The goal of this thesis is to map a theme, which has not been systematically explored enough by Czech linguists so far. It deals with the material of the Prague Spoken Corpus (PSC), which contains a series of records of authentic spoken language. The thesis presents primarily a comprehensive description of particles, which can be found in the PSC, their semantic classes based on their real occurrence in the natural speech context. It further describes their collocability and syntagmatic relations, including their valency, thus more adequately explains their function in the commonly spoken language. Attention is also paid to their frequency and preferred use within the scope of particular combinations of sociolinguistic parameters, i.e. four variables (sex, age, education and type of discourse) which determined the selection of speakers on recordings to make their combinations as balanced as possible. Some particles are homonymous with other parts of speech - the extent of homonymy and its context dependency just as the processes of particulization are described in the contextual usage of particles and adverbs. The results in terms of the frequency of usage were compared with the frequency of occurrence in the written corpus SYN2005. The presentation of particles in dictionaries of Czech language was...

The diploma thesis deals with culture of spoken language among pupils at second stage of elementary school. The theoretical part is focused on rhetoric, phonetics, syntax or stylistics. The thesis also includes a part about division of vocabulary. The last two chapters of the theoretical part deals with nonverbal communication and it also includes some specific features of spoken language. The research part contains analyses of speeches that were done by six pupils of ninth grade of elementary school. Prepared an unprepared speeches were analysed from phonetic, morphological, lexical and syntactic point of view. Nonverbal communication was also evaluated.

The present thesis is concerned with the topic of fluency in learner language, more precisely of two types of fluency - perceived and productive. Little is known about L2 fluency, especially about the fluency of Czech learners of English. The main aim of the thesis is to establish whether there is a correlation between productive fluency, represented by speech rate, and perceived fluency, represented by native speakers' evaluations. In addition, it aims at better understanding the process of evaluation of perceived fluency by native speakers of English. The material for the analysis were samples of recordings from the LINDSEI corpus, for which speech rate in WPM was calculated, evaluations of fluency of these samples by native speakers of English on a 7-point scale and the raters' commentaries on the evaluation process. The analysis tries to prove or disprove the hypothesis that speech rate is one of the features which influence perceived fluency. The results show medium correlations for two raters, low or no correlations for the rest of the raters, showing together with the commentaries, that there is a relation between perceived fluency and speech rate, but it is not as strong as previous research suggests. The results show that fluency is a complicated, highly subjective phenomenon, and further...

Ce travail s’inscrit dans une démarche d'enseignement du portugais langue étrangère centrée sur l’enseignement de la langue à des apprenants non natifs ayant des besoins communicatifs pour agir en situation professionnelle. A partir d’un corpus de données orales sur le portugais parlé par des réceptionnistes d’hôtel au Portugal, nous avons mené un travail de description linguistique de ce genre discursif, en nous focalisant sur les aspects pragmatiques et discursifs : les actes de langage, la modalisation et les formes d’adresse. Cette analyse a débouché sur un travail de conceptualisation didactique pour l’enseignement du portugais de l’hôtellerie. Elle envisage les compétences générales et communicatives (discursives, stratégiques, interculturelles et linguistiques) que les apprenants non lusophones doivent acquérir au niveau B1 du CECR. Notre travail se termine par la présentation de pistes didactiques utiles pour l’enseignant du portugais de l’hôtellerie : l’enseignement par le genre et par la tâche et une perspective actionnelle centrée sur l’unité didactique. / This work focuses on the teaching of Portuguese as a foreign language by taking into account the teaching of Portuguese to non-native learners who require the language for professional purposes. It draws upon a spoken corpus of European Portuguese used by hotel receptionists in order to explore the pragmatic and discursive phenomena present in this discursive genre. The phenomena analysed include speech acts, modalisation and the address system. Following this linguistic analysis, teaching conceptualisation work was undertaken with regard to the teaching of Portuguese in the hotel industry. This conceptualisation includes the general and communicative (discursive, strategic, intercultural and linguistic) competencies required at the B1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The research is concluded by a presentation of teaching proposals related to teaching Portuguese in the hotel industry such as discursive genre and task teaching or an action-oriented approach focussed on the didactic unit.

Brown (1973) a proposé la « longueur moyenne des énoncés » (LME) comme indice standard du développement langagier. La LME se calcule selon le nombre moyen de morphèmes dans 100 énoncés de parole spontanée. L’hypothèse sous-jacente à cet indice est que la complexité syntaxique croît avec le nombre de morphèmes dans les énoncés. Selon Brown, l’indice permet d’estimer le développement d’une « compétence grammaticale » jusqu’à environ quatre morphèmes. Certains auteurs ont toutefois critiqué le manque de fiabilité de la LME et la limite de quatre morphèmes. Des rapports démontrent des variations de la LME avec l’âge, ce qui suggère que des facteurs comme la croissance des capacités respiratoires peuvent influencer l’indice de Brown. La présente étude fait état de ces problèmes et examine comment la LME et certaines mesures de diversité lexicale varient selon le développement des capacités respiratoires. On a calculé la LME et la diversité lexicale dans la parole spontanée de 50 locuteurs mâles âgés de 5 à 27 ans. On a également mesuré, au moyen d’un pneumotachographe, la capacité vitale (CV) des locuteurs. Les résultats démontrent que la LME et des mesures de diversité lexicale corrèlent fortement avec la croissance de la CV. Ainsi, la croissance des fonctions respiratoires contraint le développement morphosyntaxique et lexical. Notre discussion fait valoir la nécessité de réévaluer l’indice de la LME et la conception « linguistique » du développement langagier comme une compétence mentale qui émerge séparément de la croissance des structures de performance. / Brown (1973) proposed the « mean length of utterance » (MLU) as a standard index of language development. MLU is calculated by counting the mean number of morphemes in 100 utterances of spontaneous speech. The underlying hypothesis of this index is that syntactic complexity rises with the number of morphemes in utterances. According to Brown, MLU indexes the development of a « grammatical competence » up to about four morphemes. However, authors have criticized the lack of reliability of the MLU and the limit of four morphemes. Reported variations in MLU with age also suggest that factors such as the growth of respiratory capacities can influence Brown’s index. The present study reviews those problems and examines how the MLU and certain measures of lexical diversity vary according to the development of respiratory capacities. We calculated the MLU and the lexical diversity in the spontaneous speech of 50 male speakers aged 5 to 27 years. We also measured, with a pneumotachograph, the vital capacity (VC) of the speakers. The results show that MLU and measures of lexical diversity strongly correlate with the growth of VC. Thus, the growth of respiratory functions constrains morphosyntactic and lexical development. Our discussion focuses on the necessity to revaluate the MLU index and a « linguistic » conception of language development as a mental competence emerging separately from the growth of performance structures.

As building transcribed speech corpora for under–resourced languages plays a pivotal role in developing automatic speech recognition (ASR) technologies for such languages, a key step in developing these technologies is the effective collection of ASR data, consisting of transcribed audio and associated meta data. The problem is that no suitable tool currently exists for effectively collecting ASR data for such languages. The specific context and requirements for effectively collecting ASR data for underresourced languages, render all currently known solutions unsuitable for such a task. Such requirements include portability, Internet independence and an open–source code–base. This work documents the development of such a tool, called Woefzela, from the determination of the requirements necessary for effective data collection in this context, to the verification and validation of its functionality. The study demonstrates the effectiveness of using smartphones without any Internet connectivity for ASR data collection for under–resourced languages. It introduces a semireal– time quality control philosophy which increases the amount of usable ASR data collected from speakers. Woefzela was developed for the Android Operating System, and is freely available for use on Android smartphones, with its source code also being made available. A total of more than 790 hours of ASR data for the eleven official languages of South Africa have been successfully collected with Woefzela. As part of this study a benchmark for the performance of a new National Centre for Human Language Technology (NCHLT) English corpus was established. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Electrical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

As building transcribed speech corpora for under–resourced languages plays a pivotal role in developing automatic speech recognition (ASR) technologies for such languages, a key step in developing these technologies is the effective collection of ASR data, consisting of transcribed audio and associated meta data. The problem is that no suitable tool currently exists for effectively collecting ASR data for such languages. The specific context and requirements for effectively collecting ASR data for underresourced languages, render all currently known solutions unsuitable for such a task. Such requirements include portability, Internet independence and an open–source code–base. This work documents the development of such a tool, called Woefzela, from the determination of the requirements necessary for effective data collection in this context, to the verification and validation of its functionality. The study demonstrates the effectiveness of using smartphones without any Internet connectivity for ASR data collection for under–resourced languages. It introduces a semireal– time quality control philosophy which increases the amount of usable ASR data collected from speakers. Woefzela was developed for the Android Operating System, and is freely available for use on Android smartphones, with its source code also being made available. A total of more than 790 hours of ASR data for the eleven official languages of South Africa have been successfully collected with Woefzela. As part of this study a benchmark for the performance of a new National Centre for Human Language Technology (NCHLT) English corpus was established. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Electrical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

The presented diploma thesis deals with the description of verbal epistemic parentheses such as (ich) glaub(e) or (ich) mein(e) in German and myslím in Czech. These types usually do not belong among the means of expressing epistemic modality and are often neglected in current dictionaries and grammars, although they have a different meaning than the verb they originated from. The diploma thesis analyzes parentheses (ich) glaub(e) in German and myslím in Czech via spoken language corpora. The German data were acquired from FOLK (Forschungs- und Lehrkorpus gesprochenes Deutsch) which is a part of IDS Mannheim corpora. The Czech data come from ORAL v1 (Český národní korpus). The overall aim was to describe their syntactic behaviour, their semantics, and in some cases their prosodic features. The theoretical part focuses on distinguishing between discourse markers and particles. Such distinction forms a foundation for the analysis. The differentiation between grammaticalization and pragmaticalization is also commented on. Both parentheses were examined with relation to their syntactic position, syntactic integration, and their potential function as fillers. Based on the analysis, both constructions evince an advanced level of particularization and have features of particles and/or discourse markers....

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Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:42:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1055577 bytes, checksum: cf26150bea8bf64b9adbdc4408047a83 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-03-26 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The present paper takes into account the Variation Theory, proposed in the 60 s by the linguist William Labov, to explain the palatalization phenomenon on /S/ fricative in coda position in the speech community of Macapá-AP. Recognizing the language variability, many studies have been carried out in order to identify, describe and explain the linguistics phenomena which occur in Brazilian Portuguese. The /S/ palatalization phenomenon, for example, is a process which had been object of study in speeches of diferent regions in Brazil: Rio de Janeiro-RJ (CALLOU & MARQUES, 1975); Natal-RN (PESSOA,1986); Recife-PE, Salvador-BA e Rio de Janeiro-RJ (CALLOU & MORAES, 1996); Corumbá-MS (SILVA, 1996); João Pessoa-PB (HORA, 2000); Salvador-BA (CANOVAS, 1996); Rio de Janeiro-RJ (SCHERRE & MACEDO, 2000); Cordeiro-RJ (GRYNER & MACEDO, 2000); Florianópolis-SC (BRESCANCINI, 2002); Recife-PE (MACEDO, 2004), demonstrating that this is a recurrent phenomenon in Brazilian Portuguese. Thus, from the supposition that the heterogeneity of spoken language can be systematized, and considering the coronal anterior fricative palatalization in sylable endings as a phenomenon that can be explained from a Variationist perspective, we intend, through this research, to trace the linguistic profile of a speaker from Macapá-AP, in relation to the studied phenomenon, taking into account the social factors (exterior factors) and the structural factors (interior factors) which are involved in that process. In order to accomplish our main goal, we attempt to present in a descriptive way the phenomenon; to verify which factors are the conditioning and which are the preventing ones; to make a quantitative analysis of data using the computer program GOLDVARB 3.0 (SANKOFF, TAGLIAMONTE e SMITH, 2005), checking the occurrence of palato-alveolar realizations in contrast with the production of the alveolar /S/; to compare the results with others from previous researches; and based on the preliminary conclusions, to raise other hypotheses to be developed in future academic investigations or even in an extention of the present study. / O presente estudo busca, à luz da Teoria Variacionista, proposta na década de 60 pelo lingüista William Labov, explicar o fenômeno da palatalização de /S/ em posição de coda, no falar da comunidade lingüística da cidade de Macapá-AP. Reconhecendo a variabilidade da língua, muitos estudos têm sido realizados a fim de identificar, descrever e explicar os fenômenos lingüísticos ocorrentes no Português Brasileiro. O fenômeno da palatalização de /S/, por exemplo, é um processo que já foi objeto de estudo de falares de diversas regiões no país: Rio de Janeiro-RJ (CALLOU & MARQUES, 1975); Natal-RN (PESSOA,1986); Recife- PE, Salvador-BA e Rio de Janeiro-RJ (CALLOU & MORAES, 1996); Corumbá-MS (SILVA, 1996); João Pessoa-PB (HORA, 2000); Salvador-BA (CANOVAS, 1996); Rio de Janeiro-RJ (SCHERRE & MACEDO, 2000); Cordeiro-RJ (GRYNER & MACEDO, 2000); Florianópolis-SC (BRESCANCINI, 2002); Recife-PE (MACEDO, 2004), demonstrando que este é um fenômeno recorrente no português do Brasil. Partindo, pois, do pressuposto de que a heterogeneidade da língua falada é passível de sistematização e, sendo a produção palatoalveolar da fricativa coronal anterior em final de sílabas um fenômeno que busca explicação à luz da análise variacionista, buscamos, por meio desta pesquisa, traçar o perfil lingüístico do falante macapaense em relação ao fenômeno estudado, considerando os fatores sociais (externos) e estruturais (internos) que estão envolvidos neste processo. A fim de alcançarmos nosso objetivo principal, buscamos também apresentar descritivamente o fenômeno; verificar quais são os fatores condicionantes e os inibidores do processo de palatalização de /S/; fazer uma análise quantitativa dos dados utilizando o programa computacional GOLDVARB 3.0 (SANKOFF, TAGLIAMONTE e SMITH, 2005), verificando a ocorrência de realizações palato-alveolares da fricativa coronal em contraste com a produção da sibilante; comparar os resultados obtidos com outros estudos já desenvolvidos; e levantar novas hipóteses com base nas primeiras constatações para serem desenvolvidas em futuras investigações acadêmicas ou como extensão desse mesmo estudo