This study aims to focus on extracting and analyzing impoliteness in corpora in British English and Turkish retrieved from two different corpora British National Corpus (BNC) and Spoken Turkish Corpus (STC), which is under construction. It focuses on conversation as genre in spoken interaction and discusses issues related to impoliteness in a corpus driven linguistics (CDL) approach. It proposes two levels / extraction and analysis. Within the CDL framework, the theory or model of impoliteness behind the analysis will be forced by the findings gathered from the extraction of impoliteness. At the extraction level, among the spoken texts in both in BNC and the databases of STC, for the purposes of this study, dialogues that include a conflict or an offending event will be selected. In order to select such dialogues, various methods will be applied. First, spoken texts will be scanned through an initial word query, collocation query, question sentences and tags query, query for imperatives and possible queries that allow for searching for prosodic nuances, as well as interruptions and overlaps to the extent the corpora and the focus of the study allow. Second, metapragmatics comments, conventionalized impoliteness formulae, cues for non-conventionalized implicational impoliteness,conversational patterns, and other cues such as semantic prosody coming into play in the co-text and context are taken into consideration. Once the selection is completed, the insights gathered from the extracted instances of impoliteness will be applied to analyze the data. Impoliteness in both languages will be examined in regards to how impoliteness is triggered, how the progression of impolite exchanges takes place, and how those instances of impoliteness are resolved. Other considerations such as context-determined impoliteness, intentionality of the speaker, and perception of the hearer will be discussed.

This study examines the level of frequency of wordlists, and the selected vocabulary exercise type in two English textbooks aimed at first year (English 5) and third year (English 7) Swedish secondary school students. A quantitative analysis was conducted by inserting the wordlists into an online tool, which generated a frequency list based on lemmas in accordance with the BNC corpus. The analysis of the wordlist indicates a majority of low frequency lemmas and a minority of high frequency lemmas, which studies report that students are not familiar with. The results of the frequency analysis support findings of previously conducted studies regarding insufficient number of high frequency words in EFL textbooks. Vocabulary exercise types were also identified, counted and analysed. The analysis of the vocabulary exercise types indicates a preference for production exercises in the textbook aimed at English 5, and a preference of interpretation exercises in the English 7 textbook. The effectiveness of commonly found exercise types in the textbooks are supported by previous research.

本研究，基於分辨非賓存現動詞及瞭解二語學習者如何讓習得此類動詞之需求，旨在分析一個高頻率之非賓格存現動詞 HAPPEN與其三個同義字(OCCUR，APPEAR，與EXIST)和中文同義字「發生」從語言使用者角度作比較。採用了母語語料庫 (英文採用英國國家語料庫 BNC；中文採用十億詞語料庫 GW 2.0)及學習者語料庫(含語言訓練與測驗中心學習者語料庫the LTTC，國際英語學習者語料庫the ICLE，及政治大學外語學習者語料庫the NCCU)作為第一部分的語料庫分析。此外，為了探索二語英文錯誤及母語中文遷移的關係，我們也進行了以語料庫為基礎的心理語言學實驗(兩個關於中英文HAPPEN句子結構的接受度判斷測驗)。 本研究結果發現，其一，就語料庫中的文法形式(Grammatical form)來分析HAPPEN、OCCUR、APPEAR與EXIST，英文母語語料庫中的高頻文法形式(例如：happened或happen)與學習者語料庫中有相同的現象。然而大部份的高頻文法形式都是二語學習者經常誤用之處，且容易與兩個常見非賓動詞錯誤—過度被動化錯誤(Overpassivization)和及物化錯誤(Transitivization)—共現(Collocated)。其二，從語料庫錯誤分析各種錯誤類型得知， HAPPEN與OCCUR較常出現過度被動化錯誤；APPEAR與 EXIST較常有及物化錯誤。此結果顯示每個非賓存現動詞可能會犯不同錯誤，也因此造成其錯誤的原因有所不同。其三，從分析心理語言實驗結果得知，我們發現母語中文文法句型(L1 Chinese grammatical patterns)，例如：「V-了」－「出現了」；抑或是「V+N」－「發生車禍」、「發生戰爭」、「存在缺失」，都影響了二語學習者對英文非賓動詞之文法形式的正確判定。由此揭示了母語中文大多都對二語英文非賓動詞習得有所干擾。 基於所得結果，我們提出「完成體」(Perfectivity)及「及物性」(Transitivity)之不同來探討中英文間存現動詞用法之異同，並試著解釋造成二語非賓動詞學習複雜化的原因。 此研究克服了過去文獻中比較非賓存現動詞之困難也透過語料庫結合心理實驗研究法提供對非賓動詞習得之解釋方法。這些發現可進一步作為詮釋非賓動詞的假說，並將其應用於語言教材設計或被視為未來跨語言分析研究之基石。 / Owing to the necessity to identify unaccusative existence/appearance verbs and realize how they are acquired by L2 learners, this present thesis aims to analyze a highly frequent English unaccusative verb HAPPEN and compare it with its three other synonyms (OCCUR, APPEAR, and EXIST), as well as its Chinese counterpart發生 fāshēn ‘happen.’ Native speaker corpora (the British National Corpus (BNC) for English and Chinese Gigaword 2 Corpus (GW 2.0) for the Chinese), and L2 learner corpora (the Language Training and Testing Learner Corpus (the LTTC), International Corpus of Learner English 2.0 (the ICLE), and the National Chengchi University Foreign Language Learner Corpus (the NCCU)) are utilized to analyze the unaccusative verbs in the first main section. In addition, in order to discover the relationship between L2 English errors and L1 Chinese transfer, psycholinguistic experiments (two acceptability judgments tasks with comparable Chinese and English HAPPEN sentence constructions) based on the corpora data were conducted in this thesis. The results in this thesis showed that, first, the highly frequent grammatical forms of unaccusative verbs (e.g., happened or happen) in the English native speaker corpus share some similarities with those of L2 learner corpora. However, these grammatical forms were usually misused by L2 learners and were frequently collocated with the two common unaccusative errors (overpassivization, e.g., *What is happened? and trasitivization, e.g., *I happen a car accident.). Second, as for the distributions of unaccusative error types, HAPPEN and OCCUR were found to mainly co-occur with overpassivization errors, whereas APPEAR and EXIST were found to mainly co-occur with transitivization errors. This indicates that each unaccusative verb may have different potential for L2 unaccusative errors, and therefore the causes of these errors with different verbs may vary. Third, from the analysis of psycholinguistic experiments, we discover that the L1 Chinese grammatical patterns, such as the V-le grammatical pattern (e.g., 出現了chūxiànle ‘appear-le’) and the V+N grammatical pattern (e.g., 發生車禍fāshēngchēhuò ‘The car accident happened’, 發生戰爭 fāshēngzhànzhēng ‘The war occurred’, and存在缺失 cúnzàiquēshī ‘The pitfalls existed’) may influence L2 learners’ correct judgment as to the grammatical forms of unaccusative verbs. This reveals that generally L1 Chinese might have some interference with L2 unaccusative acquisition. Based on the results, we proposed that the perfectivity and transitivity differences between English and Chinese unaccusative existence/appearance verbs could distinguish the uses among the English HAPPEN and the Chinese發生 fāshēn ‘happen’ with their synonyms. These differences could also provide a possible reason for the cause of the problematic L2 unaccusative acquisition. This thesis overcomes the difficulties of comparing unaccusative existence/appearance verbs in the previous studies and attempts to unravel the enigma of acquiring this verb type from the integrated corpus-based and empirical findings. These findings in turn serve as the suggested assumptions to interpret unaccusative verbs, which can be applied to the design of language teaching materials or can be viewed as the basis of cross-language analysis in the future studies.

過去多數英文介系詞語意之研究皆以介系詞為多義詞，並藉由語意網絡去分析其詞義（e.g. Lindner, 1983; Tyler and Evans, 2001），或透過意象圖式理論（image schema theory）來探究介系詞語意，依不同的前景名詞（figure）與背景名詞（ground）組成可產生不同的形貌結構，從而衍生出其特殊語意（e.g. Lakoff, 1987）。然而，有關介系詞片語中詞彙搭配詞組如何影響介系詞使用之研究則較不多見。故本論文著重在分析前景與背景名詞等搭配詞組之語意特徵，探究其對介系詞in和on語意及介系詞片語組成之影響。以英國國家語料庫（British National Corpus）和政治大學外語學習者語料庫（The NCCU Foreign Language Learner Corpus）作分析，比較學習者與以英語為母語者使用in和on介系詞片語在語意上的差異。 本研究共分三部分。第一部分的詞義分析比較學習者與母語人士在使用in與on之詞義之異同，在介系詞in的部分，學習者與母語人士語料相較之下僅有細微的差異，多數語料皆為原型場景（proto-scene）之詞義的使用。介系詞on的詞義使用則稍有不同；學習者較傾向作具體位置的指涉，然母語者則較傾向呈現此介系詞的抽象意涵。第二部分的語意特徵分析則比較介系詞in和on在具體（literal）與抽象（metaphorical）片語組成上，前景與背景語意特徵之異同。研究結果顯示不同的介系詞片語會由特定類型的前景與背景名詞組成，故在組成不同語意之介系詞片語時，特定語意特徵出現的頻率會呈現顯著性地差異。第三部分為學習者語料的錯誤分析，探究學習者誤用in和on介系詞片語之情形。 綜合上述研究結果可得知，組成介系詞片語的名詞詞組會依上下文語意而產生不同之語意偏好（semantic preferences），介系詞的語意除了會受到後接名詞的影響，周圍名詞也可能造成語意上的差異。這些名詞可能會選擇特定的介系詞來使用，亦會影響介系詞在片語中之語意。 本論文深入地探討了介系詞片語詞組之組成，透過大量的語料分析，為英語介系詞複雜的語意層面提出了一個較系統化且完整之解釋，期能將研究發現應用於教材設計上，希望能在學習介系詞使用上有所幫助，也供未來介系詞相關研究作為參考。 / The meanings of English preposition have been explored greatly through vast directions of research. Most studies agree that preposition is a polysemous lexical item whose senses can be construed from the semantic network (e.g. Lindner, 1983; Tyler and Evans, 2001). Its senses has also been examined under the image-schema theory from the cognitive perspective (e.g. Lakoff, 1987), in which the figure (or trajector) and ground (or landmark) interact differently to form various configurations that contribute to sets of distinct senses. Though these studies attempt to provide a comprehensive network for the meanings of prepositions, how the semantic features of the figure and ground might influence the choice of a preposition and the construction of a prepositional phrase is hardly seen. The thesis adopted a native speaker corpus (British National Corpus, BNC) and a learner corpus (The NCCU Foreign Language Learner Corpus, NCCU) to probe into how the semantic features of the figure and ground nouns can help explicate the semantic profiles of the preposition in and on, and to compare learners’ understanding of them with that of the native speakers’. Based on the corpora, the study is composed of three major analyses. The sense analysis compared the sense distributions of in and on, from which similarities and differences may be found between BNC and NCCU. The result of this analysis showed that in the sense categories of in, the distribution did not differ greatly since most of the data were categorized into the proto-scene sense in both BNC and NCCU, and only slight variations could be found in other categories. In the sense categories of on, in senses that refer to location, higher frequency could be found in NCCU, while more metaphorical constructions of on were identified in BNC. In the second analysis, the semantic feature analysis, the distribution of the semantic features are compared between literal and metaphorical constructions of in and on and between BNC and NCCU respectively. For the comparison of in and on, the statistical results showed that different types of nouns could be observed in the data of particular prepositions. Thus, for nouns in prepositions of different meanings, there may be significant differences in the semantic features identified in these nouns This result implied that the nouns surrounding a preposition might have some influences toward the meaning of this preposition. In the third analysis, the errors in the learner data were identified and examined. Based on the results, we proposed that in a prepositional phrase formed by a particular meaning of a preposition, there exist a range of semantic preferences shown in their co-text. The meanings of a preposition are influenced by the lexical words surrounding the preposition, rather than by the word that goes after the preposition (the ground). This thesis extends from the previous studies on the semantics of prepositions and includes the important linguistic elements in forming the prepositional phrases in the analysis. By incorporating a large amount of data, it also provides a systematic analysis and a more comprehensive explanation toward the complex semantics of English prepositions. The findings can be applied to the design of English teaching materials and techniques and may hopefully bring some insights to further preposition-related studies.

過去許多研究著眼於探討英文介系詞的語意，其中許多學者專注在單一介系詞的探討（e.g., Boers, 1996; Lindstromberg, 2010），其它學者則分析由動詞與介系詞組成之動詞片語、由介系詞與名詞組成之介系詞片語的語意（e.g. Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 1999; Lindner, 1983; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartik, 1985）。過去這些研究大多在單一介系詞的框架下進行，鮮少有包含雙介系詞的句構的研究。本論文所研究之句構為：一個由動詞及UP/DOWN組成之動詞片語加上一個由IN與名詞組成之介系詞片語，在本句構中包含兩個連用之介系詞，本研究的分析包含雙介系詞的語意、動詞片語以及介系詞片語的語意，另外還包含此句構中所有語意的語意關連。 本研究採納並調整前人對介系詞、動詞片語以及介系詞片語的語意類別，以調整過的語意類別分析句構。研究結果發現在此句構中，雙介系詞大多含有隱喻概念，而大多的動詞片語則用來表達完成的動作語意，介系詞片語則多描繪空間概念或狀態。除此之外，我們發現此句構中的語意間有所關連，另外我們更發現UP和DOWN在本句構中並沒有完全對比的語意。 在本研究中，我們不同於以往研究只專注於一個介系詞或一個片語的分析，而是由三個角度切入探討一個含有雙介系詞的句構，未來期望能將本研究的結果運用在對比學習者對此句構的語言表現，並對介系詞的教學有更多貢獻。

The thesis explores the form, function and sociolinguistic distribution of explicit apologies in the spoken part of the British National Corpus. The sub-corpus used for the study comprises a spoken text mass of about five million words and represents dialogue produced by more than 1700 speakers, acting in a number of different conversational settings. More than 3000 examples of apologising are included in the analysis. Primarily, the form and function of the apologies are examined in relation to the type of offence leading up to the speech act. Aspects such as the sincerity of the apologies and the use of additional remedial strategies other than explicit apologising are also considered. Variations in the distributions of the different types of apologies found are subsequently investigated for the two independent variables speaker social identity (gender, social class and age) and conversational setting (genre, formality and group size). The effect of the speaker-addressee relationship on the apology rate and the types of apologies produced is also examined. In this study, the prototypical apology, a speech act used to remedy a real or perceived offence, is only one of a number of uses of the apology form in the corpus. Other common functions of the form include discourse-managing devices such as request cues for repetition and markers of hesitation, as well as disarming devices uttered before expressing disagreement and controversial opinions. Among the speaker social variables investigated, age and social class are particularly important in affecting apologetic behaviour. Young and middle-class speakers favour the use of the apology form. No substantial gender differences in apologising are apparent in the corpus. I have also been able to show that large conversational groups result in frequent use of the form. Finally, analysis of the effects of the speaker-addressee relationship on the use of the speech act shows that, contrary to expectations based on Brown & Levinson’s theory of politeness, it is the powerful who tend to apologise to the powerless rather than vice versa. The study implies that formulaic politeness is an important linguistic marker of social class and that its use often involves control of the addressee.

We present the synthesis and characterisation of novel single organic molecules known as phenoxylene borazines and borazatruxenes. Using temperature-dependant and concentration-dependant 1H NMR, we probe the supramolecular aggregation of these molecules in solution. Finally, we synthesise 2D hybrid material comprised of electron delocalised benzene rings and electron localised borazine rings. Using a combination of solid-state 11B and 13C NMR techniques, Raman spectroscopy and XPS, we confirm the presence of benzene and borazine regions in these novel materials.

<p>The thesis explores the form, function and sociolinguistic distribution of explicit apologies in the spoken part of the British National Corpus. The sub-corpus used for the study comprises a spoken text mass of about five million words and represents dialogue produced by more than 1700 speakers, acting in a number of different conversational settings. More than 3000 examples of apologising are included in the analysis.</p><p>Primarily, the form and function of the apologies are examined in relation to the type of offence leading up to the speech act. Aspects such as the sincerity of the apologies and the use of additional remedial strategies other than explicit apologising are also considered. Variations in the distributions of the different types of apologies found are subsequently investigated for the two independent variables speaker social identity (gender, social class and age) and conversational setting (genre, formality and group size). The effect of the speaker-addressee relationship on the apology rate and the types of apologies produced is also examined.</p><p>In this study, the prototypical apology, a speech act used to remedy a real or perceived offence, is only one of a number of uses of the apology form in the corpus. Other common functions of the form include discourse-managing devices such as request cues for repetition and markers of hesitation, as well as disarming devices uttered before expressing disagreement and controversial opinions.</p><p>Among the speaker social variables investigated, age and social class are particularly important in affecting apologetic behaviour. Young and middle-class speakers favour the use of the apology form. No substantial gender differences in apologising are apparent in the corpus. I have also been able to show that large conversational groups result in frequent use of the form. Finally, analysis of the effects of the speaker-addressee relationship on the use of the speech act shows that, contrary to expectations based on Brown & Levinson’s theory of politeness, it is the powerful who tend to apologise to the powerless rather than vice versa.</p><p>The study implies that formulaic politeness is an important linguistic marker of social class and that its use often involves control of the addressee. </p>

The thesis explores the form, function and sociolinguistic distribution of explicit apologies in the spoken part of the British National Corpus. The sub-corpus used for the study comprises a spoken text mass of about five million words and represents dialogue produced by more than 1700 speakers, acting in a number of different conversational settings. More than 3000 examples of apologising are included in the analysis. Primarily, the form and function of the apologies are examined in relation to the type of offence leading up to the speech act. Aspects such as the sincerity of the apologies and the use of additional remedial strategies other than explicit apologising are also considered. Variations in the distributions of the different types of apologies found are subsequently investigated for the two independent variables speaker social identity (gender, social class and age) and conversational setting (genre, formality and group size). The effect of the speaker-addressee relationship on the apology rate and the types of apologies produced is also examined. In this study, the prototypical apology, a speech act used to remedy a real or perceived offence, is only one of a number of uses of the apology form in the corpus. Other common functions of the form include discourse-managing devices such as request cues for repetition and markers of hesitation, as well as disarming devices uttered before expressing disagreement and controversial opinions. Among the speaker social variables investigated, age and social class are particularly important in affecting apologetic behaviour. Young and middle-class speakers favour the use of the apology form. No substantial gender differences in apologising are apparent in the corpus. I have also been able to show that large conversational groups result in frequent use of the form. Finally, analysis of the effects of the speaker-addressee relationship on the use of the speech act shows that, contrary to expectations based on Brown &amp; Levinson’s theory of politeness, it is the powerful who tend to apologise to the powerless rather than vice versa. The study implies that formulaic politeness is an important linguistic marker of social class and that its use often involves control of the addressee.

Submitted by Automa??o e Estat?stica (sst@bczm.ufrn.br) on 2016-12-15T18:17:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 IsaacDeMacedoFelix_DISSERT.pdf: 16244301 bytes, checksum: 298e0141a76245a28ff867f88d1a8925 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Arlan Eloi Leite Silva (eloihistoriador@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-12-20T21:18:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 IsaacDeMacedoFelix_DISSERT.pdf: 16244301 bytes, checksum: 298e0141a76245a28ff867f88d1a8925 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-20T21:18:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 IsaacDeMacedoFelix_DISSERT.pdf: 16244301 bytes, checksum: 298e0141a76245a28ff867f88d1a8925 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-29 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior (CAPES) / A capacidade de manipular propriedades t?rmicas de super-redes pode ajudar na descoberta de materiais mais promissores para aplica??es na nanotecnologia. Por meio de simula??es de din?mica molecular de n?o-equil?brio, investigamos o transporte t?rmico em nanofitas BNC, revezando periodicamente quantidades equivalentes de grafeno e nitreto de boro ao longo do seu comprimento, nomeando de per?odo de rede o tamanho de cada par de dom?nio (grafeno-nitreto de boro). Este trabalho revela que a condutividade t?rmica nessa super-rede varia n?o-monotonicamente com o per?odos de rede, podendo dessa forma ser controlada de acordo com os dom?nios de grafeno e nitreto de boro. Isso possibilita identificar o per?odo de rede que fornece a menor condu??o de calor nessa super-rede. Nesse sentido, para nanofitas com per?odo de rede de 3,43 nm, registramos uma condutividade t?rmica de ~ 89 W/m?K. Este valor ? muito menor do que o encontrado para grafeno e nitreto de boro isolados. O transporte t?rmico em nanofitas BNC ? dominado por vibra??es na sua rede cristalina (f?nons). Associamos o comportamento n?o-monot?nico da condutividade t?rmica dessa super-rede com o transporte t?rmico de f?nons coerentes e incoerentes. Por meio da densidade de estados vibracionais (VDOS) e da dispers?o de f?nons, analisamos seu espectro vibracional. / The ability to manipulate thermal properties of superlattices can help in finding the most promising materials for applications in nanotechnology. Through nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the thermal transport in graphene-boron nitride nanoribbons (BNC nanoribbons), alternating periodically equivalent amounts of graphene and boron nitride along its length, by naming the size of each domain pair (graphene-boron nitride) a lattice period. This work shows that the thermal conductivity in BNC nanoribbons varies non-monotonically for different lattice periods, which can thus be controlled according to the domains of graphene and boron nitride. This allows the identification of a lattice period that provides the lowest heat conduction in these superlattices. Accordingly, for nanoribbons with lattice period 3; 43 nm, we find a thermal conductivity of 89 W=m K. This value is much lower than the value found for both graphene and boron nitride isolated. The thermal transport in BNC nanoribbons is dominated by vibrations in their crystal lattice (phonons). We associate this non-monotonic behavior of the thermal conductivity of this super-lattice with the thermal transport of coherent and incoherent phonons. Through the density of vibrational states (VDOS) and phonon dispersion we analyze its vibrational spectrum.