La thèse propose un début d’étude du champ sémantique de la santé en breton vannetais. Cette étude est basée sur un corpus de breton littéraire vannetais et un corpus de breton oral recueilli auprès de locuteurs traditionnels de la région de Pontivy. Le travail de description de lexies de ce champ sémantique est fait dans le cadre de la théorie linguistique Sens-Texte. Dans un premier temps sont données des explications sur le modèle linguistique proposé par la théorie Sens-Texte et sur la branche lexicologique de cette théorie, la Lexicologie Explicative et Combinatoire. La combinatoire lexicale et syntaxique des noms dénotant des troubles physiologiques, y compris ceux dénotant des maladies, est ensuite décrite. Cette description suppose un travail de lexémisation – c’est-à-dire de distinction des différentes acceptions d’un mot polysémique – de quelques vocables dont certaines acceptions sont des lexèmes de base de ce champ sémantique : les vocables DROUG ‘mal’, KLEÑVED ‘maladie’, KLAÑV ‘malade’, KLEÑVEDET lit. ‘maladié’ = ‘qui a une maladie’, YAC’H ‘en bonne santé’, YEC’HED ‘santé’ et AESAAT ‘guérir’. Il est proposé une description la plus complète possible de ces lexèmes. Il s’agit de la toute première tentative d’application au breton d’une méthodologie d’élaboration dictionnairique claire et cohérente, au fort pouvoir descriptif. En outre, ce travail de thèse débouche sur un corpus de breton oral d’environ un demi-million de mots, outil précieux pour les chercheurs sur la langue bretonne / The thesis offers a first-start study of the semantic field of health in the vannetais variety of Breton, based both on a corpus of literary Breton from the Vannes region and a corpus of oral Breton collected from traditional speakers in the Pontivy area. Lexicographic description of lexical units from that semantic field is embedded in the Meaning-Text linguistic theory. An overview of the theory, in particular it’s lexicological branch, the Explanatory and Combinatorial Lexicology is given, followed by a detailed description of the lexical and syntactic co-occurrence of nouns denoting physiological disorders, illnesses and diseases. Such a description has required lexemization of vocables (= discrimination of different word-senses of polysemous words) to which belong basic lexemes of this semantic field: DROUG ‘≈ physiological disorder’, KLEÑVED ‘disease’, KLAÑV ‘ill / sick’, KLEÑVEDET lit. ‘made.ill’ = ‘having an illness’, YAC’H ‘healthy’, YEC’HED ‘health’ and AESAAT ‘to cure / heal’. These lexemes have been given a detailed lexicographic description. The thesis represents the very first attempt at applying a clear, coherent and descriptively powerful lexicographic methodology to Breton data. In addition, it makes available to the scientific community a corpus of oral Breton of about a half million words

Cette thèse en didactique des langues étrangères montre le potentiel des corpus pour l'apprentissage de l'allemand au collège. Conformément aux objectifs poursuivis dans une recherche-action, elle renseigne sur l'évolution des acteurs impliqués dans un dispositif spécifique, en tenant compte de facteurs multiples, tels que le type d'input, les outils, les modes de travail - en présentiel et à distance - et la relation pédagogique. J'ai observé les effets d'un scénario pédagogique, basé sur l'exploitation de corpus spécialisés pour la création de textes du domaine du tourisme. Les participants, des adolescents de niveau intermédiaire en allemand, langue étrangère, ont exploré les corpus à l'aide de lignes de concordances. J'ai analysé leurs discours et leurs actions face à l'input, et j'ai décrit l'évolution de certains aspects linguistiques et discursifs de leurs textes. Le projet et les outils proposés ont soutenu le développement de modes de lecture qui ont favorisé la recherche ciblée d'informations dans l'input. Le recyclage d'éléments repérés dans l'input a mené, pour une partie des apprenants, à l'obtention de productions écrites dont les caractéristiques linguistiques et discursives sont proches de celles attestées dans les corpus. L'écriture intertextuelle a permis aux participants, à des degrés variables, de se décentrer et de progresser dans l'apprentissage de l'altérité. L'observation de formes linguistiques à l'aide de lignes de concordances et l'intégration de collocations identifiées dans l'input ont contribué au développement du système linguistique, en particulier dans le domaine de la flexion des adjectifs. / This action-research in applied linguistics investigates the evolution of adolescent learners of German as a foreign language during a project involving corpus exploration. It focuses on the role played by resources, tools, face-to-face learning versus distance learning and by the pedagogical relationship. My research analyzes how the learners perceived and exploited three small specialized corpora containing texts representing each one sub-genre of the « tourist information » genre. The learners explored them by means of concordance lines. Firstly, I observe what the learners said about the input and what they did with it. Secondly, I describe how the language and the discourse used in the texts changed during the project. The tasks and tools of the project helped some of the learners to develop reading habits which focus on information retrieval more than on complete comprehension of the text. The effects are texts written in a German ha! ving linguistic features that resemble those attested in the explored corpora. The intertextual writing method offered by the project supports acculturation to the foreign language. By means of concordancing and the import of collocations, the learners are now able to deal with some language features, especially with the domain of German adjective inflection, better than before.

High failure rates in English as a second language at secondary school level have become a concern in the Namibian education sector. From 2005 until 2013, the overall performance of the grade 12 learners in English as a second language on Ordinary level in the Oshana region was unsatisfactory. In fact, only a minority (18.52 percent) of the grade 12 learners obtained a grading in the range of A to D in comparison to the majority (81.48 percent) of learners who obtained a grading of E to U. The poor performance was attributed to: poor sentence structure, syllabification and spelling (Directorate of National Examination and Assessment, 2007-2010). The causes of these low performance rates however, were not scientifically explored in this region. Therefore this study embarked on an investigation in order to identify the reasons behind the low performance rates of the grade 12 Oshiwambo speaking learners of English and to determine whether the impressionistic results from the Directorate’s report correlate with the present study’s findings. In order to understand the dynamic linguistic system of the learners, a contrastive analysis of Oshiwambo and English was done in order to investigate the potential origins of some of the errors. An error analysis approach was also used to identify, classify and interpret the non-standard forms produced by the learners in their written work. Based on the results obtained from this study, a more comprehensible assessment rubric was devised to help identify learners’ written errors. A group of 100 learners from five different schools in the Oshana region was asked to write an essay of 150 to 200 words in English. The essays were analysed using Corder’s (1967) conceptual framework which outlines the steps that a researcher uses when undertaking an error analysis study. The errors were categorised according to Keshavarz’s (2006) linguistic error taxonomy. Based on this taxonomy, the results revealed that learners largely made errors in the following categories: phonology/orthography, morpho-syntax, lexico-semantics, discourse and techniquepunctuation. The study concluded that these errors were most likely due to: first language interference, overgeneralisation, ignorance of rule restriction and carelessness. Other proposed probable causes were context of learning and lack of knowledge of English grammar. The study makes a significant contribution, in that the findings can be used as a guide for the Namibian Ministry of Education in improving the status quo at schools and informing the line Ministry on various methods of dealing with language difficulties faced by learners. The findings can also empower teachers to help learners with difficulties in English language learning, thereby enabling learners to improve their English language proficiency. The study has proposed methods of intervention in order to facilitate the teaching of English as a second language in the Oshana region. In addition, the study has devised an easily applied assessment rubric that will assist in identifying non-standard forms of language used by learners. The reason for designing a new rubric is because the rubric which is currently being used is believed to be subjective, inconsistent and lacks transparency. / Name in Graduation Programme as: Nghikembua, Anneli Ndapanda

The juvenile hormones (JHs) are sesquiterpenoid compounds that play a central role in insect reproduction, development and behavior. They are synthesized and secreted by a pair of small endocrine glands, the corpora allata (CA), which are intimately connected to the brain. The enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of JH are attractive targets for the control of mosquito populations. This dissertation is a comprehensive functional study of five Aedes aegypti CA enzymes, HMG-CoA synthase (AaHMGS), mevalonate kinase (AaMK), phosphomevalonate kinase (AaPMK), farnesyl diphosphate synthase (AaFPPS) and farnesyl pyrophosphate phosphatase (AaFPPase). The enzyme AaHMGS catalyzes the condensation of acetoacetyl-CoA and acetyl-CoA to produce HMG-CoA. The enzyme does not require any co-factor, although its activity is enhanced by addition of Mg2+. The enzyme AaMK is a class I mevalonate kinase that catalyzes the ATP-dependent phosphorylation of mevalonic acid to form mevalonate 5-phosphate. Activity of AaMK is inhibited by isoprenoids. The enzyme AaPMK catalyzes the cation-dependent reversible reaction of phosphomevalonate and ATP to form diphosphate mevalonate and ADP. The enzyme AaFPPS catalyzes the condensation of isopentenyl diphosphate (IPP) and dimethylallyl pyrophosphate (DMAPP) to form geranyl diphosphate (GPP) and farnesyl pyrophosphate (FPP). The enzyme AaFPPS shows an unusual product regulation mechanism, with chain length final product of 10 or 15 C depending on the metal cofactor present. The enzymes AaFPPase-1 and AaFPPase-2 efficiently hydrolyze FPP into farnesol, although RNAi experiments demonstrate that only AaFPPase-1 is involved in the catalysis of FPP into FOL in the CA of A. aegypti. This dissertation also explored the inhibition of the activity of some of the JH biosynthesis enzymes as tools for insect control. We described the effect of N-acetyl-S-geranylgeranyl-L-cysteine as a potent inhibitor of AaFPPase 1 and AaFPPase-2. In addition, inhibitors of AaMK and AaHMGS were also investigated using purified recombinant proteins. The present study provides an important contribution to the characterization of recombinant proteins, the analysis of enzyme kinetics and inhibition constants, as well as the understanding of the importance of these five enzymes in the control of JH biosynthesis rates.

Ecdysis triggering hormone (ETH) is a neuropeptide known for its role in the orchestration of ecdysis. However, its role in the regulation of Juvenile Hormone (JH) synthesis is unknown. In Aedes aegypti, JH is synthesized by the corpora allata (CA) and titers are tightly regulated by allatoregulatory factors. In this study I describe the effect of ETH on JH synthesis during the late pupal stage and in the adult female after blood feeding. Analysis of ETH receptor (ETHRs) expression showed that ETHRs are present in both the CA and the corpora cardiaca (CC), a neurohemal organ. The data suggest that ETH regulates JH synthesis directly through its receptors in CA. Our results show that in pupa, ETH has a stimulatory effect on JH synthesis while in adult blood fed females, ETH is inhibitory. These findings constitute the first evidence of ETH as a regulatory peptide in mosquito JH synthesis.

The aim of the thesis is to propose a tagging system for a learner corpus of spoken English which would, apart from tagging errors, focus also on the features specific for spoken language. Theoretical part, therefore, introduces basic concepts including learner language, the development of learner corpora in the last 20 years and both classical and computer-aided error analysis. Features typical of spoken language are described in the theoretical part as well since these are the focus of the research part of the thesis. The Louvain tagging system used for error-tagging of a leaner corpus of written language is used as the basis for the tagging system proposed in this thesis. Based on the analysis of 20 transcriptions taken from the Czech part of spoken learner corpus LINDSEI, modifications of the categories taken from the Louvain error-tagging system are proposed and new categories necessary for a better description of spoken language are introduced. The tagging system proposed in this thesis should make further analysis of the tagged corpus easier.

Title: Mining Parallel Corpora from the Web Author: Bc. Jakub Kúdela Author's e-mail address: jakub.kudela@gmail.com Department: Department of Software Engineering Thesis supervisor: Doc. RNDr. Irena Holubová, Ph.D. Supervisor's e-mail address: holubova@ksi.mff.cuni.cz Thesis consultant: RNDr. Ondřej Bojar, Ph.D. Consultant's e-mail adress: bojar@ufal.mff.cuni.cz Abstract: Statistical machine translation (SMT) is one of the most popular ap- proaches to machine translation today. It uses statistical models whose parame- ters are derived from the analysis of a parallel corpus required for the training. The existence of a parallel corpus is the most important prerequisite for building an effective SMT system. Various properties of the corpus, such as its volume and quality, highly affect the results of the translation. The web can be considered as an ever-growing source of considerable amounts of parallel data to be mined and included in the training process, thus increasing the effectiveness of SMT systems. The first part of this thesis summarizes some of the popular methods for acquiring parallel corpora from the web. Most of these methods search for pairs of parallel web pages by looking for the similarity of their structures. How- ever, we believe there still exists a non-negligible amount of parallel...

This thesis analyses expletive usage of Czech word to (it). The aim is to contribute to the current description of Czech expletive to in the subject position and to compare it with English expletive subject it. Theoretical part of this thesis is dedicated to definition of the term reference, and other terms associated with it, and referential, modifying and non- referential functions of to in Czech academic literature. Important part of the theoretical background is definition of semantic criteria for identification of the Czech expletive to by Ivana Kolářová. In Czech academic literature, the term expletive is not widely described, therefore this thesis also gives a brief overview of description of English expletive it. For the purposes of comparison of the Czech and English expletives, this thesis is partly dedicated to a description of partial pro-drop languages and to an explanation how it is connected to the Czech language. There are two types of Czech expletive to defined as a basis for a qualitative analysis: formal expletive subject to in raising constructions and inferential expletive subject to. The analysis is based on 300 manually excerpted examples of constructions with expletive subject to from spoken corpora ORAL2013 and ORTOFON. Both types of expletives are described separately on...

(in English): Focal point of presented thesis is concurence of certain lexico-semantic alternations, more specifically of the locative ones. Opening chapters deal with their definition and conception in theoretical frames of FGP and CxG. Following passages concentrate on specification of alternating contructions, their concurence and semantical restriction of alternating verbs. The second, core chapter of the thesis presents a corpus-based, quantitative and qualitative study of several Czech alternating verbs (cpát, balit, nakládat, napouštět, nalévat and plnit). It deals mainly with the question of distrubition of each construction and alternation capacity of aforementioned verbs. It verificates some hypotheses concerning pronominality, number and grammatical complexity of arguments. At the same time it aspires to bring a few new points and perspectives into Czech locative alternation discourse.

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