Untersuchungsgegenstand der Dissertation sind sprachliche Strukturen, die aus einer Form des Verbs „machen“ und einer objektsprädikativen Adjektivphrase bestehen. Die Arbeit ist eingebettet in einen konstruktionsgrammatischen Rahmen, nach dem Sprache sich als strukturiertes Inventar von Konstruktionen (Form-Funktions-Beziehungen) beschreiben lässt. Ziele der Arbeit sind a) die korpusbasierte Ermittlung lexikalischer Kollokationen und Gebrauchstendenzen innerhalb der Zielstruktur sowie b) die systematische Beschreibung der damit verbundenen Form-Funktions-Beziehungen. Als Arbeitshypothese wurde übereinstimmend mit bisherigen Arbeiten zum selben sprachlichen Gegenstand eine kausative Bedeutung, also die Kodierung einer Ursache-Wirkung-Relation, angenommen. Da konstruktionsgrammatischen Ansätzen zufolge formale Unterschiede mit Unterschieden auf der Ebene der Funktion korrespondieren sollten, wurde empirisch untersucht, in welchen Fällen formale Unterschiede innerhalb der Zielstruktur tatsächlich systematisch zu unterschiedlichen funktionalen Interpretationen führen. Lexikalische Kollokationen innerhalb der Zielstruktur wurden statistisch anhand von Kollostruktionsanalysen („Covarying Collexeme Analysis“; vgl. Gries/Stefanowitsch, 2004) ermittelt. Zur Beschreibung der Bedeutung oder Funktion dienten Frame-semantische Beschreibungen englischer Verben aus dem FrameNet (vgl. Fillmore/Baker, 2010). Eine wesentliche Beobachtung besteht nun darin, dass entgegen der ursprünglichen Annahme keineswegs alle Vorkommen von „machen“ mit einer objektsprädikativen Adjektivphrase eine Ursache-Wirkung-Relation kodieren. Gerade die in der Kombination mit „machen“ hochfrequenten Adjektive korrelieren signifikant mit abweichenden, nicht im engeren Sinne kausativen, Interpretationen im Sinne der jeweils evozierten semantischen Frames. / This dissertation focuses on combinations of a form of the German verb “machen” with an adjective phrase which, according to a working hypothesis, is said to have a resultative reading. The work is grounded in a Construction Grammar approach, viewing language as a structured inventory of Constructions, i.e. form-function mappings. The aims are a) establishing lexical collocations and usage tendencies within these structures involving “machen” and a resultative adjective phrase, based on corpus studies, and b) describing systematically the relevant form-function mappings. As Construction Grammar approaches predict changes in function corresponding to changes in form, the formal collocations established according to aim a) are systematically analyzed with respect to their respective functional interpretations. The methods used involve a series of „Covarying Collexeme Analyses“ (cf. Gries/Stefanowitsch, 2004) to study lexical collocations within the given formal structure, and the application of frame semantic descriptions of English verbs, as found in FrameNet (cf. Fillmore/Baker, 2010), to the German structures found in the corpora. The results indicate that, contrary to the working hypothesis, a great number of “machen” plus adjective tokens does not lead to a causative or resultative interpretation. Especially the most frequent adjectives combined with “machen” exhibit a significant correlation with structures evoking different, not strictly causative, semantic frames.

The concept of "family" has undergone major changes over the past 50 years. This thesis examines changes in attitudes and values that can be detected in German and Swedish during this time. In order to investigate these changes in the concept of "family" I have analyzed how the German focus word Familie and the Swedish focus word familj are used in newspaper articles from the 1960s, 1980s and early 2000s. The empirical data consists of German and Swedish newspaper corpora from the three different periods. The theoretical point of departure is a social constructionist perspective, where family is considered to be something constructed and negotiated in language use. The method is corpus linguistic discourse analysis: compound words, collocations and multi-word patterns that include the focus words are analyzed using large text corpora. The study is both about changes in HOW the words familj and Familie are used and WHAT is said about the family in public language use. The thesis shows changes in both Swedish and German language use. I conclude that two different sub-concepts are being constructed and negotiated: the family as a GROUP OF PERSONS and family as a WAY OF LIVING TOGETHER. As regards the family as a group of persons this sub-concept has undergone major changes during the period studied. Differences in Swedish and German language use indicate more and sometimes earlier changes in the Swedish concept of family. The sub-concept of family as a way of living together is more constant. The observed changes can also be seen against a background of Swedish and German conceptual norms of family that do not change to the same extent. New family structures such as nätverksfamiljer (reconstituted families) and regnbågsfamiljer (rainbow families) are partly constructed as deviations from these conceptual norms. The thesis also shows that the sub-concept of family as a group of persons has become even more complex, especially in Swedish language use and particularly in so-called bio boxes, where pets are mentioned as family members and couples without children label themselves as familj. / Begreppet ”familj” har genomgått stora förändringar de senaste 50 åren. I den här avhandlingen studeras vilka förändringar i synsätt och värderingar som kan upptäckas i det tyska och det svenska språkbruket under denna tid. För att undersöka dessa förändringar i begreppet ”familj” analyseras hur det tyska fokusordet Familie och det svenska fokusordet familj används i tidningstext från 1960-talet, 1980-talet och början av 2000-talet. Det empiriska materialet består av tyska och svenska tidningskorpusar från de tre olika perioderna. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten är ett socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv, där familj betraktas som någonting som konstrueras och förhandlas i språkanvändning. Metoden är korpuslingvistisk diskursanalys: med hjälp av stora textkorpusar analyseras sammansatta ord, kollokationer och flerordsmönster där fokusorden ingår. Det handlar här både om förändringar i HUR orden familj och Familie används och i VAD som sägs om familj i offentligt språkbruk. Avhandlingen visar på förändringar i både den svenska och den tyska språkanvändningen. Jag kommer fram till att två olika delbegrepp konstrueras och förhandlas: familj som PERSONGRUPP och familj som SAMLEVNADSFORM. När det gäller familj som persongrupp genomgår det delbegreppet stora förändringar under den studerade tidsperioden. Förändringarna visar sig vara större och ibland tidigare i det svenska materialet än i det tyska materialet. Delbegreppet familj som samlevnadsform är mer konstant. De förändringar som kan observeras sker också mot en bakgrund av svenska och tyska normbilder av familj, som inte förändras i samma grad. Nya familjebildningar som nätverksfamiljer och regnbågsfamiljer konstrueras delvis som avvikelser från dessa normbilder. Avhandlingen visar också att delbegreppet familj som persongrupp blir allt mer mångfacetterat, särskilt i svenskt språkbruk och i synnerhet i s.k. faktarutor, där även husdjur nämns som familjemedlemmar och par utan barn får etiketten familj.

This essay deals with translation changes and problems that occur when translating collocations, i.e. sequences of words that are usually combined such as work hard, from Swedish to German. Being an essential part of our communication, collocations are common both in everyday-life and in technical terminology. This qualitative research deals with collocations in scientific texts about children’s literature and aims to increase attention on collocations in the translation process. The term collocation as used here refers to the concept of hierarchical relations between the lexemes of a collocation by the German linguist F. J. Hausmann (1984), distinguishing between bases and collocators. It proved itself useful in the translation process and showed that the translator must pay special attention to the collocator in order to find the equivalent expression in the target language. In doing so he/she is not at all obliged to translate a collocation with the respective target collocation. In fact due to stylistic reasons collocations were replaced by individual lexemes or paraphrases. Referring to Hausmann’s terminology and the studies of Baker (1992) this essay highlights the importance of considering collocations as translation units, i.e. not translating the lexemes of a collocation separately. Furthermore the assumption was disproved that translation errors, e.g. interferences and semantic deficits, are mainly caused when translating collocations to a foreign language. Even translators translating into their mother tongue have to examine collocations carefully to avoid errors that can result in doubts about the quality of the whole translation.

The aim of the present study has been to investigate how titles of social rank used in Tudor and Stuart England are modified by attributive adjectives in pre-adjacent position and the implications that become possible to observe. Using the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler (CEECS) the present work set out to examine adjectival modification, gender perspectives and MI (Mutual Information) scores in order to gain a deeper understanding of how and why titles were modified in certain ways. The titles under scrutiny are Lord, Lady, Sir, Dame, Madam, Master and Mistress and these have been analysed following theories and frameworks pertaining to the scientific discipline of sociohistorical linguistics.    The findings of the present study suggest that male titles were modified more frequently than, and differently from, female titles. The adjectives used as pre-modifiers, in turn, stem from different semantic domains which reveals differences in attitudes from the language producers towards the referents and in what traits are described regarding the holders of the titles. Additionally, a type/token ratio investigation reveals that the language producers were keener on using a more varied vocabulary when modifying female titles and less so when modifying male titles. The male terms proved to be used more formulaically than the female terms, as well. Lastly, an analysis of MI scores concludes that the most frequent collocations are not necessarily the most relevant ones.    A discussion regarding similarities and differences to other studies is carried out, as well, which, further, is accompanied by suggestions for future research.

The research reported in this thesis explores the degree of authenticity of the formulaic language used by NNSs and the extent to which a learner's L1 interferes in the production of different types of multi-word units, namely non-idiomatic recurrent three and four-word combinations (lexical bundles), phrasal and prepositional verbs and collocation. Drawing on Granger's Contrastive Interlanguage analysis (CIA 1996), the investigation is conducted on two different learner sample corpora and subsequently contrasted with a native sample corpus. The study aims to prove that multi-word units pose a challenge for learners for several reasons. In general terms, learners are assumed to operate predominantly on what Sinclair calls the open-choice principle, that is to say their production will be less idiomatic than that of native speakers'. This assumption is independently tested on different types of phraseological combinations. As regards non-idiomatic recurrent word combinations, learners are expected to be more repetitive in their three- and four-word combinations and use less creativity in their writing. Concerning the phrasal verbs, it is highly likely to observe a small number of phrasal verbs in the non-native writing whereas prepositional verbs are considered problematic for learners due to the...