L'acquisition de connaissances relatives aux constructions verbales est une question importante pour le traitement automatique des langues, mais aussi pour la lexicographie qui vise à documenter les nouveaux usages linguistiques. Cette tâche pose de nombreux enjeux, techniques et théoriques. Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement à deux aspects fondamentaux de la description du verbe : la notion d'entrée lexicale et la distinction entre arguments et circonstants. A la suite de précédentes études en traitement automatique des langues et en linguistique nous faisons l'hypothèse qu’il n’y a pas de distinction marquée entre homonymes et quasi-synonymes ; de même, nous posons qu’il existe un continuum entre arguments et circonstants. Nous proposons une chaîne de traitement complète pour l'acquisition de schémas prédicatifs verbaux en japonais à partir d'un corpus non étiqueté de textes journalistiques. Cette chaîne de traitement intègre la notion d'argumentalité au processus de création des entrées lexicales et met en œuvre une modélisation de ces deux continuums. La ressource produite a fait l'objet d'une évaluation comparative qualitative, qui a permis de mettre en évidence la difficulté des ressources linguistiques à décrire de nouvelles données, plaidant par là même pour une lexicologie s'inscrivant dans le cadre épistémologique de la linguistique de corpus. / Lexical knowledge acquisition of verbal constructions is an important issue for natural language processing as well as lexicography, which aims at referencing emerging linguistic usages. Such a task implies numerous challenges, technical as well as theoretical. In this thesis, we had a closer look at two fundamental aspects of the description of the verb: the notion of lexical item and the distinction between arguments and adjuncts. Following up on studies in natural language processing and linguistics, we embrace the hypothesis that there is no clear distinction between homonyms and quasi-synonyms, and the hypothesis of a continuum between arguments and adjuncts. We provide a complete approach to lexical knowledge acquisition of verbal constructions from an untagged news corpus. The acquisition process makes use of the notion of argumenthood, and builds models of the two continuums. Our lexicon has been evaluated on a qualitative and comparative basis. Siding with lexicography anchored in the theoretical framework of corpus linguistics, we show the difficulty of using lexical resources to describe as yet unseen data.

No ensino de língua nacional, concordância é um dos tópicos em cujo aprendizado observa dificuldade por parte dos discentes, principalmente pelo grande número de regras facultativas das gramáticas, que muitas vezes não levam em conta o uso formal real da língua. Este trabalho visa a descrever esse uso, a partir da observação de um corpus do caderno opinião de jornais de grande circulação, confrontando os resultados com as prescrições da norma gramatical escolar, a fim de separar, em tais prescrições, a parte aproveitável da não coincidente com a realidade do corpus, se for o caso. Pretende-se, dessa forma, contribuir para a boa qualidade do ensino da língua portuguesa nos níveis fundamental e médio, especificamente no que se refere à concordância / In first language teaching, topics related to verbal agreement present a high degree of difficulty for students to master, mainly because of optional rules that only emphasize a strictly grammatical teaching and disregards reality in the stantard use of language.Through the analysis of a language corpus extracted from O Globo and Folha de São Paulo, the two most notorious newspapers in Brazil, this work aims at verifying trends in the standard use of language as to verbal agreement, comparing the corpus data with rules prescribed by traditional grammarians. The final goal is to demonstrate that it is possible to minimize the overwhelming number of optional rules whose main application is to establish paradigms that hinders the performance of students proficient in their language.In short, the research was conducted both qualitatively and quantitatively, and is based on prescriptive and descriptive approaches to language teaching and also on the author's experience in educational institutions. The conclusion is that, with the help of this comparative study, the construction of a quality teaching can be achieved through more interaction

A presente pesquisa tem por objetivo investigar como a palavra paz é entendida, em termos de conceito, pelo Conselho de Segurança da Organização das Nações Unidas. Para tanto, são analisados trinta e sete relatórios oficiais produzidos pelo Conselho de Segurança, no período de agosto de 1994 a junho de 2009, acerca das missões de paz realizadas em trinta e uma regiões/países que apresentavam ameaça à paz e à segurança internacionais durante aquele período. De acordo com a Conselheira Gilda Santos Neves, chefe da Divisão das Nações Unidas do Ministério das Relações Exteriores, em seu texto O Brasil e a Criação da Comissão para a Consolidação da Paz (2008), a paz é algo que se consolida e não se constrói. Tal posição norteia a presente pesquisa, uma vez que o objetivo aqui é mapear as expressões linguísticas realizadas através da palavra paz. As bases teóricas desta pesquisa encontram-se fundamentadas na teoria da metáfora cognitiva, de Lakoff e Johnson (1980), bem como no estudo de Deignan (2005) em seu livro intitulado Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics, que visa a fornecer os benefícios que a abordagem cognitiva de metáforas pode obter através da análise de corpora digitalizados. Após compilar os relatórios do Conselho de Segurança e prepará-los para serem lidos pelo programa computacional WordSmith Tools 3.0, foram extraídas todas as ocorrências da palavra paz dos referidos relatórios. Das 686 ocorrências geradas, foram deixadas para análise somente aquelas com sentido metafórico e, no total, nove esquemas conceptuais foram construídos. A pesquisa feita sugere que, para o Conselho de Segurança, a paz é algo profundamente desejado tanto pela população das zonas de conflito quanto pela comunidade internacional. No entanto, a paz não é facilmente construída ou estabelecida. Alcançar a paz implica seguir um processo com diferentes etapas, ou seja, com início, meio e fim, bem como superar obstáculos e retrocessos que surgem no meio do caminho. Para tanto, diversos investimentos têm de ser feitos por todos aqueles envolvidos e realmente interessados na paz mundial. Por fim, vê-se que a visão da Conselheira Gilda Santos Neves, de acordo com as metáforas aqui analisadas, está correta, já que, conforme apontam os resultados do presente estudo, o conceito de paz, para o Conselho de Segurança, não é o de algo a ser construído do zero / The present research aims at investigating how the word peace is understood, in terms of meaning, by the Security Council of the United Nations. In order to do so, thirty seven official reports written by the Security Council, from August 1994 to June 2009, about the peace missions in thirty one areas/countries which presented threat to international peace and to international security during that period are analyzed. According to the Counselour Gilda Santos Neves, Head of UN Division, Ministry of External Relations, in her book O Brasil e a Criação da Comissão para a Consolidação da Paz (2008), peace is something which is consolidated, not built. This statement guides the present research, as the aim here is to map the linguistic expressions realized through the word peace. This research draws on the theory of the cognitive metaphor, by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), as well as the study proposed by Deignan (2005) in her book entitled Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics, which aims at providing the benefits the cognitive metaphor approach can obtain through the analysis of digitalized corpora. After compiling the reports of the Security Council and preparing them to be read by the software used, all the occurrences of the word peace were extracted. From 686 occurrences found, only the ones with metaphorical meanings were taken into consideration and nine conceptual metaphors were created altogether. The research suggests that, for the Security Council, peace is deeply desired not only by the population of the conflict zones but also by the international community. In spite of this fact, peace is not easily built or established. Achieving peace implies following a process with different phases, as well as overcoming obstacles and drawbacks which appear in the middle of the course. Therefore, several investments must be made by everyone involved and interested in global peace. Finally, it can be concluded that, according to the metaphors analysed here, the point of view of the Counselor Gilda Santos Neves is right, as the results of this study show that the concept of peace, for the Security Council, is not of something which must be built from its very beginning

A legendagem de programas audiovisuais tem merecido atenção renovada na área da pesquisa em Tradução, dado o incremento de acesso de filmes e seriados pela internet. Ao ocupar o profissional e também o leigo, que traduz legendas por hobby e na condição de fã, a legendagem de séries televisivas norte-americanas tem gerado materiais interessantes para estudo, também no âmbito da Terminologia. Mesmo com o crescente número de séries que usam terminologias específicas como pano de fundo (FROMM, 2011a), como as que se ocupam de temas médicos ou jurídicos, ainda não há muitos estudos sobre essa terminologia em tradução. As séries de ficção de tema sobrenatural, como as que tratam do universo de vampiros, lobisomens e bruxas, ou de ficção científica, por sua vez, parecem trazer um vocabulário com elementos bastante semelhantes às terminologias “tradicionais”, instaurando um vocabulário próprio relacionado a toda uma complexidade conceitual, pois constroem realidades particulares, comparáveis às realidades científicas. Nesse universo de discurso, segundo Barbosa (2005, 2006a, 2007, 2009), determinadas unidades lexicais funcionariam tanto como vocábulos quanto como termos. Levando isso em consideração, conhecer melhor esse tipo de material textual e, em meio a ele, as especificidades de sua “terminologia”, pode ajudar os tradutores brasileiros a se inserirem neste mercado de trabalho ou, ainda, a se estabelecerem como aqueles com maior familiaridade com a linguagem, com o vocabulário e com a tradução do “mundo das séries”. Este trabalho lidará, então, com um vocabulário não prontamente considerado como especializado por algumas correntes da Terminologia. Seu objetivo é propor bases teóricas e metodológicas para a elaboração de um glossário cujo público-alvo são os tradutores. No entanto, esse tipo de obra se baseia, por sua natureza, em procedimentos terminográficos para a compilação de um repertório de termos sem a pretensão de exaustividade (KRIEGER; FINATTO, 2004). Tomando como referencial teórico a Etnoterminologia, a Terminologia Cultural e a Terminologia Textual, aliadas a recursos e princípios da Linguística de Corpus, é oferecido como produto final um protótipo de glossário para tradutores de legendas do inglês para o português, utilizando como corpus os seriados True Blood e The Vampire Diaries em inglês e em português. Tal corpus foi analisado por meio do programa de análise lexical AntConc e de suas ferramentas, principalmente Word List, Keyword List e Concordance. Como parte do protótipo de glossário, foram desenhadas árvores de domínio para cada um dos seriados e elaboradas 18 fichas terminológicas como amostra. Nessas fichas, foram registradas informações encontradas no corpus sobre os termos selecionados, bem como especificidades lexicais e gramaticais desses textos. Ao final, foi possível mostrar que as unidades lexicais encontradas nos seriados de tema sobrenatural, por mais que se pareçam com vocábulos, estão em função de termo quando atualizadas nesse universo de discurso. Essa função designa a essas unidades lexicais um significado muito especializado, específico a esse contexto. Além disso, demostrou-se a produtividade de se adotar uma abordagem terminográfica ao universo de discurso dos seriados de tema sobrenatural. / The subtitling of audiovisual programs has received renewed attention in the area of translation research, due to the increase in the access to films and TV series through the Internet. As it engages professionals as well as laymen, who subtitle as a hobby and as fans, the subtitling of North American TV series has generated interesting materials for study, also within Terminology. Even with the increasing number of TV series that use specific terminology as background (FROMM, 2011a), such as those dealing with medical or legal issues, there are not many studies on this terminology in translation yet. Fictional TV series of supernatural theme, such as those dealing with the world of vampires, werewolves and witches, or of science fiction, in their turn, seem to bring vocabulary with elements quite similar to the “traditional” terminologies, setting up their own vocabulary related to a whole conceptual complexity, as they build particular realities, comparable to scientific realities. In this universe of discourse, according to Barbosa (2005, 2006a, 2007, 2009), certain lexical units would work as words and as terms as well. Considering this, knowing this kind of textual material better and, through it, the specifics of its “terminology”, may help Brazilian translators to insert themselves in this market, or even to establish themselves as the ones more familiar with the language, with the vocabulary and the translation of the “world of TV series”. This thesis will deal then with a vocabulary not readily considered as specialized by some Terminology theories. Its goal is to propose theoretical and methodological basis for the development of a glossary whose target audience is the translators. However, this type of work is based, in its nature, on terminographic procedures for the compilation of a term directory without aiming at exhaustiveness (KRIEGER; FINATTO, 2004). Taking as a theoretical framework Etnoterminology, Cultural Terminology and Textual Terminology, combined with resources and principles of Corpus Linguistics, it is offered as a final product a glossary prototype for subtitlers from English to Portuguese, using as a corpus the series True Blood and The Vampire Diaries in English and Portuguese. This corpus was analyzed using the lexical analysis program AntConc and its tools, especially Word List, Keyword List and Concordance. As part of the glossary prototype, domain trees were designed for each of the series and 18 terminological record sheets were produced as sample. In these sheets, information on the selected terms found in the corpus was recorded, as well as lexical and grammatical peculiarities of these texts. At the end, it was possible to show that the lexical units found in series of supernatural theme, no matter how much they might look like words, are in the function of terms when inserted in this universe of discourse. This function designates a very specialized meaning to these lexical units, specific to this context. In addition, the productivity of adopting a terminographic approach to the universe of discourse of TV series of supernatural theme was demonstrated.

A legendagem de programas audiovisuais tem merecido atenção renovada na área da pesquisa em Tradução, dado o incremento de acesso de filmes e seriados pela internet. Ao ocupar o profissional e também o leigo, que traduz legendas por hobby e na condição de fã, a legendagem de séries televisivas norte-americanas tem gerado materiais interessantes para estudo, também no âmbito da Terminologia. Mesmo com o crescente número de séries que usam terminologias específicas como pano de fundo (FROMM, 2011a), como as que se ocupam de temas médicos ou jurídicos, ainda não há muitos estudos sobre essa terminologia em tradução. As séries de ficção de tema sobrenatural, como as que tratam do universo de vampiros, lobisomens e bruxas, ou de ficção científica, por sua vez, parecem trazer um vocabulário com elementos bastante semelhantes às terminologias “tradicionais”, instaurando um vocabulário próprio relacionado a toda uma complexidade conceitual, pois constroem realidades particulares, comparáveis às realidades científicas. Nesse universo de discurso, segundo Barbosa (2005, 2006a, 2007, 2009), determinadas unidades lexicais funcionariam tanto como vocábulos quanto como termos. Levando isso em consideração, conhecer melhor esse tipo de material textual e, em meio a ele, as especificidades de sua “terminologia”, pode ajudar os tradutores brasileiros a se inserirem neste mercado de trabalho ou, ainda, a se estabelecerem como aqueles com maior familiaridade com a linguagem, com o vocabulário e com a tradução do “mundo das séries”. Este trabalho lidará, então, com um vocabulário não prontamente considerado como especializado por algumas correntes da Terminologia. Seu objetivo é propor bases teóricas e metodológicas para a elaboração de um glossário cujo público-alvo são os tradutores. No entanto, esse tipo de obra se baseia, por sua natureza, em procedimentos terminográficos para a compilação de um repertório de termos sem a pretensão de exaustividade (KRIEGER; FINATTO, 2004). Tomando como referencial teórico a Etnoterminologia, a Terminologia Cultural e a Terminologia Textual, aliadas a recursos e princípios da Linguística de Corpus, é oferecido como produto final um protótipo de glossário para tradutores de legendas do inglês para o português, utilizando como corpus os seriados True Blood e The Vampire Diaries em inglês e em português. Tal corpus foi analisado por meio do programa de análise lexical AntConc e de suas ferramentas, principalmente Word List, Keyword List e Concordance. Como parte do protótipo de glossário, foram desenhadas árvores de domínio para cada um dos seriados e elaboradas 18 fichas terminológicas como amostra. Nessas fichas, foram registradas informações encontradas no corpus sobre os termos selecionados, bem como especificidades lexicais e gramaticais desses textos. Ao final, foi possível mostrar que as unidades lexicais encontradas nos seriados de tema sobrenatural, por mais que se pareçam com vocábulos, estão em função de termo quando atualizadas nesse universo de discurso. Essa função designa a essas unidades lexicais um significado muito especializado, específico a esse contexto. Além disso, demostrou-se a produtividade de se adotar uma abordagem terminográfica ao universo de discurso dos seriados de tema sobrenatural. / The subtitling of audiovisual programs has received renewed attention in the area of translation research, due to the increase in the access to films and TV series through the Internet. As it engages professionals as well as laymen, who subtitle as a hobby and as fans, the subtitling of North American TV series has generated interesting materials for study, also within Terminology. Even with the increasing number of TV series that use specific terminology as background (FROMM, 2011a), such as those dealing with medical or legal issues, there are not many studies on this terminology in translation yet. Fictional TV series of supernatural theme, such as those dealing with the world of vampires, werewolves and witches, or of science fiction, in their turn, seem to bring vocabulary with elements quite similar to the “traditional” terminologies, setting up their own vocabulary related to a whole conceptual complexity, as they build particular realities, comparable to scientific realities. In this universe of discourse, according to Barbosa (2005, 2006a, 2007, 2009), certain lexical units would work as words and as terms as well. Considering this, knowing this kind of textual material better and, through it, the specifics of its “terminology”, may help Brazilian translators to insert themselves in this market, or even to establish themselves as the ones more familiar with the language, with the vocabulary and the translation of the “world of TV series”. This thesis will deal then with a vocabulary not readily considered as specialized by some Terminology theories. Its goal is to propose theoretical and methodological basis for the development of a glossary whose target audience is the translators. However, this type of work is based, in its nature, on terminographic procedures for the compilation of a term directory without aiming at exhaustiveness (KRIEGER; FINATTO, 2004). Taking as a theoretical framework Etnoterminology, Cultural Terminology and Textual Terminology, combined with resources and principles of Corpus Linguistics, it is offered as a final product a glossary prototype for subtitlers from English to Portuguese, using as a corpus the series True Blood and The Vampire Diaries in English and Portuguese. This corpus was analyzed using the lexical analysis program AntConc and its tools, especially Word List, Keyword List and Concordance. As part of the glossary prototype, domain trees were designed for each of the series and 18 terminological record sheets were produced as sample. In these sheets, information on the selected terms found in the corpus was recorded, as well as lexical and grammatical peculiarities of these texts. At the end, it was possible to show that the lexical units found in series of supernatural theme, no matter how much they might look like words, are in the function of terms when inserted in this universe of discourse. This function designates a very specialized meaning to these lexical units, specific to this context. In addition, the productivity of adopting a terminographic approach to the universe of discourse of TV series of supernatural theme was demonstrated.

The linguistic character of the “biblical” Dead Sea Scrolls has been of interest to scholars since the very beginning of scrolls research. However, scholars have disagreed over the nature of the language found in those scrolls. Some argue that the “biblical” scrolls are essential to our understanding of Second Temple Hebrew, while others set these scrolls aside in favour of the non-biblical texts. Yet, no one has undertaken a comprehensive analysis of the “biblical” scrolls, which is essential if we hope to settle this debate. This study fills that void by providing a comprehensive analysis of all the “biblical” DSS. Over forty different features are discussed through a comparison between the “biblical” scrolls and the other major witnesses to the Hebrew Bible. Current linguistic theories, including robust inferential statistical tools, are utilised within the analysis in order to provide conclusions based on sound methodology. This study begins with a global analysis of all the “biblical” scrolls, focusing on a comparison between the plene and defective manuscripts. Through that analysis, this study concludes that there are very few linguistic modernisations found in the “biblical” scrolls. In order to verify this conclusion, five individual scrolls are analysed. Finally, this study closes by providing a qualitative analysis of the “biblical” scrolls and shows their linguistic character to be most consistent with a scribal culture of linguistic stability and textual authority.

Dans cette thèse, nous nous interrogeons sur les réalisations linguistiques des relations causales selon une approche sémantique et pragmatique du discours. Bien que la causalité occupe une place centrale dans les théories du discours, il n’existe pas de consensus quant aux relations qui lui sont associées. Confrontant les propositions faites dans la littérature avec nos observations sur des données attestées, nous proposons de contribuer à l’enrichissement d’une théorie du discours spécifique : la SDRT (Segmented Discourse Representation Theory). Cette thèse se situe donc à l’interface entre linguistique de corpus et linguistique théorique. Les analyses qui y sont menées s’appuient sur le corpus EXPLICADIS, corpus de français écrit constitué spécifiquement pour répondre à l’objectif visé. L’annotation de ce corpus en relations de discours causales nous a ainsi autorisée à procéder à l’analyse de ces relations selon une approche originale qui consiste à prendre pour point de départ la relation elle-même et non ses marqueurs. Cette approche nous a permis d’offrir une vision unificatrice de la causalité en caractérisant les relations de discours qui lui sont liées dans le cadre théorique de la SDRT. Elle nous a également permis de mener des études quantitatives et comparatives sur corpus. Notre travail dresse, en outre, un panorama des moyens d’expression de la causalité observés à l’écrit en français. / The purpose of this thesis is to study the linguistic realizations of causal relations, according to a semantic and pragmatic approach of discourse structure. Even though causality is a central phenomenon in most theoretical frameworks on discourse, to date there is no consensus on the relations associated to it. Confronting the hypotheses put forward in the literature with our own observations on the basis of attested data, we offer to enrich a specific discourse theoretical model, i.e. SDRT (Segmented Discourse Representation Theory). Therefore, this study stands at the interface between corpus linguistics and theoretical linguistics. The analyses we carried out are based on the EXPLICADIS corpus, which is a written French corpus built specifically to meet the objective. Annotating this corpus with causal discourse relations allowed us to analyze these using an original approach which consists in starting from the relation itself rather than its markers. This approach provided us with the opportunity to offer a unified vision of causality by characterizing the different discourse causal relations in the framework of SDRT. It also provided us with the opportunity to conduct quantitative and comparative corpus studies. Our work also includes an overview of the different means of expression of causality that are documented in written French.

Dans le cadre d’une sémantique linguistique reposant sur la distinction signification/sens et partant du principe que le sens se construit en discours, nos recherches ont pour objectif de rendre compte de la diversité des emplois d’un signe dans une perspective intégrant la prosodie, afin de définir un processus de discrimination prosodique des différents sens d’une même unité tels qu'ils peuvent être décrits sur la base de corpus oraux authentiques. Elles portent sur un ensemble d’objets empiriques, de enfin à quelques ou oui en passant par disons, mais principalement sur des connecteurs discursifs. Après avoir mis au jour des corrélations forme prosodique/sens au niveau du lexique, et en prenant en compte le caractère gradable de la langue ainsi que la notion d’argumentation dans la langue, nous proposons un nouveau format de représentation sémantique distinguant, sur la base de nos résultats, deux niveaux de sens que sont l’interprétation-type et l’emploi-type, ce dernier présentant la particularité de comporter un commentaire exprimé par la prosodie, commentaire qui porte sur le rapport à la situation et/ou à l'énonciation. L’intégration d’un niveau de sens supplémentaire constitue l’originalité de ce nouveau format et présente l’avantage de réduire les phénomènes de surgénéralisations observables dans les caractérisations sémantiques des emplois. Nous présentons ensuite la façon dont nos résultats pourraient être intégrés à une perspective lexicographique, et dont ils pourraient permettre d'obtenir à la fois une plus grande cohérence et une plus grande exhaustivité des articles d’une entrée de dictionnaire, et une prise en compte systématique de la prosodie des emplois. / Within a linguistic approach to semantics based on the distinction between signification and sense (lexical meaning) and the assumption that sense is built it in discourse, our research aims is to account for the diversity of uses of a sign in a perspective that integrates the prosodic dimension of the interpretative process. Based extensively on authentic oral corpora and, its goal is to define a process of prosodic discrimination of the different senses of the same lexical unit. It deals with of empirical objects, from French enfin to quelques (some) or oui (yes) passing by disons (so to say, etc.), but essentially about discourse connectives (discourse markers). After establishing the existence of an association of prosody and senses at the level of lexicon, which takes into account the gradable nature of language (la langue) and its argumentative nature, we present a new semantic model in which the classical level of sense or lexical meaning is described as split between two levels of sense which are interpretation-type and use-type, the specificity of the latter being to include a prosodically expressed lexicalized comment about the speaker's relationship with the situation and/or its own discourse or enunciation. The integration of an additional level of sense is the originality of the new model. It aims at reducing the otherwise constant fatality of over-generalisation in the semantic characterisations of lexical uses. We further present the way our results could be integrated into a lexicographic perspective in order to obtain both more coherent and more exhaustive descriptions of actual language use in dictionaries and a systematic description of prosody within each entry.

This thesis is a case study on newspaper discourse representation of SARS. The study uses two representative English newspapers in Asia – the China Daily (“CD”) and the South China Morning Post (“SCMP”). By comparing the discursive construction of the same event – the outbreak of SARS - in the two newspapers, it aims to reveal that the practice of news follows institutional, cultural and political assumptions, and also make visible the two newspapers’ embedded attitudes and ideological positions. The methodology is a critical corpus linguistics (CCL) approach, especially using KWIC format (Key Word in context), word frequency, collocation, and concordance data, which is analyzed according to transitivity systems of systemic functional grammar (SFG). The main approach of the study is achieved by a computer-assisted corpus analysis with the help of software “Wordsmith 3.0” (on line version). Results indicate that through the comparison of the newspapers’ corpora, there are statistically significant differences between the two newspapers’ word patterns. First, in the context of SARS, the CD corpus and the SCMP corpus shows different word choice and words frequency in occupying disease-relevant and human-relevant words. Second, when SARS is situated as the node word, the collocation results discuss the observation that the CD tends to treat the SARS epidemic from a national struggle perspective, while the standpoint of the SCMP is more based on the human health and safety, and its social role as the fourth estate. Moreover, the collocation of the three selected keywords is summarized for finding out the general patterns of their concordance lines. Third, according to further concordancing analysis, the study investigates to what extent critical corpus linguistics and transitivity systems of systemic functional grammar can be mutually reinforced and interpreted within the disease discourse context, textually, culturally and ideologically. In particular, a power hierarchy model is established and used in the transitivity analysis. Results show that the two selected newspapers discursively constructed the SARS-issue in a different way, and these differences help to understand how the ideologies work in both newspapers.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study investigates the ideational metafunction in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in order to explore the characterisation of Okonkwo, Unoka, Ezinma, Ekwefi and Mr. Brown. The study confines itself to the following objectives, namely, to identify process-types attributed to characters; identify the transitivity patterns embedded in process-types attributed to characters; establish the significance of transitivity patterns attributed in the characterisation; and establish the significance of process-type collocations in projecting the development of characters in the story. The present undertaking is drawn from the theoretical frontiers of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and the analytical lens of transitivity model, backed by the methodological locale of Corpus Linguistics (CL). The study reveals that although Okonkwo, Unoka, Ezinma, Ekwefi and Mr. Brown are attributed material processes (MaPs); mental processes (MePs); relational processes (RePs); and verbal processes (VePs), significant differences exist not only in how the allotted process-types are mapped per character but also on how they impact on characterisation. / 2023