glottalization in Slovak English Mária Uhrinová Praha, 2012 Abstract The features of prosodic structure were shown to influence the occurrence of word-initial glottalization in English. The aim of the present thesis is to analyze the occurrence of glottalization in word-initial vowels in Slovak English in relation to prosodic structure, specifically to word stress and position in the intonational phrase. The semantic status of words (lexical vs. grammatical) is also considered. The first part provides a brief overview of key concepts in second language acquisition with focus on acquisition of second language phonology. In addition, a summary of previous research on glottalization is given. The empirical part of this thesis is based on the recordings of 15 Slovak speakers of English. The results suggest that Slovak speakers use glottalization extensively in their production of English. This should be taken into consideration when looking for better methods for teaching English pronunciation. Keywords: glottalization, prosodic structure, Slovak, English, foreign accent
|
|
|
Bilingualism on Social Networks: The Use of Czech, English and other languages among Czech users of Facebook
Pilzová, Zuzana ; Švelch, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Jirák, Jan (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to find and describe the evidence of bilingual communication of English language among Czech users of the social network Facebook. A qualitative method of both text document and semi-structured interviews with six active users was used to describe the type of bilingualism which occurs in the social media environment, in what situations and what is the user's motivation behind it. Therefore the main theoretical approaches I focus on are bilingualism and its place in the Czech Republic and the role of the English language in this socio-culture context. Furthermore I study the communication in an online environment: what are the specifications and what role does the CMC (computer-mediated-communication) play in relationship of the language and the user. Finally, I search for previous studies in the field of online bilingualism, social media preferably. The results show not only the Czech users are well situated within the discourse of English as (online) lingua franca, moreover they seem to be very active in self-imposed code-switching into the English language. The data acquired through the interviews helped to identify bilingualism occurs on both levels of code-switching and code-mixing. Additionally, Anglicism's in the Czech language were reported widely.
|
|
|
English Loanwords in the Chinese Language
Ambrožová, Romana ; Pavlík, Štěpán (advisor) ; Zádrapa, Lukáš (referee)
The presented paper is devoted to the description of English loanwords in Chinese. It describes the problems connected to their integration into the target language and it also introduces a short history of borrowing in Chinese and the current tendencies in borrowing foreign words into Chinese. This paper also shows the classification of loanwords according to both Western and Chinese linguistics and focuses on language changes in the process of borrowing.
|
guest ::
