The use of demonstrative adverbs is a function of making reference to a real or abstract location. In German, there are three principle demonstrative adverbs that are used spatially--hier, da, and dort. This thesis provides an overview of the primary theories proposed in the literature to explain the German hier/da/dort system of reference and examines those claims from the context of a study of L2 learners and L1 speakers combined with a corpus-based analysis of the frequency, distribution, and use of the demonstrative adverbs, both in isolation and in unison. The evidence from learner data, native speaker interpretations and grammaticality judgments, adult use corpora, and L1 child corpora all point to da as playing a more significant role than dort in the three-way spatial adverb system of German. Evidence from multiple sources points to the default hier `here' counterpart, there-like equivalent being da. While da is not always used to indicate a non-speaker location, this flexibility is not an indication of its primary or default role. Context often provides semantic information, and even if used in a semi-neutral manner, the use of da often suggests the possibility of a dort-type non-speaker location or of an abstract location/third location. The flexibility that da has in being used in non-contrastive locations or idiomatic expressions to refer to the location of the speaker does not discount the role da has as a primary means of indicating spatial differences in opposition to hier. The presence of dort enables a third location to be identified with a distinct spatial adverb, while hier appears to be highly restricted in its usage. Evidence from child L1 learners is congruent with this analysis. The frequency of da in child L1 learner speech cannot simply be explained by phonetic production, and the child L1 corpora show that dort is only chosen when da and hier are already present (three or more locations are referenced). Native speaker survey data concerning the three spatial adverbs under investigation indicate that locational situation affects the acceptance and interpretation of all three adverbs including da. Da is not shown to be a superfluous double, as it is neither consistently accepted at or near 100%, nor is its acceptance consistently near that of dort or hier. There is evidence that native speaker grammaticality judgments show regional variation when da is used to indicate a speaker location, with northern speakers tending to prefer hier and southern speakers tending to prefer da. L2 speakers show a greater variation from native speakers with respect to their acceptance and interpretations of da as compared with that of hier and dort. Non-native speakers were more likely to accept hier and less likely to accept da than were the native speakers in this study. Elementary, intermediate, and advanced L2 learners showed a significant difference in their acceptance rates of da in at least 50% of the items, while the group of highly-proficient L2 speakers of German showed a significant difference in their acceptance of da in only one item.

In this paper we compare the behaviour of adverbs of frequency (de Swart 1993) like usually with the behaviour of adverbs of quantity like for the most part in sentences that contain plural definites. We show that sentences containing the former type of Q-adverb evidence that Quantificational Variability Effects (Berman 1991) come about as an indirect effect of quantification over situations: in order for quantificational variability readings to arise, these sentences have to obey two newly observed constraints that clearly set them apart from sentences containing corresponding quantificational DPs, and that can plausibly be explained under the assumption that quantification over (the atomic parts of) complex situations is involved. Concerning sentences with the latter type of Q-adverb, on the other hand, such evidence is lacking: with respect to the constraints just mentioned, they behave like sentences that contain corresponding quantificational DPs. We take this as evidence that Q-adverbs like for the most part do not quantify over the atomic parts of sum eventualities in the cases under discussion (as claimed by Nakanishi and Romero (2004)), but rather over the atomic parts of the respective sum individuals.

In this paper we compare the behaviour of adverbs of frequency (de Swart 1993) like usually with the behaviour of adverbs of quantity like for the most part in sentences that contain plural definites. We show that sentences containing the former type of Q-adverb evidence that Quantificational Variability Effects (Berman 1991) come about as an indirect effect of quantification over situations: in order for quantificational variability readings to arise, these sentences have to obey two newly observed constraints that clearly set them apart from sentences containing corresponding quantificational DPs, and that can plausibly be explained under the assumption that quantification over (the atomic parts of) complex situations is involved. Concerning sentences with the latter type of Q-adverb, on the other hand, such evidence is lacking: with respect to the constraints just mentioned, they behave like sentences that contain corresponding quantificational DPs. We take this as evidence that Q-adverbs like for the most part do not quantify over the atomic parts of sum eventualities in the cases under discussion (as claimed by Nakanishi and Romero (2004)), but rather over the atomic parts of the respective sum individuals.

(in English): French grammars define the word class adverbs as a very heterogeneous set distinguished particularly by its invariability and intransitivity. The aim of this thesis is to study the valency structure of certain French adverbs forming such a subset which to certain extent denies aforesaid definition. Therefore, the definition of adverbial valency and the characteristic of "inheritance" and "fading" of adverbial valency potential after a transformation from verbs and adjectives will be given. The outcomes of the theoretical part will then be verified by analysing the data presented in the electronic dictionary le Petit Robert completed by qualitative and quantitative analyses based on two written French corpuses: Frantext and L'Est Républicain. To describe the "inheritance" and "fading" of valency potential, the same method will be used to depict the set of the adverbs derived from the adjectives, which take prepositional phrases headed by the preposition de as their complement. This work will be based not only on the theory of general linguistics and grammar, but also on the knowledge of mathematical and corpus linguistics. Klíčová slova (anglicky): valence, adverbs, French, corpus linguistics.

<p>The purpose of this paper is to examine the adverbs <em>mainly</em>, <em>mostly</em>, <em>chiefly</em> and <em>principally</em> for their level of synonymity. Dictionaries commonly lists synonyms to their main entries without providing information about commonality, contexts or level of formality or even sample sentences. More often than not this is done in a circular fashion, one main entry is listed as synonym to another which in turn is listed as a synonym to the first. This is confusing to persons not knowing what word to use and when to use it. The adverbs <em>mainly</em>, <em>mostly</em>, <em>chiefly</em> and <em>principally</em> are listed as synonyms to each other in several dictionaries in this circular fashion. By using corpus research I have shown that these adverbs are not the absolute synonyms dictionaries indicate, but differ greatly in usage, context and level of formality. I have investigated real samples of how <em>mainly</em>, <em>mostly</em>, <em>chiefly</em> and <em>principally</em> are used in a British newspaper. From the results I have obtained, I have analyzed the usage of the adverbs and suggested new and improved definitions.</p>

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This tesis deals with French adverbs and their placement by a compound form of verb. The purpose of this work is to find out if it is possible to apply any rules on these issues and to specify at least some of the rules. The first theoretical part of this work is focused on the summary of existing knowledge about placement of adverbs in French especially by a compound form of verb.Two main hypothesis are made based on this knowledge and afterwards verified in the theoretical part. This verification is based on data from monolingual synchronic corpora.

This thesis deals with temporal and local circumstantial adverbials. The aim of this thesis is to define the adverbials, to describe manners of expressions, positions in the sentence and functions and to analyse French and Czech adverbials on the basis of the parallel corpus Intercorp.The thesis is divided into a theoretical part and a practical part. The theoretical contains three chapters. The first deals with the description of temporal and local circumstantial adverbials on the basis of Czech grammars. The second chapter focuses on the description of adverbials by French grammars. The third chapter summarizes the conclusions of the theoretical part. The principal chapter is the fourth chapter dealing with the analysis of the temporal and local circumstantial adverbials in the corpus Intercorp.

The use of gradable adjectives and adverbs represents an important means of expressing comparison in English. The grammatical forms of comparatives and superlatives are used to express explicit orderings between objects with respect to the degree to which they possess some gradable property. While comparatives are commonly used to compare two entities (e.g., “The blue whale is larger than an African elephant”), superlatives such as “The blue whale is the largest mammal” are used to express a comparison between a target entity (here, the blue whale) and its comparison set (the set of mammals), with the target ranked higher or lower on a scale of comparison than members of the comparison set. Superlatives thus highlight the uniqueness of the target with respect to its comparison set. Although superlatives are frequently found in natural language, with the exception of recent work by (Bos and Nissim, 2006) and (Jindal and Liu, 2006b), they have not yet been investigated within a computational framework. And within the framework of theoretical linguistics, studies of superlatives have mainly focused on semantic properties that may only rarely occur in natural language (Szabolsci (1986), Heim (1999)). My PhD research aims to pave the way for a comprehensive computational treatment of superlatives. The initial question I am addressing is that of automatically extracting useful information about the target entity, its comparison set and their relationship from superlative constructions. One of the central claims of the thesis is that no unified computational treatment of superlatives is possible because of their great semantic complexity and the variety of syntactic structures in which they occur. I propose a classification of superlative surface forms, and initially focus on so-called “ISA superlatives”, which make explicit the IS-A relation that holds between target and comparison set. They are suitable for a computational approach because both their target and comparison set are usually explicitly realised in the text. I also aim to show that the findings of this thesis are of potential benefit for NLP applications such as Question Answering, Natural Language Generation, Ontology Learning, and Sentiment Analysis/Opinion Mining. In particular, I investigate the use of the “Superlative Relation Extractor“ implemented in this project in the area of Sentiment Analysis/Opinion Mining, and claim that a superlative analysis of the sort presented in this thesis, when applied to product evaluations and recommendations, can provide just the kind of information that Opinion Mining aims to identify.

Ao analisar o material hoje disponível sobre os advérbios em inglês e em português observa-se, em especial naqueles baseados em corpus e aqui referimo-nos mais especificamente às gramáticas , que o estudo dessa classe gramatical vem ganhando espaço. Além de abordar questões morfológicas, sintáticas, pragmáticas, semânticas e em alguns casos discursivas, essas obras de referência têm procurado conscientizar o consulente sobre a imprecisão dessa classe gramatical, chamando a atenção para seu uso em contexto. Mesmo com esses avanços significativos, no entanto, observa-se que não há dados sobre o uso dos advérbios, mais especificamente aqueles terminados em ly e mente, em linguagens especializadas, principalmente no que tange o levantamento de padrões linguísticos que venham a caracterizar essas áreas e tenham, em sua composição, esse grupo de advérbios. Partindo de dois corpora de estudo, um composto de receitas culinárias em inglês e em português e outro de instrumentos contratuais no mesmo par de línguas, levantamos os cinco advérbios terminados em ly e mente mais chave em cada tipologia e língua e extraímos os padrões linguísticos em que ocorriam. Considerando a extração e análise dos dados coletados, pudemos comprovar a nossa tese de que esse grupo de advérbios apresenta características próprias e fraseologias típicas da área em que se inserem, ajustando-se a cada contexto de uso. Inclusive, tal fato é evidenciado quando analisamos immediately, advérbio com alto índice de chavicidade e comum às receitas culinárias e contratos em inglês, e imediatamente e juntamente nessas tipologias em português. Descrevemos também todo o processo para o levantamento de formas equivalentes de algumas fraseologias na direção inglês-português, com o objetivo de enfatizar a necessidade de incluir os resultados obtidos em diferentes obras de referência, especialmente em gramáticas e dicionários especializados, o que contribuiria de modo significativo para o trabalho do produtor de textos, principalmente o tradutor. / When analyzing the material available nowadays about adverbs in English and in Portuguese we observe, especially in those that are corpus-based more specifically grammar books , that the study of this grammatical class has gained ground. Besides covering topics such as morphology, syntax, pragmatics, semantics and sometimes discourse, these reference books have tried to make the reader aware of the lack of precision when referring to this grammatical class, emphasizing its use in context. However, despite these significant advances we observe that adverbs, especially those ending in ly in English and mente in Portuguese, are not mentioned as far as specialized languages are concerned, especially when referring to linguistic patterns that may characterize their use in specific areas, in both languages. Based on two study corpora, one with recipes (Culinary) in English and in Portuguese and the other with agreements (Contract Law) in these two languages, we extracted the five adverbs (ending in ly and mente) with the highest keyness index in each text typology and language, also identifying the linguistic patterns in which they occurred. Considering the extraction and analysis of the collected data, we could confirm our thesis that these adverbs have their own characteristics and specific phraseologies in the area in which they occur, adjusting to each context of use. This was also observed when we analyzed immediately, an adverb with a high keyness index that was common to both areas of study, i.e., culinary recipes and agreements in English, and imediatamente and juntamente in the same text typologies in Portuguese. We have also described the whole process to extract the equivalent forms of some phraseologies in the English-Portuguese direction, with the objective of emphasizing the need to include the results obtained so far in different reference books, especially grammar books and specialized dictionaries which would contribute significantly to the job of the text producer, mainly the translator.