This thesis deals with the language of players of video games, especially computer games. The language sample was taken from written as well as spoken sources - magazines, web reviews and Let's Plays - and is limited to action, strategic and RPG games with some overlap with action-adventures. Researched words are mainly keywords of video game players' vocabulary. The goal of this thesis was to describe the language of video game players from several language viewpoints and briefly describe the slang of the players. The first part deals with introducing the researched material, video games as a whole and their history and also the subculture of video game players. The second part analyses the sample in terms of lexical semantics and word formation, describes the extent of adaptation of loanwords, also stabilization of words, neology and the words' affiliation to slang, terminology and common vocabulary. Then the thesis attempts to briefly describe the slang of video game players. Generally, the slang includes a large number of anglicisms and expressions from informatics (in a large part technical terms), while loanwords are adapted to a varying degree. Many expressions in the slang of video game players can also be considered professionalisms given the existence of professional players and...

This work explains the types of affixation errors second language learners make when learning English word formation processes, especially derivational and inflectional affixations. The data for the study were collected as primary sources from two secondary schools in Sweden. The data were analyzed with the use of Error Analysis noted by Corder (1967) and the error analysis framework adapted by Ellis et al. (2005, p. 57). The method chosen was to identify, classify, describe,and evaluate derivational and inflectional affixation errors. In total 2,812 answers were retrieved. The results consist of some findings, for example, some of the derivationaland inflectional affixations errors were noticed to be intralingual and interlingual. Also, the nature of the errors issuch that they are either transferred, omissive, additive or substitutive errors. Moreover, the errors were also due to overgeneralization, including substitutionerrors, or additive errors. Previous research findings showedstudents make grammatical errors with letter insertions, letter omission, or substitutionerrors. This study made the same findings as students made errors of letter insertion, letter omission, substitution errors, and errors due to overgeneralization. Some of the most difficult derivational and inflectional affixation errors were also noticed across all the grades.

В данной магистерской диссертации исследуются окказионализмы, созданные Терри Пратчеттом, в сопоставлении с их русскими эквивалентами. Рассматриваются способы конструирования окказиональной лексики в оригинале и переводе романов «Мор, ученик Смерти» и «Мрачный жнец», определена частотность использованных способов перевода. В русле существующих теорий эквивалентности доказана зависимость используемого способа перевода от степени семантической нагруженности индивидуально-авторского онима или реалии, а равно от типологической принадлежности каждой окказиональной единицы. / This master's thesis studies the occasional words created by Terry Pratchett as compared to their Russian equivalents. The ways of constructing occasional words in English and Russian variants of the novels "Mort" and "Reaper Man" are considered, the frequency of the applied translation methods is defined. Within the existing theories of equivalence, the dependence of the applied method of translation on the degree of semantic meaningfulness of the individual author’s word is proved, as well as on the typological peculiarities of each occasional lexeme.

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The lack of terminology in Zulu can be overcome if it is developed to meet international scientific and technical demands. This lack of terminology can be traced back to the absence of proper language policy implementation with regard to the African languages. Even though Zulu possesses the basic elements that are necessary for its development, such as orthographical standards, dictionaries, grammars and published literature, a number of problems exist within the technical elaboration and standardisation processes: * Inconsistencies in the application of standard rules, in relation to both orthography and terminology. * The lack of standardisation of the (technical) word-formation patterns in Zulu. (Generally the role of culture in elaboration has largely been overlooked). * The avoidance of exploiting written technical text corpora as a resource for terminology. (Text encoding by means of corpus query tools in term extraction has just begun in Zulu and needs to be properly exemplified). * The avoidance of introducing oral technical corpora as a resource for improving the acceptability of technical terminology by, for instance, designing a type of reusable corpus annotation. This study contributes towards solving these problems by offering a practical approach within the context of the real written, standard and oral Zulu language, mainly within the medical terminological domain. This approach offers a reusable methodological foundation with proper language exemplification that can guide terminologists in terminological research, or to some extent even train them, to achieve effective technical elaboration and eventual standardisation. This thesis aims at attaining consistent standardisation on the orthographical level in order to ease the elaboration task of the terminologist. It also aims at standardising the methods of word- (term-) formation linking them to cultural factors, such as taboo. However, this thesis also emphasises the significance of using written and oral technical corpora as terminology resource. This, for instance, is made possible through the application of corpus linguistics, in semi-automatic term extraction from a written technical corpus to aid lemmatisation (listing entries) and in corpus annotation to improve the acceptability of terminology, based on the comparison of standard terms with oral terms. / Linguistics / D. Litt et Phil. (Linguistics)

Text in Afrikaans / In hierdie verhandeling word 'n voorlopige bestekopname van Afrikaanse ekosentriese komposita aangebied. Die korpus waaruit voorbeeldmateriaal geput is, sluit leksikografiese en akademiese werke, asook die spreektaal in. Na aanleiding van 'n komparatiewe bespreking van morfologiese, kategoriale en semantiese onderskeidingskenmerke van ekso- en endosentriese komposita, word daar tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat die onderskeid tussen eksosentriese en endosentriese lekseme noodsaaklik is. Eksosentriese komposita word deurgaans bespreek as 'n prototipiese kategorie, met kern- en randelemente. Anders as by endosentriese samestellings, ontbreek 'n hipnimie-relasie tussen prototipiese eksosentriese samestellings en enige van hul konstituente. Alhoewel eksosentriese komposita uiteraard dubbelsinnig en semanties ondeursigtig is, is die ondeursigtighied gradeerbaar, vanaf redelik deursigtig tot heeltemal ondeursigtig. 'n Inventaris word aangebied van eksosentriese samestellings, soos dit verdeel kan word in subgroepe op grond van ontstaanswyses, semantiese kenmerke en strukturele kenmerke van die woorde. Ten slotte word die verdere studie van funksionele aspekte van eksosentriese komposita in die vooruitsig gestel. / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / M.A. (Afrikaans)

<p>Ova disertacija se bavi procesom<br />&nbsp;morfemizacije krnjih osnova koje su nastale<br />od leksičkihslivenica. Rekurzivinim<br />slivanjem s različitim inicijalnim elementima,<br />ove osnove se konsoliduju u svom skraćenom<br />obliku ili oblicima, &scaron;to za rezultat ima<br />separaciju novih tvorbenih jedinica. Najbitniji<br />ciljevi istraživanja su sledeći: da se utvrdi<br />teorijski i terminolo&scaron;ki status ovih elementa i<br />odrede kriterijumi za njihovo članstvo u ovoj<br />kategoriji; da se na osnovu tih kriterijuma<br />napravi popis morfemizovanih elemenata uz<br />razvoj metodologije potrebne za njihovu<br />ekscerpciju; da se sačini spisak leksema u<br />kojima se javljaju; da se ustanove formalne<br />varijacije i njihova relativna učestalost kao i<br />tipovi i oblici inicijalnih elementa sa kojima<br />se kombinuju, &scaron;to bi za rezultat imalo<br />formulisanje prototipskog tvorbenog modela;<br />da istraži značenje ovih elemenata, eventualni<br />razvoj novih semema i smisaonih odnosa; da<br />d&acirc; pregled njihove zastupljenosti u<br />postojećim rečnicima; da predloži model<br />njihove leksikografske obrada i da se na<br />osnovu tog predloga sačini rečnik kako<br />morfemizovanih krnjih osnova, tako i reči u<br />kojima se javljaju.</p> / <p>This dissertation investigates the process of<br />AB morphemization of truncated bases which<br />have originated from lexical blends. Through<br />their recurrent blending with various initial<br />elements, they become consolidated in their<br />truncated form or forms, resulting in the<br />secretion of new word-formational units. The<br />most important goals of the research are the<br />following: to determine the theoretical and<br />terminological status of these elements and<br />establish the criteria for category<br />membership; to compile a list of<br />morphemized elements based on these<br />criteria by developing the methodology for<br />their extraction; to compile a list of lexemes<br />containing these newly morphemized<br />elements; to determine formal variations and<br />their relative frequency as well as the types<br />and forms of initial elements with which they<br />combine, resulting in theformulation of the<br />prototypical word-formation pattern; to<br />investigate the meaning of these elements and<br />the development of new senses and sense<br />relations; to give an overview of their<br />representation in existing dictionaries; to<br />propose a model for their lexicographic<br />treatment and to apply that model in the<br />compilation of a specialized dictionary of<br />morphemized truncated bases and words in<br />which they appear.</p>

In Swedish dialects we find the terms ris,skäver and skärva referring to illnesses in children. The words are also parts of various compounds which refer to variants of the illnesses. The terms are linguistic expressions denoting two folk categories of illnesses, RIS and SKÄVER/SKÄRVA. These categories are investigated from a cognitive semantic perspective. The cognitive perspective argues that we organize our understanding of reality by using Idealized Cognitive Models (ICM) based on our physical, mental and emotional experiences of the world. The aim is twofold: to demonstrate the bases on which an experienced illness is placed in a certain category, and to show how a folk conception of illness is reflected in the word formation strategies. The word formation strategies emanate from notions of characteristic symptoms, and from notions of causes of illnesses. Both categories, RIS and SKÄVER/SKÄRVA, are based on a number of ICM's. The category RIS is a radial structure, which means that the category is held together although its members have no structural criteria in common. The category SKÄVER/SKÄRVA is a concentrating structure, meaning that all members share all structural criteria. There is a strong connection between word formation strategies and the structures of the categories. Terms related to symptoms refer to members of a category which are part of a radial structure, while terms related to causes refer to members of a category which are part of a concentrating structure. This can be explained by two of the basic assumptions of cognitive semantics: semantic content is structred and symbolized overtly on the surface form of a language and categories are conventional, based on cultural assumptions about the world. / digitalisering@umu

This thesis approaches the question of how nominal compounds as linguistic means contribute to the construction of cultural meaning within the framework of knowledge transfer in the medieval monastic school. The starting point for the study is the semiotic definition of culture, which sees culture as shared models for perceiving, relating and interpreting among members of a social group. Language is seen as the place where cultural meaning is constructed and manifests itself in significant patterns, i.e., patterns of language usage that have meaning due to the fact that they are patterns. The central objective of this study is to reveal such patterns in nominal compounds drawn from Old High German (or rather bilingual hybrid) adaptations of Latin school texts translated, or adapted by Notker III (Labeo). Focus is placed on newly formed compounds, as well as compounds that differ distinctively from their Latin models. Methodologically this study combines the morphosemantic analysis of nominal compounds with a hermeneutic approach interpreting compounds in their textual and cultural context. Three significant patterns were established: (1) explication of implied meaning, (2) summary of complex expressions, and (3) explanatory translation. The first pattern can be observed in cases where the power of compounds to give additional information was utilised, e.g., in order to ensure a certain interpretation of a metaphorical expression. The second pattern demonstrates the capacity of compounds to refer to more complex concepts, expressing underlying syntactic constructions in a more memorisable manner. Finally, recourse was taken to explanatory translation in order to make the concept easier to understand. The three patterns are not necessarily the only patterns used by Notker III (Labeo); rather they are to be seen as an exemplification of the potential of nominal compounds for meaning construction.

Ce mémoire présente une étude de la morphologie de ce qui est généralement appelé le pluriel nominal du persan (parler de Téhéran) dans le cadre d’une théorie de la morphologie basée sur le mot : Whole Word Morphology, développée par Ford et Singh (1991). Ce modèle lexicaliste adopte une position plus forte que les modèles proposés par Aronoff (1976) et Anderson (1992) en n’admettant aucune opération morphologique sur des unités plus petites que le mot. Selon cette théorie, une description morphologique consiste en l’énumération des Stratégies de Formation de Mots (SFM), licencées chacunes par au moins deux paires de mots ayant la même covariation formelle et sémantique. Tous les SFM suit le même schéma. Nous avons répertorié 49 SFM regroupant les pluriels et les collectifs. Nous constatons qu’il est difficile de saisir le pluriel nominal du persan en tant que catégorie syntaxique et que les différentes « marques du pluriel » présentées dans la littérature ne constituent pas un ensemble homogène : elles partagent toutes un sens de pluralité qui cependant varie d’une interprétation référentielle à une interprétation collective non-référentielle. Cette étude vise la déscription de la compétence morphologique, ce qui ne dépend d’aucune considération extralinguistique. Nous argumentons notamment contre la dichotomie arabe/persan généralement admise dans la littérature. Nous avons également fourni des explications quant à la production des pluriels doubles et avons discuté de la variation supposée du fait d’un choix multiple de « marques du pluriel ». / This thesis presents a word-based study of what is generally called the nominal plural morphology of Persian (Tehrani dialect) within the framework of the Whole Word Morphology developed by Ford & Singh (1991). This lexicaliste model takes up a stronger position than that proposed by Aronoff (1976) and Anderson (1992), by not allowing any morphological operation on units smaller than the word. According to this theory a morphological description consist of the listing of the Word Formation Strategies (WFS), each licensed by at least two pairs of words having the same formal and semantic covariation. All WFS’s follow the same schema. We have listed 49 WFS’s of plurals and collectives. We note that it is difficult to understand the import of the plural nominal as a syntactic category in Persian and that different “marks of plural” presented in the literature do not make a homogeneous unity: they all share a plurality meaning but it varies from referential interpretation to collective and non-referential interpretation. This study’s aim is to describe the morphological competence, which does not depend on any extra-linguistic criteria. In particular, we argue against the generally admitted Arabic/Persian dichotomy. We also provide explanation with regards to the utterance of double plurals and to the variation assumed since more than one choice of “plural marks” are available.