This diploma thesis deals with the defectiveness of present converb in contemporary Russian language. The first part outlines the theoretical solutions of converb in Russian language, its origin and diachronic development. The second part presents basic grammar books illustrating the codification of defectiveness of present converb during the 20th and early 21st century. The grammars of Lomonosov, Grech and Vostokov, which illustrate the state of codification in the previous period, are composed to supplement. On the basis of theoretical knowledge and data from the grammars most often forbidding forms of the converbs were chosen and then submitted to corpus analysis. The aim of the corpus analysis was to verify the actual usage of the forbidding forms of present converbs in literary texts. key words: morphology; Russian; converb; codification; use; corpus

This thesis investigates the syntactic features, functions, and diachrony of a complex predicate called ‘the inceptive construction’ which is based on a grammaticalised use of the converbs ‘get up’, ‘pick up’, ‘grasp’, and ‘take’. The languages under investigation are Amharic, Argobba, Harari, Zay, and Selt’i. The data collection that was analized consists of elicitations, audio recordings, and written texts. The analysis shows that the converbs identify the initial phase of the event encoded by a following verb. The converbs are further associated with nuances like volition, surprise, and emphasis. The rise of such interpretations as surprise and emphasis appears to depend mainly on context, while volition is inherent to the construction. The languages generally do not show much variation. However, there is a notable difference in some co-occurrence restrictions. Moreover, there is a difference in the presence/absence of certain converbs mainly in Harari and Zay, which is clearly a matter of preference between individual consultants. Regarding the origin of the inceptive construction, collocation, frequency, and speakers’ conception of the action of the converbs are possible factors that lead the verbs to grammaticalize into markers of the inception phase. Only some traces of the construction are found in an old Amharic text from the 15th century. The converb is the main verb form used in the inceptive construction, although other verb forms are allowed which may take a coordinating conjunction (in the cases of Amharic and Argobba) and an iterative/simultaneity marker (‘while’). The Amharic conjunction =nna ‘and’ links the light verb with the reference verb in the inceptive construction, but is also used in causal(purposive) and conditional coordination. The criteria of tense iconicity and variable positions indicate that =nna is a coordinating conjunction in the former, but a subordinator in the latter. Lastly, the converb in Amharic is shown to become insubordinated, i.e. the main verb or auxiliary it depends on gets ellipsed over time and it comes to function as a main verb. An insubordinated converb is used in the expression of surprise/exclamation, interrogation, rhetorical questioning, wishing, and the resultative/perfective. The point is it is still possible to use the notion of ‘converb’ in the inceptive construction as this is a separate historical process.

Syftet med studien är att analysera frekvensen av den svenska s-participen i skönlitteraturgenren och att jämföra dess användningar med en lista på kriterier för ”konverbskap”. Definitionen av konverb är baserad på källor som Haspelmath 1995 och Nedjalkov 1990. S-participen studeras för att undersöka hur den har använts de senaste 180 åren, och skönlitteraturgenren valdes då den förväntas ha många s-participer. Eftersom konverb är vanligare i skriftspråk, eller åtminstone används mer varierat där, studeras inte talspråket. En korpusstudie har gjorts som täcker in fem subkorpora av Språkbankens Korp. Resultet filtrerades med hjälp av konverbkriterierna. Efter filtreringen räknades andelen s-participer ut för varje subkorpora och utifrån det drogs slutsatser. Resultatet visar att s-participen tycks ha varit mer vanlig i äldre litteratur, men andelen är ungefär densamma i ”Strindberg”, som täcker åren 1869-1912 och ”Bonnierromaner 1980-81”. Resultaten slogs ihop så att ”Strindberg” hamnade i den äldre tidsperioden och de tre efterkommande subkorpora i den yngre. För övrigt var skillnaden mellan de båda tidsperiodernas antal av s-participen statistiskt signifikant, men antalet funna s-participer behöver inte tyda på en historisk nedgång. / The aim of the study is to analyze the frequency tables of the Swedish s-participle in the literature genre and to compare its uses with a list of criteria of converbhood. The definition of a converb is based on sources such as Haspelmath 1995 and Nedjalkov 1990. The s-participle is studied in order to discover how it has been used throughout the last 180 years, and the literature genre is chosen since it is expected to have a lot of s-participles. The method was as follows: five subcorpora were searched through in Språkbanken’s Korp. The results were filtered using the converb criteria. When the filtering had been done, the ratio of s-participles was to be calculated for each subcorpora and from that, conclusions were to be drawn. The results show that the s-participle seems to have been more common in earlier literature, but the ratio is about the same in ”the August Strindberg” corpus covering the years 1869-1912 and ”Bonnier Novels 1980-81”. Moreover, the difference between the number of s-participles betweens the two periods were statistically significant, but the numbers do not need to amount to a historical decline in s-participles.

Cette thèse vise à traiter les verbes composés en japonais et les verbes préverbés en polonais comme faisant partie des constructions verbales à prédicat complexe. D’abord, la notion de la formation des mots et, par conséquent, la notion de « mot », sont examinées par les analyses entre les mots (ortho)graphiques et prosodiques ; le problème d’espace entre les mots et différents systèmes d’accentuation sont pris en compte. D’une part, l’analyse des verbes composés japonais remonte jusqu’aux deux premières grammaires au XVIIe siècle, celle de Rodriguez et de Collado, dont la première propose la dichotomie entre les verbes composés à « mode de l’action » et à « particule ». Ensuite suivent les analyses des verbes composés contemporains, avec un accent particulier sur un certain nombre de couples de verbes transitifs et intransitifs en second élément du composé. D’autre part, la typologie des constructions préverbales de la langue polonaise est examinée. Enfin, à travers la comparaison multilingue du Petit prince de Saint-Exupéry entre l’original et deux traductions japonaises et deux polonaises, une typologie des constructions verbales à prédicat complexe est proposée, ce qui fait écho au choix de notre langue de rédaction, le français servant de pivot afin d’examiner diverses constructions verbales de nos langues de comparaison, le japonais et le polonais : composition verbale et construction converbale pour le premier et préverbation et construction infinitivale à semi-auxiliaire pour le second. / This thesis seeks to analyse Japanese compound verbs and Polish prefixed verbs as a part of complex predicate verbal constructions. First, the notion of word-formation and consequently that of word are examined by analyses between (ortho)graphic and prosodical words, which include problems of word space and several accentual systems. Next, this analysis of compound verbs goes back to 17th century with the first two Japanese grammars by Rodriguez and Collado, respectively, where the former proposes a dichotomy between manner of action and particle verbal compounds. Then follows an analysis of contemporary Japanese compound verbs, with particular emphasis on some pairs of transitive and intransitive verbs in the second element of compound. Contrastingly, a typology of verbal prefix constructions in Polish is considered and reviewed. Finally, through a multilingual comparison of The Little Prince, by Saint-Exupéry, using two translations in each of Japanese and Polish, a typology of complex predicate verbal constructions is put forward which corresponds with the language, French, in which this thesis is written and which serves as a pivot for the examination of various verbal constructions of the languages for comparison, Japanese and Polish: verbal compounding and converbal construction for the former, verbal prefixation and infinitival auxiliary construction for the latter.

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...

Swedish lacks gerunds and is therefore suitable for studying implicit meanings of Russian gerunds that are forced to become explicit in Swedish translations. The present contrastive parallel corpus study explores translation correspondences in both directions. It is shown that constructions with finite verbs of perfective aspect followed by imperfective gerunds largely correspond to Swedish absolute withconstructions (= Swedish med-constructions). Another finding is the insertion of extra gerunds in connection with translation of Swedish locative constructions. A classification of Swedish explicit time markers corresponding to converb constructions is structured according to time relations (taxis relations): perfective aspect converbs show a clear correspondence to anterior markers, and imperfective converbs correlate with simultaneity markers. Contextual secondary meanings like means, purpose, cause, consequence are analyzed and various structures are found