The first aim of this work is to describe the way in which the term apposition is defined in French and Czech linguistics. The second aim is to examine the use of one type of French apposition in journalistic and legal texts and to find out which equivalents are used in the Czech language for these expressions. The work is divided into theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part includes a description of different approaches of apposition in the French and Czech language. The practical part begins with a choice of one definition of apposition which will be further used in the corpus analysis. The corpus analysis is conducted by using the corpus InterCorp and its subject is to examine the function and frequency of French apposition in journalistic and legal texts and furthermore to analyse its Czech equivalents.

<p>This survey focuses on the omissible constituents of a sentence, which not only relate to the verb but also describe the subject or object. In a sentence analysis, they cannot be determined by the syntactic structure alone, but need an additional semantic approach. These units are commonly used, but so far have been insufficiently described in grammars and research literature, although the understanding of the function of these units is necessary in order to be able to make a complete sentence analysis. Further, there is no consensus regarding terminology and classification. The term depictive secondary predication is commonly used in English, and the terms <i>prädikatives Attribut, freies Prädikativ </i>and <i>Koprädikativ</i> are the most widely used terms in German. In this study, the term <i>freies Prädikativ</i> (FP) is used. The classification of these constituents in the literature varies between FP, adverbials and in some cases attributes.</p><p>Based on the information available in German grammars and mainly German research literature, a model was developed, which makes it possible to distinguish FP from adverbials and attributes. A corpus containing German novels and newspapers was analysed in the light of this model. The controlled sentences of grammar books and research literature almost always use adjectives as examples of FP. This study shows that FP can be found in all types of phrases like adjective phrases, participle constructions, als- phrases and prepositional phrases. In addition, it is shown that FP occur with all types of verbs.</p>

La présente recherche traite des constructions participiales en –ing de l’anglais contemporain. Elle s’appuie sur un corpus de plus de 1700 occurrences de participiales issues de romans et d’articles de journaux, ainsi que sur le British National Corpus et le Corpus of Contemporary American English. Les participiales ont pour caractéristique majeure ne pas expliciter les liens syntaxiques et sémantiques qui les unissent à la proposition dont elles dépendent. Pour expliquer les fondements linguistiques de cette propriété, la recherche établit une typologie détaillée des participiales, étudie les relations qu’elles entretiennent avec leur sujet, ainsi que la nature de l’incidence et de la prédication qui les caractérisent, et détaille les interprétations sémantiques qu’elles peuvent recevoir. Elle montre que la valeur sémantique basique des participiales est la circonstance concomitante, soit un simple lien établi entre deux procès qui forment une unité dans l’esprit de l’énonciateur. Ce sont les traits spécifiques du co- et du contexte qui peuvent modifier cette valeur basique pour déboucher sur l’interprétation finale, adverbiale ou adjectivale, de la participiale. La recherche propose, dans le cadre de la psychosystématique de Gustave Guillaume, des hypothèses susceptibles d’expliquer le comportement syntaxique et sémantique des participiales ; elle montre qu’il est directement lié au sens du participe présent, dont il est postulé que l’incidence est interne et qu’il code la simultanéité et l’imperfectif dans tous ses emplois. / This research deals with –ing participle clauses in contemporary English. It is based on a corpus totalling over 1,700 participle clauses collected from novels and newspaper articles, and it also relies on data from electronic corpora – the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The main characteristic of –ing participle clauses is that they lack an explicit syntactic and semantic link to their superordinate clause: to shed light on the linguistic phenomena accounting for this specificity, the research establishes a detailed typology of –ing clauses, studies their relationship to their subjects, investigates the specific nature of their incidence and predication, and provides a detailed analysis of their semantic indeterminacy. It shows that their basic semantic value is one of attendant circumstance – a mere link between two events or states that form a unit in the speaker’s mind. The characteristics of the co- and context may alter this basic value to give the clause its final (adjectival or adverbial) meaning. The research puts forward hypotheses to account for the syntactic and semantic characteristics of –ing participle clauses within the framework of Gustave Guillaume’s psychosystematic theory: it shows the syntactic and semantic behaviour of –ing clauses can be directly traced back to the meaning of the –ing participle, which, it is hypothesised, has an internal incidence and expresses simultaneity and imperfectivity in all of its uses.

This survey focuses on the omissible constituents of a sentence, which not only relate to the verb but also describe the subject or object. In a sentence analysis, they cannot be determined by the syntactic structure alone, but need an additional semantic approach. These units are commonly used, but so far have been insufficiently described in grammars and research literature, although the understanding of the function of these units is necessary in order to be able to make a complete sentence analysis. Further, there is no consensus regarding terminology and classification. The term depictive secondary predication is commonly used in English, and the terms prädikatives Attribut, freies Prädikativ and Koprädikativ are the most widely used terms in German. In this study, the term freies Prädikativ (FP) is used. The classification of these constituents in the literature varies between FP, adverbials and in some cases attributes. Based on the information available in German grammars and mainly German research literature, a model was developed, which makes it possible to distinguish FP from adverbials and attributes. A corpus containing German novels and newspapers was analysed in the light of this model. The controlled sentences of grammar books and research literature almost always use adjectives as examples of FP. This study shows that FP can be found in all types of phrases like adjective phrases, participle constructions, als- phrases and prepositional phrases. In addition, it is shown that FP occur with all types of verbs.

Title: Non­finite Verb Forms as Semipredicates in Russian, Czech and German. A Typological View. Author: Jana Kocková Supervisor: doc. Dr. phil. Markus Giger Abstract: This research paper presents a comprehensive picture of non­finite verb forms in Russian, Czech and German supported by a corpus analysis based on the parallel corpus InterCorp CNC. Equivalents of each of the non­finite verb forms were analysed manually in each of the monitored languages. The data obtained served for typological classification focused on non­finite verb forms as secondary predicates. Different frequencies of the individual forms and mutual competition of various means in language also indirectly result from the analysis. In Czech we may observe generally a strong tendency to express the semiprediaction by means of a finite verb form in a sentence structure. As regards non­ finite verb forms, the actively used forms are participle and verbal nouns, i.e. forms which relate to the existing part­of­speech paradigms. Due to being inflectional they express explicitly syntactic relations. Czech uses the possibility to express the secondary predication by means that are not contrary to morphological regularities of the inflectional type. Russian uses actively all the non­finite verb forms. A high...