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Adjective Positions in Old English and Middle English Homilies and Sermons
ILIĆOVÁ, Alexandra
The thesis is focused on the variability of adjectival position in noun phrases in the Old English and Middle English periods, which is analyzed on the textual samples of six Old English and Middle English homilies and sermons. It describes these texts with regards to their general characteristics and focuses on the grammatical changes that occurred in the Old English and Middle English periods, especially with regards to leveling of inflectional endings and the gradual loss of strong and weak inflection. Subsequently, it focuses on the interplay of the factors of adjective position, strong or weak inflection (particularly in Old English), definiteness or indefiniteness of the noun phrase, and meaning. It also explores the connection of adjective position and information structure of the texts. It devotes brief attention to two cases of similarity between adjective placement nowadays, and in the past.
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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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Corpus based analysis of the competition of linguistic expressions of Old Norse and Old English origin in the Late Old English and Middle English periods
Schlindenbuchová, Magdalena ; Tichý, Ondřej (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
This paper seeks to illustrate the influence of Old Norse on the English lexicon. The theoretical part deals mainly with the socio-historical background and with the invasions of the Old Norse speakers, which brought about the changes in the English language. Furthermore, it discusses the idea of mutual intelligibility of the two languages concerned and it describes the characteristics of the language contact situation, which lasted for about 200 years, during which speakers of Old Norse invaded the British Isles. The aim then is to relate these events and factors to the linguistic changes in historical English caused by the influence of Old Norse. The changes shall be illustrated on the competition of concrete linguistic expressions of Old Norse origin and Old English origin. The research itself focuses on the examination of the competition during the periods of Late Old English and Middle English, and it is carried out in the Old English and Middle English corpora (YCOE, PPCME2). The analysis comprises four words of Old Norse origin and their four Old English equivalents. Key words: historical linguistics, borrowing, language contact, corpus linguistics, Old English, Middle English, Old Norse
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Middle English adjectival innovations of native origin (1200-1400) formed by prefixation
Ortutayová, Dominika ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to analyse and describe the Middle English adjectival innovations of native origin coming into existence by prefixation in the period of 1200-1400. The formations are described from the point of view of their word-formation and semantics, the individual word- formation patterns are identified and analysed in terms of their productivity. In the theoretical part we present three points of view - social, typological and word-formational - which allow us to formulate our hypothesis consisting in the assumption that the native prefixation will exhibit gradual signs of decreasing productivity, brought about both by the language-external and language-internal causes - the language being overwhelmed by the an influx of foreign elements due to political and social situation at the time; as well as gradual phonological and semantic non- transparency of the native prefixes. The empirical part is based on the analysis of the 219 adjectives retrieved from the Oxford English Dictionary. Our results show that 7 out of 13 prefixes are decreasing in productivity or unproductive, yet the situation is not homogeneous and we were able to identify eight possible scenarios of development in productivity patterns. Our hypothesis is thus confirmed only partially - both the extra and...
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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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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 Motives of Separation and Solitude in Old English Lyrical Poetry
Klasnová, Lenka ; Znojemská, Helena (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
This thesis is concerned with four Old English lyrical poems of the so-called elegiac group, i.e. The Wife's Lament, Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wanderer and The Seafarer and their shared themes of separation and solitude. After a brief account of the few facts known about the poems, the appropriateness of the elegiac genre imposed upon them by scholarly tradition is addressed in the introduction. The first chapter gives a brief overview of the history of critical opinion on each of the poems. Since their simple unambiguous translation is impossible, given the cryptic nature of the narratives and numerous grammatically, syntactically, semantically or otherwise problematic points, the chapter also attempts the notoriously difficult task of their interpretation. While some solutions to the problematic aspects may be preferred in the course of the interpretation, a variety of potential possibilities is discussed in most cases. The resulting interpretations strive to present each poem as a unified and logical narrative. The second chapter addresses the themes of loneliness, alienation, isolation and separation in each of the four poems, their given reasons, manifestations, progress and the common elegiac imagery used to express them. The mood evoked by specific word meanings and employed rhetorical devices...
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Word Order Patterns in Old and Modern English
REHÁKOVÁ, Zuzana
This thesis focuses on the patterns of the word structures in Old English and Present Day English. It is based on an analysis of two different texts. The theoretical part of this study concentrates on the evolution of the language itself which, is vital for understanding all the changes that have occurred during the evolution of English language. Different sentence structures and word order patterns are analysed in the practical part. I chose the poem Beowulf, because it is the best preserved work from the Old English period and a book by the author Agatha Christie who is a world-famous writer of the 20th century. Samples were selected from both written texts, and analysed with a focus on the word order patterns of different types of sentences (simple sentences, subordinate clauses of time, purpose, manner, conditional, etc.).
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