La présente recherche s’interroge sur la présumée dichotomie entre les alternances et les généralisations de surface dans le cadre théorique de la grammaire de constructions. Plus précisément,l’objectif de cette thèse est ternaire. Par l’analyse attentive d’une grande quantité de données, nous faisons une description détaillée de l’alternance causative en anglais (The fabric stretched vs. Joan stretched the fabric), nous proposons une méthode qui permet de mesurer la force d’alternance des verbes ainsi que la quantité de sens partagée entre les deux constructions, et, enfin, nous montrons que si l’on veut rendre compte des contraintes au niveau de la construction, l’on doit alors prendre en compte les généralisations de plus bas niveau, telles que les interactions entre le verbe et ses arguments dans le cadre de chaque construction. Afin d’ajouter au débat entre alternance et généralisations de surface, nous proposons une analyse détaillée des deux constructions qui forment l’alternance causative en anglais : la construction intransitive non-causative d’une part et la construction transitive causative de l’autre.Notre but est de mesurer la quantité de sens partagée par les deux constructions mais aussi démontrer en quoi ces deux constructions diffèrent. Dans cette optique, nous prenons en compte trois éléments: construction, verbe et thème (i.e. l’entité sujette à l’évènement dénoté par le verbe). Nous utilisons la sémantique distributionnelle pour la mesure des similarités sémantiques entre les divers thèmes employés avec chaque verbe dans chaque construction dans notre corpus.Ce groupement sémantique met en lumière les différents sens verbaux employés avec chaque construction et nous permet d’établir des généralisations quant aux contraintes qui s’appliquent au thème dans chaque construction. / The present research takes issue with the supposed dichotomy between alternations on the onehand and surface generalisations on the other, within the framework of construction grammar.More specifically the aim of this thesis is threefold. Through the careful analysis of a largedataset, we aim to provide a thorough description of the causative alternation in English (Thefabric stretched vs. Joan stretched the fabric), suggest a method that allows for a solid measure ofa verb’s alternation strength and of the amount of shared meaning between two constructions,and finally, show that in order to capture constraints at the level of the construction, one mustpay attention to lower level generalisations such as the interaction between verb and argumentswithin the scope of each construction.In an effort to add to the discussion on alternation vs. surface generalisations, we propose adetailed study of the two constructions that make up the causative alternation: the intransitivenon-transitive causative construction and the transitive causative construction. Our goal is tomeasure the amount of meaning shared by the two constructions and also show the differencesbetween the two. In order to do so we take three elements into account: construction, verband theme (i.e. the entity that undergoes the event denoted by the verb). We use distributionalsemantics to measure the semantic similarity of the various themes found with each verb andeach construction in our corpus. This grouping highlights the different verb senses used witheach construction and allows us to draw generalisations as to the constraints on the theme ineach construction.

This study investigates the expression of epistemic modality in a corpus of Ghanaian Pidgin English (GhaPE). The epistemic expressions are manually identified and thereafter distinguished from each other in terms of grammatical status and their indication of different epistemic and evidential notions. 7 different elements are found, ranging from 1 pre-verbal marker, 1 adverb, 2 particles and 3 complement-taking predicates. The results indicate, in line with existing research, that to differentiate between usage properties of individual modal expressions it may be necessary to subdivide them in terms of not only epistemic but also evidential meanings. Moreover, a functional parallel between the GhaPE particle abi, the Swedish modal particle väl and the Spanish adverbs a lo mejor and igual is demonstrated, with respect to their simultaneous function of expressing epistemic probability and asking the hearer for confirmation. Finally, the results suggest, contrary to previous accounts, that the pre-verbal marker fit may indicate epistemic possibility without the addition of a preceding irrealis marker go. It is proposed that future researchers should make use of bigger corpora in order to arrive at a more ample conception of both individual modal categories and their interrelations.

This study examines linguistic frame changes in the Polish EU-discourse after the election of the PiS party in 2015. By looking at keywords, n-Grams, collocations, and verbs this thesis pursues a corpus-driven, inductive approach. Those findings generated in the corpus-driven examination are further analysed in a corpus-based follow-up analysis, as well as by using FrameNet entries. Especially keywords and microstructural constructions (e.g. the preposition 'na') have been found to convey changes in broader semantic (re)contextualizations. Hence, the evidence shows that the political upheaval in 2015 was accompanied by frame semantic shifts.

Syftet med detta arbete är att göra en kvantitativ, korpusbaserad undersökning av den språkliga andrafieringen av tre minoritetsgrupper: romer, vietnameser och ukrainare, i den tjeckiska mediadiskursen under 15 år, samt att få ett omfattande, representativt resultat genom att jämföra neutrala, positiva och negativa adjektiv som står intill sökorden. Till teoretisk grund ligger hur språket hjälper till att bygga och förstärka maktstrukturer samt hur korpussökningar efter kollokationer och närliggande ord kan tydliggöra en språklig andrafiering. Här används en kvantitativ metod för att besvara analytiska frågor om dessa benämningar. Materialet som ligger till grund för analysen är SYN version 4 i det tjeckiska Nationalkorpuset – i sin helhet består det av 275 miljoner meningar. Det verkar inte tidigare ha utförts någon sådan undersökning på ett så stort material, även om några forskare har använt liknande metoder. Resultatet bekräftar att de olika grupperna beskrivs på olika sätt, och är, genom det stora källmaterialet, ett bevis på hur språket i mediadiskursen speglar diskursen i samhället i stort.

Studiens övergripande syfte är att undersöka om det finns ett samband mellan olika bruk av förstapersonspronomen i tre olika ämneskategorier av studenters c-uppsatser och refereegranskade artiklar och, i så fall, hur sambandet ser ut. Därtill vill denna studie undersöka om detta samband kan bero på följande faktorer: skribenters erfarenhet, skilda skrivkonventioner och skilda skrivpraxis i olika textdelar (d.v.s. inledning, forskningsbakgrund, metod osv). Förutom att jämföra andelen förstapersonspronomen kommer denna studie också att undersökas författaridentitet med utgångspunkt i Tang och Johns (1999) modell. Resultaten visar att i akademiskt skrivande förekommer förstapersonspronomen olika ofta i olika ämneskategorier av c-uppsatser och refereegranskade artiklar, vilket troligen beror på olika skrivkonventioner inom olika ämnen. Generellt förekommer förstapersonspronomen mest i två textdelar av den examinerade korpusen: inledning samt diskussion och avslutning. Detta indikerar att på grund av olika skrivpraxis, tillåts författare vara mer eller mindre närvarande i olika textdelar. Slutligen visar denna studie att den representativa identiteten är den mest frekventa i alla ämneskategorier av både c-uppsatser samt refereegranskade artiklar. / The aim of this study is to investigate whether there is a connection between different uses of first-person pronouns in three different subject categories of students’ c-theses and peer-reviewed articles and, in that case, how this connection looks like. Also, if this connection may depend on the following factors: writers' experience, different writing conventions, different writing practices in different parts of text (i.e., introduction, research background, method etc.). In addition, this study aims to investigate the authorial identity based on Tang and John's (1999) model. The results show that, in academic writing, first-person pronouns occur differently in diverse subject categories of c-thesis and peer-reviewed articles, which is probably due to dissimilar writing conventions within different subjects. Generally, first-person pronouns occur mostly in two parts of text in the examined corpus: introduction and also discussion and conclusion. This pinpoints that, due to diverse writing practices, authors are allowed to be more or less present in different parts of text. To conclude, this study shows that the representative authorial identity is the most frequent in all subject categories of both c-theses and peer-reviewed articles.

В рамках данной работы представлен фрагмент исследования политических метафор, которые задействуются в формировании образа России в британских СМИ. Цель данного исследования – изучить специфику метафорических моделей, объективирующих образ России в СМИ Великобритании. Анализ производится с помощью корпусных технологий, анализируется массив материала из англоязычного корпуса NOW (News on the web). Наряду с дефиницией метафорической модели как элемента, апеллирующего к когнитивной деятельности человека, отобранные метафорические единицы сортировались по разрядам и видам, была указана их дискурсивная характеристика, дана оценка продуктивности метафорической модели при моделировании образа России, а также характеристика прагматического потенциала модели. При анализе и интерпретации метафор использовались работы известных отечественных лингвистов. Материал отбирался из британских газет и журналов в период с 01.01.2019 по 30.04.2021 (использованы такие издания как «The Spectator», «The Guardian», «The «Politico», «The New European» и др.). Метод метафорического моделирования, который используется в работе, представляет возможность выявить специфику доминантных метафорических моделей. В исследовании также используется описательный метод, который позволяет включить в работу интерпретационную методику. Данные методы позволяют комплексно проанализировать собранный материал и изучить метафорический образ России в британских СМИ. Актуальность исследования определяется процессами глобализации, которые расширяют границы межкультурной коммуникации. Они обязывают исследовать то, как образ России воспринимается в других странах для составления имиджа страны, работы с ним и его корректировки. / This article presents a fragment of the study of political metaphors that form the image of Russia in the British media. The purpose of this study is to find the specifics of metaphorical models that objectify the image of Russia. The analysis is carried out with corpus technologies, the material was taken from the English-language NOW corpus (News on the web) and analyzed. Along with the definition of the metaphorical model as an element appealing to the cognitive activity of a person, the selected metaphorical units were sorted by categories and types, their discursive characteristics are indicated, the productivity of each metaphorical model in modeling the image of Russia is evaluated, the pragmatic potential of the models are given. The works of well-known Russian linguists were used in the analysis and interpretation of metaphors. The material was selected from British newspapers and magazines in the period from 01.01.2019 to 30.04.2021 (such media as "The Spectator", "The Guardian", "The "Politico", "The New European", etc. were used). The method of metaphorical modeling, which is used in the paper, provides an opportunity to identify the specifics of dominant metaphorical models. The study also uses a descriptive method, which allows to include an interpretative method in the work. These methods allow us to comprehensively analyze the collected material and study the metaphorical image of Russia in the British media. The relevance of the research is determined by the processes of globalization, which expand the boundaries of intercultural communication. They oblige us to study how the image of Russia is perceived in other countries to create the image of the country, work with it and adjust it.

This work describes an approach to determine whether people participate in the events they tweet about. Specifically, we determine whether people are participants in events with respect to the tweet timestamp. We target all events expressed by verbs in tweets, including past, present and events that may occur in future. We define event participant as people directly involved in an event regardless of whether they are the agent, recipient or play another role. We present an annotation effort, guidelines and quality analysis with 1,096 event mentions. We discuss the label distributions and event behavior in the annotated corpus. We also explain several features used and a standard supervised machine learning approach to automatically determine if and when the author is a participant of the event in the tweet. We discuss trends in the results obtained and devise important conclusions.

This study investigates undergraduate students’ vocabulary size, and their use of formulaic language. Using the Vocabulary Levels Test (Laufer and Nation 1995), it measures the vocabulary size of native and non-native speakers of English and explores relationships between this and course of study, gender, age and home language, and their academic performance. A corpus linguistic approach is then applied to compare student writers’ uses of three high-frequency verbs (have, make and take) relative to expert writers. Multiword units (MWUs) featuring these verbs are identified and analysed, focusing on delexical MWUs as one very specific aspect of depth of vocabulary knowledge. Student and expert use of these MWUs is compared. Grammatically and semantically deviant MWUs are also analysed. Finally, relationships between the size and depth of students’ vocabulary knowledge, and between the latter and academic performance, are explored. Findings reveal that Literature students had larger vocabularies than Law students, females knew more words than males, and older students knew more than younger ones. Importantly, results indicated a relationship between vocabulary size and academic performance. Literature students produced more correct MWUs and fewer errors than Law students. Correlations suggest that the smaller students’ vocabulary, the poorer the depth of their vocabulary is likely to be. Although no robust relationship between vocabulary depth and academic performance emerged, there was evidence of an indirect link between academic performance and correct use of MWUs. In bringing together traditional methods of measuring vocabulary size with an investigation of depth of vocabulary knowledge using corpus analysis methods, this study provides further evidence of the importance of vocabulary knowledge to academic performance. It contributes to debates on the value of a sound knowledge of high-frequency vocabulary and a developing knowledge of at least 5000 words to academic performance, and the analysis and quantification of errors in MWUs adds to our understanding of novice writers’ difficulties with these combinations. The study also explores new ways of investigating relationships between size and depth of vocabulary knowledge, and between depth of vocabulary knowledge and academic performance. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

This study sought to examine linguistic and discursive strategies used to construct messages reflective of the implementation of the HIV and AIDS policy for Zimbabwe of 1999 by government and private newspapers. Such analysis was perceived to be important since media content has a bearing on Zimbabweans‘ perception and attitudes regarding HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment and control. The study was aimed at comparing messages from newspapers with views by the people of Zimbabwe regarding the implementation of the policy. Findings reveal that empowerment programmes particularly those targeting women and children are lagging behind as Zimbabweans, literature and newspaper data sources testify. In addition, information sources concur that cultural (For example, stigmatisation, polygamy, religious practices, spouse inheritance) and structural (For example, patriarchy, masculinity, bureaucracy, politics) are stumbling blocks that negatively affect the implementation of the policy. Further, even though private and government newspapers do not fully agree on the portrayal of human agents, there is a general consensus between newspaper reports and Zimbabweans that people still face socio-economic and econo-political challenges that militate against the smooth implementation of the HIV and AIDS policy. Government newspapers tend to downplay aspects which reveal inadequacies of government activities. The study notes this as betrayal of use of ideological squares both by government and private newspapers whereby certain aspects regarding the implementation of the policy are either downplayed or highlighted to influence perception. The study reveals that newspaper reports used nominalisation, quantification, positive politeness, thematisation, rhematisation, intertextuality, euphemism, proverbs, idioms, action verbs, metaphors and citation of experts as linguistic and discursive strategies both for agenda setting and building purposes regarding the implementation of the HIV and AIDS policy. Other devices used particularly in the encoding of Operation Murambatsvina are, claptraps, deictic referencing, personal pronouns, adjectives and direct speech. The study attributes problems regarding the Zimbabwean HIV and AIDS intervention model to the top – down approach inherent in the policy. Hence, the call for an adoption of an unhu/hunhu/ubuntu inspired bottom – up HIV and AIDS intervention model in Zimbabwe. This would inculcate pro-family, pro-village, pro-nation/people and ―servant leadership‖ (Mangena and Chitando, 2011) values in the fight against the pandemic through the embracing of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS). Unfortunately, such values largely continue to elude the radar of the current top – down HIV and AIDS intervention model cuurently in use in Zimbabwe. / African Languages / D. Litt et Phil. (African Languages)

Cette thèse de doctorat étudie l'utilisation discursive des régionalismes, ou diatopismes, du français en alliant les perspectives de la linguistique variationniste et de l'analyse du discours. L'étude fournit un développement conceptuel, terminologique et méthodologique détaillé en matière de diatopie et des contraintes qui pèsent sur l'usage de diatopismes dans le discours. Elle explicite en particulier la méthode d'analyse appliquée en termes différentiels, pour la description des diatopismes et l'interprétation des sources et des enquêtes de terrain menée par l'auteure, ainsi que pour l'analyse du discours. À partir de l'analyse des procédés discursifs qui présentent les diatopismes en autonymie (les mises en relief) et de leur distribution discursive, un nouveau paradigme sociopragmatique permet d'interpréter les caractéristiques pragmatiques et sociolinguistiques des diatopismes dans le discours. Le corps de l'analyse est présenté sous la forme d'articles dictionnairiques, complétant un modèle lexicographique différentiel de rubriques qui sont consacrées aux aspects discursifs et sociopragmatiques des diatopismes étudiés. L'analyse philologique porte sur tous les diatopismes qui sont mis en relief dans l'ensemble des vingt-six romans grand public du Vendéen Yves Viollier, publiés de 1972 à 2009, et qui appartiennent à la communauté sociolinguistique de ce dernier. L'étude montre que les mises en relief, tributaires de l'orientation réaliste des romans étudiés, sont relativement rares, et que la création de l'ethos du 'régional' passe dans ceux-ci par un choix original de diatopismes, et non par des clichés largement partagés. / This doctoral dissertation studying the use of French regionalisms, or diatopicisms, in literature, is situated in the fields of variationist linguistics and of discourse analysis. The study offers a detailed description of the concepts and current terminology in the recent discipline of Francophone differential linguistics as well as in the related branches of French discourse analysis. It pays particular attention to the methods applied in the identification of diatopic elements and the interpretation of existing sources – completed by field studies conducted by the author – as well as for an appropriate discourse analysis of diatopicisms in literature. Developing a new sociopragmatic paradigm, the author analyses the strategies that present meta-linguistically highlighted diatopicisms and their textual distribution in order to interpret what these procedures say obliquely about the diatopicisms in terms of their pragmatic and sociolinguistic characteristics. The large corpus analysis is presented in the form of dictionary articles, based on a model developed in French differential lexicography, and enriched by sociopragmatic sections. The author analyses all highlighted diatopicisms in the twenty-six popular novels of Yves Viollier which belong to the latter's sociolinguistic community (Vendée). The study shows that the strategies highlighting diatopicisms in the analysed novels – published from 1972 to 2009, realist and partly regionalist – are relatively rare. The ethos of the novelist's home region is partly created by the use of diatopicisms – but this is achieved through original choices, rather than largely shared stereotypes.