The thesis deals with questions of pre-contractual liability which is seen as a very specific institute whose conception is diverse in different EU countries and also outside. The main research question is a difference between pre-contractual liability perception in the different countries and its full description in relation to the negotiations of business contracts with an emphasis on Czech law. In the first part, the author analyses historical background of pre-contractual liability in relation to Roman law and German-Austrian legal systems in which the professor Jhering developed that construction of culpa in contrahendo. In the following chapters, the author deals with the description and nature of pre-contractual liability, particularly in questions of whether they are contractual or delictual liability and enter into details the basic facts, example and extent of damages with respect to the European concept of pre-contractual liability. He concludes that the pre-contractual liability is in the European concept as delictual liability, with regard to the decision of European Court of Justice. The author simultaneously mentions that although similar facts in the legal systems, the extent of damages is very different when there is a clear dichotomy between positive and negative interesse. The...

Dans cette thèse, nous présentons une analyse syntaxique du vietnamien de Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville, dans la lignée de la syntaxe fonctionnelle mise en place par André Martinet et développée par la suite par ses continuateurs. Dans un premier temps, nous nous sommes intéressée au degré d’opposition verbo-nominal en vietnamien : nous proposons tout d’abord une synthèse des travaux menés à ce sujet, avant d’exposer notre analyse en classes, en nous appuyant sur des critères strictement syntaxiques. Une étude syntaxique détaillée des modalités (déterminants non déterminables) – les modalités nominalisantes, les modalités de degré, les modalités prédicatives et les modalités injonctives – a été nécessaire. Ces unités permettent de distinguer des comportements différents, et l’identification des grandes classes lexicales du vietnamien : nominaux, adjectifs, modaux et verbaux. Il apparait que ces classes d’unités s’organisent en un continuum, avec à un pôle les nominaux, à l’autre les verbaux. Dans un second temps, l’analyse porte sur les différents types de structures prédicatives du vietnamien. La variété des constructions – nucléaires et connectives – est au centre de l’étude, ainsi que l’identification des différentes fonctions. Enfin, nous exposons une analyse des “séries verbales”, phénomène très courant en vietnamien, mais décrivant en fait des réalités très diverses. Tout au long de l’analyse, nous accordons une importance particulière à la variation et aux zones de changements (réanalyses, lexicalisations, grammaticalisations), faisant état de la dynamique des différentes structures et de la langue elle-même. / We present here a syntaxic analysis of the Vietnamese language spoken in Ho Chi Minh City, in line with the functional syntax introduced by André Martinet and developed later by his followers. In a first part, we examined the extent of noun/verb opposition in Vietnamese. After a synthesis of work on this subject, we present our own analysis of the lexical classes, relying on strictly syntactic criteria. A detailed study of the syntactic modalités (undeterminable determinants) - nominalizing undeterminable determinants, undeterminable determinants of degree, predicative undeterminable determinants and injunctive undeterminable determinants - was necessary. These units are used to distinguish different behaviors, and leads to the identification of major lexical classes in Vietnamese: nominals, adjectives, modals and ‘verbals’. It appears that these classes of units are organized along a continuum. In a second part, the analysis focuses on the different types of predicative structures in Vietnamese. The variety of structures - nuclear and connective - is central to the study as well as the identification of the different functions. Finally, we present an analysis of "serial verb constructions" very common in Vietnamese, but actually reflecting very different realities. Throughout this study, we pay particular attention to the variation and change (reanalysis, lexicalizations, grammaticalizations), referring to the dynamics of the various structures and of the Vietnamese language itself.

Disease- and drug-related bone disorders are rapidly increasing in the population. The drugs which are used for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and metabolic derangements, may have negative or positive effects on bone tissues. In the first study, the possible side-effects of Carbamazepine and epileptic seizures on bone structure and composition were investigated by FTIR and synchrotron-FTIR microspectroscopy, AFM and micro- and nano-hardness analysis. The effects on the blood parameters, bone turnover and vitamin D metabolism were also investigated by ELISA and western blot analysis. The current study provides the first report on differentiation of the effects of both epileptic seizures and AED therapy on bones. Besides Carbamazepine treatment, seizures also caused a decrease in the strength of bone. The biochemical data showed that both the epileptic and drug-treated groups decreased vitamin D levels by increasing the vitamin D catabolism enzyme / 25-hydroxyvitamin D-24-hydroxylase. In the second study, the possible pleiotropic (positive) effects of cholesterol lowering drug / Simvastatin on bones were investigated by ATR-FTIR spectroscopy. The current study provides the first report on dose-dependent effects of simvastatin on protein structure and lipid conformation of bones. ATR-FTIR studies showed that although both high and low dose simvastatin strengthen bones, low dose simvastatin treatment is much more effective in increasing bone strength. Neural network analysis revealed an increased antiparallel and aggregated beta sheet and random coil in the protein secondary structure of high dose group implying a protein denaturation. Moreover, high dose may induce lipid peroxidation which limit the pleiotropic effects of high dose treatment on bones. This study clearly demonstrated that using low dose simvastatin is safer and more effective for bone health than high dose simvastatin treatment.

The dissertation “Informal Economic Activities” takes a comprehensive approach to the informal economy by studying traditional shadow economic activities, household DIY activities, and the smuggling of illegal and legal goods. Chapter 2 analyzes shadow economic and DIY activities and presents a dual estimation for the development of both types of informal economic activities in Germany from 1970 to 2005. It also considers the impact of German reunification on shadow economic and DIY activities and employs a proper estimate of domestic currency in circulation within Germany as an indicator variable for the shadow economy. Chapter 3 studies an informal economic activity that has attracted much attention recently: legal goods smuggling, or the illegal trade of otherwise legal goods. The main channel of this type of smuggling is the falsification of trade documents. By reporting false amounts of exports and/or imports to authorities smugglers, or trade misinvoicers, seek to avoid paying taxes and/or tariffs. Chapter 4 widens the analysis of smuggling to the smuggling of illegal goods and studies the smuggling of legal and illegal goods across the U.S.-Mexico border in order to improve the understanding of illegal trade. Studying the U.S.-Mexican case is particularly interesting as most illegal drugs and immigrants enter the United States via the Mexican border. The empirical analyses in the dissertation “Informal Economic Activities” are based on structural equation models (SEMs). The results demonstrate that the informal economy is significant and that growth of the informal economy is not exclusive to developing countries, although it is a more serious problem in these countries. Moreover, although the informal economy covers a wide range of rather diverse economic activities, the dissertation works out that a few similarities exist. These are important, especially for policymakers, in first understanding what drives informal economic activities and second designing appropriate policies to deter them.

MA (ELT) / Department of Engliish / Learning English as a second language by the South African learners of English First Additional Language (FAL) causes many challenges, such as committing errors in concord as there are differences between the learners’ mother tongue and the target language. Even at Grade 12 level, which is the exit point to institutions of higher learning or to the workplace, learners still display some deficiencies in the mastery of the English concord. This happens despite the fact that, in many South African schools, English is used as a medium of instruction and learnt as a First Additional Language (FAL) especially at high schools. Through the analysis of the written concord errors committed by the 72 of the 720 sampled Grade 12 English FAL learners in Vhembe District, the study answered to two questions which formed its cornerstone which are: what are the most common types of written concord/ subject-verb agreement errors which are committed by Grade 12 FAL learners and what are the causes thereof? The study employed both the quantitative and the qualitative methods to pursue the primary question. Learners responded to the questionnaires and the researcher also analysed their teacher-marked English FAL composition scripts with the focus on concord/subject-verb agreement usage. The findings were that concord/subject-verb agreement was a challenge to the majority of the participants. There was not even a single question which recorded a 100% correct entry. The question on collective nouns was found to be the hardest to the participants while comparatively, the singular indefinite pronoun question recorded the best results. The learners’ written compositions were also found to have been marred by concord/subject-verb agreement errors. In most instances, the learners had resorted to simple sentences avoiding the complex sentence construction as those would have required complicated application of concord/ subject-verb agreement usage. Based on the findings, the following recommendations were made: teaching of grammar should be intensified, and that teachers of English should be retrained even if it will be through the in-service programmes

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La thèse porte sur le statut sémantico-pragmatique des propositions relatives appositives (PRA), étudié à travers l’examen du fonctionnement discursif des phrases complexes de la forme ‘Matrice, qui PRA’ du français. Dans beaucoup de langues, les PRA n’interagissent pas sémantiquement avec les opérateurs présents dans leurs propositions enchâssantes et tendent à s’interpréter pragmatiquement comme porteuses d’informations non-centrales ou secondaires pour la question en discussion (QUD) du discours en cours. Plusieurs analyses (Holler 2005, Arnold 2007, Koev 2012) dissocient ces deux propriétés en dérivant la projection des PRA de leur statut d’assertions indépendantes et en expliquant leur lecture pragmatique à l’aide de principes généraux de gestion du flot discursif. En effet, lorsque les PRA apparaissent en fin de phrase, elles sont susceptibles d’interagir avec la QUD tout en ayant une portée large vis-à-vis du reste de la phrase. Certains phénomènes discursifs semblent néanmoins contredire l’idée que les PRA constituent des assertions indépendantes. D’abord, les PRA peuvent interagir avec la QUD seulement si leurs matrices véhiculent également des informations pertinentes pour le sujet en discussion. Ensuite, contrairement à ce que l’on peut observer dans une séquence de deux propositions indépendantes, dans une séquence formée d’une proposition matrice et d’une PRA, quel que soit l’ordre de leur linéarisation, la matrice s’interprète toujours comme centrale pour le discours, alors que le statut pragmatique de la PRA dépend fortement du degré d’informativité du reste de la phrase vis-à-vis de la QUD. Enfin, les résultats de deux études comportementales conduites pour la thèse montrent que, suite au traitement de phrases complexes comme ‘Matrice, qui PRA’, les référents du type ‘individu’ mentionnés par la matrice restent hautement saillants pour le discours subséquent contrairement à ceux dont il est question dans la PRA, qui jouissent d’un degré d’accessibilité assez faible. Partant de ces données, nous concluons que la lecture pragmatique centrale des PRA n’est pas une conséquence de leur statut d’assertions indépendantes mais résulte de l’intégration de leur contenu dans le domaine focal de leurs matrices. Plus généralement, en nous appuyant sur les travaux d’Ander Bois & al. (2010) et Schlenker (2013, ms), nous défendons l’idée que le manque d’interaction entre les PRA et le reste de leurs phrases d’accueil ainsi que leur prédisposition à une interprétation non-centrale pour le discours proviennent du fait, qu’à la différence de leurs matrices, dont l’énonciation s’accompagne de l’introduction d’un référent propositionnel nouveau, les PRA sont des anaphores propositionnelles, dont la portée sémantique et l’interprétation pragmatique dépendent de la position discursive de l’expression important dans l’univers du discours le référent auquel s’applique le contenu qu’elles expriment. / The thesis focuses on the semantic-pragmatic status of appositive relative clauses (ARC). We address this question by examining discourse functioning of complex sentences of the form ‘Matrix, qui ARC’ in French. Crosslinguistically, ARC fail to interact semantically with scope taking operators contained in their embedding clauses and tend to be interpreted pragmatically as carrying non-central or secondary information for the question under discussion (QUD) in the ongoing discourse. Several analysis (Holler 2005, Arnold 2007, Koev 2012) dissociate these two properties, deriving the ARC projection from their status of independent assertions and explaining their pragmatic reading with independent principles of the discourse flow management. Indeed, when an ARC follows linearly its embedding clause, it can interact with the QUD while still receiving a wide scope relatively to the rest of the host sentence. Some discursive phenomena seem nevertheless contradict the idea that ARC constitute independent assertions. First, an ARC can interact with a QUD only if its matrix clause also conveys information relevant to the subject under discussion. Second, contrary to what we observe examining sequences of two independent clauses, in sequences formed of a matrix clause and an ARC, regardless of the order of their linearization, the matrix clause is always interpreted as being at-issue for the discourse, while the pragmatic status of the ARC depends to a great extent on the degree of informativeness of the rest of the sentence relatively to the QUD. And, third, the results of two psycholinguistic experiments conducted as part of this study show that after processing a sentence such as ‘Matrix, qui ARC’, the entity-type referents realized by the matrix clause are highly salient for the subsequent discourse unlike those realized by the ARC, which have a rather low accessibility degree. Based on these data, we conclude that at-issue pragmatic reading of ARC is not a consequence of their functioning as independent assertions but results from integration of their content into the focal domain of the embedding clause. More generally, building on the works of AnderBois & al. (2010) and Schlenker (2013, ms), we defend the idea that the lack of interaction between ARC and the host sentences as well as their tendency to receive a not at-issue reading in discourse arise from the fact that unlike their matrix clauses, whose utterance has the effect of introducing a new propositional referent, ARC are propositional anaphora, the semantic and pragmatic interpretation of which depends thus on the discourse position of their antecedent expression, importing into the discourse the propositional referent the ARC’s content applies to.

Diese Dissertation befasst sich in drei voneinander unabhängigen Kapiteln mit dem Forschungsfeld des ökonomischen Designs. Das "Design" von Situationen wirtschaftlicher Interaktion hat zum Ziel, den Verlauf und das Ergebnis der jeweiligen Interaktion zu steuern. In dieser Arbeit werden mathematisch-theoretische "Designs" zum einen formal entwickelt und diese zum anderen durch politische oder soziale Institutionen realisiert. Das erste Kapitel thematisiert die Implementierung von Sozialwahlfunktionen in einem kollusiven Umfeld. Es wird gezeigt, wie die gezielte Schaffung von asymmetrischer Information zwischen den kolludierenden Parteien deren Koordination erschweren und die Implementierung erleichtern kann. Im zweiten Kapitel wird dieser Ansatz im Kontext der Bestechlichkeit bei Finanzaudits angewendet. Korruption kann verhindert werden, wenn der bestechliche Akteure eine Warnung über anstehende Kontrollen erhält, nicht jedoch der bestechende Akteur. Das dritte Kapitel wiederum untersucht "Design" in Form von Markt- und Wettbewerbsregulierung. Eine Beschränkung des Wettbewerbs - durch eine Begrenzung der Zahl miteinander konkurrierender Firmen - kann entgegen der ökonomischen Intuition wohlfahrtsoptimierend sein. / This thesis contributes to the field of economic design in three independent chapters. Taking the perspective of a "designer", it derives formal solutions in the framework of economic theory and suggests political as well as social institutions to put these solutions to practice. The first chapter employs mechanism design to mitigate the problem of collusion. It shows how the implementation of social choice functions can be achieved by introducing asymmetric information into a system prone to collusion. In the second chapter, this methodology is applied to the context of corruption in auditing. Bribery is impeded by selectively warning one - and only one - of the corruptive parties about upcoming inspections. Finally, the third chapter studies market regulation as a means of "design". Contrary to economic intuition, it may be beneficial in terms of welfare to limit competition by restricting the number of firms allowed to enter a market.

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