Students in Sweden are exposed to English education in the classroom from a very young age. This paper sets out to see whether bilingual or multilingual students perform better than monolingual students when acquiring English as a second or third language in Sweden. The research questions look at whether or not complex noun phrase structures can be connected to the language background of the students. The Dynamic Model of Multilingualism along with Second Language Acquisition theories suggest that students who have already acquired a second language have achieved a multilingual competence that monolingual speakers do not have, and that this multilingual competence can benefit a learner in acquiring additional languages. 64 students submitted language background surveys and essays. 12 essays were chosen to represent three different language categories: monolingual, bilingual and multilingual. The method of comparing the essays was based on the use of complex noun phrases. Two analyses were carried out: 1) on the modification of noun phrases at phrase level, and 2) on the embedding and modification of embedded noun phrases at the clause level. The results of the study are not statistically significant, but they may indicate that bilingual students create the most complex noun phrases, though the monolingual students were not far behind. The multilingual students used the least modification and also the least embedded noun phrases. Further research in this area is warranted based on the results found here.

The subject of the present study is a comparison of two postmodifying constructions in noun phrases - finite relative adnominal clauses with the subject gap and nonfinite participial clauses - in spoken academic discourse: natural and social science. The comparison is based on the fact that both constructions realize the same clause element, i.e. a postmodifier in a noun phrase. The aim of the present study is thus to present major characteristics and functions of finite relative clauses and their reduced counterparts with respect to their distribution across the two subregisters of spoken academic discourse. The study is divided into three main parts: the theoretical background (Chapter 2) which defines the major characteristics and functions of the two postmodifying constructions and their mutual relationship, as are presented in the literature; the main part (Chapters 3 and 4) which provides the analysis of finite relative clauses and participial postmodifiers; and conclusion in Chapter 5.

The thesis provides a quantitative survey and a detailed description of noun postmodification by single uncomplemented adjectives, i.e. cases where a modifying adjective phrase represented only by an adjective follows a head noun. The theoretical background of this thesis is based mainly on Randolph Quirk et al.'s A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985). The data for empirical corpus based research have been drawn from the British National Corpus by the means of a corpus query extracting the sequence noun+adjective+verb. This query returned 6,413 concordance lines out of which, after manual assessment, the resultant sample of 4,627 examples was compiled. The data obtained were further examined and categorized, revealing that up to eleven categories are needed to account for the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic factors, and other communicative implications and lexicalized conventions that motivate the use the postnominal position.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal. / Les liposomes ayant des lipides cationiques (liposomes cationiques) sont évalués dans plusieurs domaines thérapeutiques pour la libération intracellulaire des oligonucléotides antisenses et des plasmides ayant différents gènes humains. La majorité de ces liposomes sont composés de dioléoylphosphatidyléthanolamine (DOPE) pour assurer la déstabilisation de l'endosome suite à l'endocytose, et d'un lipide cationique pour assurer l'interaction avec les molécules d'ADN négativement chargés. Bien que les liposomes cationiques ont été administrés via les voies orale, pulmonaire et systémique, leur problème de stabilité dans différents milieux biologiques n'était pas complètement résolu. Il était déjà démontré que les liposomes cationiques ayant des ADN plamidiques sont déstabilisés par les protéines anioniques se trouvant dans le plasma. Les liposomes ayant une couche de poly(éthylène glycol) (PEG) à la surface ont largement contribué au développement des liposomes à longue circulation à cause de l'interaction réduite avec les protéines plasmatiques et les membranes cellulaires. Les liposome-PEG sont normalement préparés en faisant dissoudre le lipide-PEG avec les autres lipides et les phospholipides dans la phase organique avant l'hydratation et l'association des lipides en liposomes. Cette méthode conventionnelle d'incorporation de PEG possède plusieurs inconvénients. D'une part, les chaînes polymériques sont incorporées dans l'espace interne aqueux et entre les bicouches lipidiques où l'eau est normalement enfermée. Ceci réduit significativement le volume aqueux interne et nuit à l'incorporation des médicaments dans les liposomes. D'autre part, les molécules d'ADN sont reconnues pour se lier aux lipides cationiques dans les liposomes par des forces électrostatiques en formant des complexes ADN/liposome assez stables. Dans cette étude, nous présentons deux méthodes de modification des liposomes pré-formés, l'une est une réaction chimique ayant lieu dans le milieu aqueux et l'autre est une insertion des dérivés pégylés connus pour être non-toxiques et économiques. Ces nouvelles procédures de postmodification liposonnique s'effectuent dans des conditions douces et dans des temps très courts. L'efficacité de ces nouvelles méthodes a été prouvée par les mesures du changement de diamètre et de la charge apparente à la surface des liposomes. Les liposomes classiques DOPE/DOTAP (1:1) ont un potentiel zéta (Ç) moyen de +33 mV et l'incorporation par la méthode conventionnelle de 1 et 0.5 mol% de PE-PEG2000 (Phosphatidyléthanolamine-PEG2000) et PE-PEG5000réduit complètement la charge des liposomes. Une concentration cinquante fois plus grande de M-SC-PEG (N-hydroxysuccinimidyl carbonate méthoxy-PEG) et BTC-PEG (Benzotriazolyl carbonate PEG) était nécessaire pour réduire la charge des liposomes pré-formés d'une façon significative. La méthode d'insertion membranaire du PEG1760-nnonostéarate s'avère beaucoup plus avantageuse vu le temps très minime qu'elle requiert (1 minute) d'une part, et l'efficacité d'insertion proche de 95% d'autre part, une efficacité jamais préalablement atteinte.

The aim of this thesis is to compare the use of postmodifiers in an English source text and its Czech translation. 200 English postmodifiers are contrasted against their 200 Czech translation equivalents. These samples were excerpted from randomly chosen parts of four bilingual books written by British and American authors and translated by native speakers of Czech. 50 English samples and their translations were excerpted from each book. The 400 occurrences of postmodifiers and their equivalents are analyzed from a syntactico-semantic point of view, the aim being to determine the constancy of the syntactic functions of English postmodifiers in translation, as well as the constancy of their realization forms. The theoretical background part will present and compare postmodification and its realization forms in English and in Czech. The actual analysis of all 400 samples will examine both the frequency of individual postmodifier types in English, and the convergent and divergent realization forms of these in the Czech translation. Special heed will be paid to divergences arisen through different language facts, such as English non-finite verb forms or Czech case endings that enable nominal postmodification without a preposition. An attempt will be made to classify the non-postmodifying translation...

The objective of the thesis is to describe and compare the modifying uses of two adjectives which can appear both as premodifiers as well as bare postmodifiers, namely available and responsible. Both modifying positions are examined with respect to the textual environment, the complexity of noun phrases and adjective phrases in which the adjectives function, reference and other features in order to outline the patterns in which these two adjectives appear. The data for the analytical part have been extracted from the British National Corpus using the basic query and limiting the search to the written part of the corpus. After manual assessment of the initial samples of 500 concordance lines, 154 concordance lines containing the adjective available and 147 containing the adjective responsible proved to be suitable for the analysis. The final samples of the data are further categorized and analysed concerning the complexity of the noun phrase, premodification, postmodification and complementation of the adjectives, semantic preference of the head nouns, and the motivation for the pre- or postnominal placement of the modifiers. Key words: adjective, adjective phrase, premodification, postmodification, complementation, attributive function, predicative function, postpositive function, bare adjective,...

This thesis deals with the modification of nouns by bare past participles in the pre- and post- head positions and uses authentic examples from the written component of The British National Corpus. The aim is to describe the possibility of corpus excerption of this construction and to qualitatively compare participles in both positions using examples with context. In the first step, a simple search query was entered to retrieve bare past participles in the postnominal position with the result of 21,437 concordance lines which were then manually filtered. The resulting 14,529 lines were used to obtain a random sample of 400 lines which was again manually filtered. The resulting Sample 1 of 247 lines was described quantitatively in terms of the left and right context of the noun phrase and in terms of the head nouns. Sample 1 contained 118 unique participles, from which 10 were randomly selected for a qualitative description (Sample 2; 70 concordance lines per position, 140 lines in total). Sample 2 was then described in terms of the presence or absence of determiners, in terms of the types of definiteness, reference and restrictivity. An interesting feature is the presence of quantifiers, and the generally implied quantificational meaning of the construction. Semantics and the possibility to occur...