In this dissertation, I develop an interpretation of Leibniz on modality and free will. I do so for two reasons: first, I am attempting to revitalize the notion that Leibniz is the predecessor of contemporary modal semantics; second, I am using Leibniz's philosophical system to motivate responses to contemporary philosophical issues in modality and free will. In Chapter One, I argue that Leibniz's basic principles are plausible theoretical tools that ought to be used by contemporary philosophers in developing their philosophical systems. In Chapter Two, I develop Leibniz's views on the nature of individuals. I argue that possible individuals are actually of the same sort as individuals in the actual world--possible individuals and actual individuals are complete creatures that do not differ ontologically from each other. In Chapter Three, I argue that Leibniz's views on possible individuals make him a modal realist and compare his view with contemporary modal realism in order to support this claim. I also argue that counterparts avoid many of the problems set for them by contemporary thinkers; I end with the ways that Leibniz's view differs from contemporary accounts. In Chapter Four, I argue that Leibniz provides two different analyses of modality. The first is an infinite analysis account; the second is a possible worlds account. I argue that these two accounts are compatible and amount to two different descriptions of the same theory of modality. I address objections to each account in order to show this. In Chapter Five, I argue that Leibniz is a compatibilist about free will. Importantly, I argue that it is precisely Leibniz's account of modality that allows for this compatibilism, as against a necessitarian like Spinoza. I then use Leibniz's account to challenge contemporary libertarians about free will on the basis of the principle of sufficient reason. I also show how Leibniz can help semicompatibilism avoid a worry concerning necessitarianism. At the end of the day, I claim that adopting elements of Leibniz's system can help us better understand modality and the freedom of the will and can be an aid in furthering contemporary philosophical theory.

The present paper studies the English imperatives look and listen used as discourse markers. The study focuses on two aspects: firstly, to identify the factors indicating the primary function as opposed to the discourse function of look and listen in English, and secondly, to analyse the Czech counterparts of these verbs used as discourse markers. The paper is comprised of two main parts. The first, theoretical background, describes the grammatical form of the English imperative with focus on look and listen, the concept of discourse markers, the cross-linguistic studies focusing specifically on look and listen, the correspondence between English and Czech imperative, and the potential Czech counterparts. The second, empirical part analyses two hundred and three examples of the imperatives look and listen and their Czech counterparts from the parallel translation corpus InterCorp. Key words: imperative, look, listen, discourse markers, primary function, Czech counterpart

The present thesis presents a contrastive analysis of the Czech modifying and connecting particles tedy and tak and their English counterparts. Since these particles are specific for the Czech language as well as highly ambiguous, they can cause problems with translation as well as theoretical description. It is expected that a quality translation will provide a representative overview of possible correlates, which should contribute to their description and classification. The theoretical chapter of the thesis firstly outlines the treatment of particles in the Czech grammars and linguistic literature, their definition and classification, and secondly, it discusses formal correspondences of the Czech particles in the English grammars and linguistic literature, with the focus on the English conjuncts and discourse particles as most likely candidates of the formal equivalence of tedy and tak as modifying and connecting particles. The methodological chapter describes the source material for the analysis and clarifies the selection of the sample. 200 occurrences of tedy and tak in four Czech novels and their English translations were extracted from the electronic parallel corpus InterCorp. The data collection was performed manually in order to distinguish modifying and connecting particle meanings from...

abstract: High-energy explosive phenomena, Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) and Supernovae (SNe), provide unique laboratories to study extreme physics and potentially open up the new discovery window of Gravitational-wave astronomy. Uncovering the intrinsic variability of GRBs constrains the size of the GRB emission region, and ejecta velocity, in turn provides hints on the nature of GRBs and their progenitors. We develop a novel method which ties together wavelet and structure-function analyses to measure, for the first time, the actual minimum variability timescale, Delta t_min, of GRB light curves. Implementing our technique to the largest sample of GRBs collected by Swift and Fermi instruments reveals that only less than 10% of GRBs exhibit evidence for variability on timescales below 2 ms. Investigation on various energy bands of the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) onboard Fermi shows that the tightest constraints on progenitor radii derive from timescales obtained from the hardest energy channel of light curves (299--1000 keV). Our derivations for the minimum Lorentz factor, Gamma_min, and the minimum emission radius, R = 2c Gamma_min^2 Delta t_min / (1+z), find Gamma < 400 which imply typical emission radii R ~ 1 X 10^14 cm for long-duration GRBs and R ~ 3 X 10^13 cm for short-duration GRBs (sGRBs). I present the Reionization and Transients InfraRed (RATIR) followup of LIGO/Virgo Gravitational-wave events especially for the G194575 trigger. I show that expanding our pipeline to search for either optical riZ or near-infrared YJH detections (3 or more bands) should result in a false-alarm-rate ~1% (one candidate in the vast 100 deg^2 LIGO error region) and an efficiency ~90%. I also present the results of a 5-year comprehensive SN search by the Palomar Transient Factory aimed to measure the SN rates in the local Luminous Infrared Galaxies. We find that the SN rate of the sample, 0.05 +/- 0.02 1/yr (per galaxy), is consistent with that expected from the theoretical prediction, 0.060 +/- 0.002 1/yr (per galaxy). / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Astrophysics 2017

The present paper is concerned with the English analytical causative construction make someone do something, its semantic subtypes and its Czech translation counterparts. In the theoretical part we outline the general aspects of causation, the English means of expressing it, the participants of a causative event and different types of causation, before moving on to the description of analytical causative constructions in English and, more specifically, the constructions with the causative auxiliary make. The practical part is based on the analysis of 200 random concordances from the parallel corpus InterCorp, English originals and its Czech translation counterpart. The translation equivalents are furthermore divided into six categories and each of them is analysed separately. The analysis is meant to corroborate or disprove the hypothesis that there exists a correlation between the specific semantic subtype of the English causative construction and the means used to translate it into Czech. This was not supported by the research material as no clear correlation could be determined and the analysis uncovered merely some general tendencies of some of the categories. Keywords: causation, analytical causative constructions, translation counterparts

The subject of the present paper is an analysis of two formally similar comment clauses (CCs henceforth) you know and you see with the help of a parallel corpus InterCorp. First, the focus is put on their pragmatic functions; it is attempted to find out whether they perform all the functions that can be realized by you-oriented CCs as identified and characterized by Povolná (2010), i.e. whether they can be found both as appealers and empathizers, inform markers and monitors, and whether they prefer a certain sentence-position. Second, the present paper studies the Czech translation counterparts of the selected CCs; it attempts to offer a summary of the strategies concerning the translation of the CCs into Czech and to identify their most typical Czech equivalents. It also examines to what extend the type of the pragmatic function influences the translation. The theoretical part summarizes the history of the phenomenon of CCs and characterizes and describes two approaches generally applied to CCs: CCs as ordinary clause constituents (Quirk et al. (1985)) vs. CCs as discourse markers (Povolná (2010)). Also offered is the treatment of the equivalents of CCs in the Czech grammars (Cvrček et al. (2010), Daneš, Hlavsa et al. (1987) and Karlík and Grepl (1998, 1999)). The methodological part summarizes...

The aim of this diploma thesis is to analyse and describe the Czech translation counterparts of English present- and perfect-participial clauses which function as postmodifiers and adverbials. Although there is a formal counterpart of the English participle - the transgressive - this form is considered very marked and archaic in Czech. Therefore, based on an analysis of 210 sentences excerpted from three American works of contemporary fiction, the thesis describes the recurrent patterns used in the translation of the forms in question. The analysis confirmed the findings of previous studies that while English prefers nominal and verbo- nominal means of expressions, Czech relies rather on verbal expression. The majority of the translation counterparts are divergent correspondences, above all finite clauses connected paratactically to the counterpart of the matrix clause. Although the translation of a participle by a finite verb form is more explicit, the coordinative relation makes it possible to retain the semantic indeterminacy of the relation between the clauses which is specific for participial constructions. Key words: participle, participial clause, transgressive, postmodifier, adverbial, translation counterparts

This diploma thesis examines English have-presentative sentences and their Czech translational counterparts. Have-presentative sentences have a similar function to there- existentials, i.e. they introduce a new element on the scene. From the FSP point of view, the subject is context-dependent in these sentences and serves thus as a rheme, e.g. We have a long trip ahead of us (Ebeling 2000: 1) or The tree has a nest in it (Ebeling 2000: 228). The possessive meaning of have is weakened in these sentences and could be thus described as existential, which is possible to attest by the means of alternative there-construction (There's a long trip ahead of us.; There's a nest in the tree.). The theoretical part summarizes the treatment of have in various grammar books, its semantics and diverse functions. Furthermore, it briefly discusses the theory of functional sentence perspective (FSP) as defined by Firbas (1992) and explore different presentative constructions with emphasis on have- and there-presentatives. Finally, it describes the Czech verb mít - its semantics and function, and explores FSP with regard to Czech. The aim of the analysis was to gather 200 examples of have-presentatives extracted from the Czech-English parallel corpus InterCorp v10, examine its Czech translational counterparts and...

The inspiral and merger of two black holes is among the most exciting and extreme events in our universe. Being one of the loudest sources of gravitational waves, they provide a unique dynamical probe of strong-field general relativity and a fertile ground for the observation of fundamental physics. While the detection of gravitational waves alone will allow us to observe our universe through an entirely new window, combining the information obtained from both gravitational wave and electro-magnetic observations will allow us to gain even greater insight in some of the most exciting astrophysical phenomena. In addition, binary black-hole mergers serve as an intriguing tool to study the geometry of space-time itself. In this dissertation we study the merger process of binary black-holes in a variety of conditions. Our results show that asymmetries in the curvature distribution on the common apparent horizon are correlated to the linear momentum acquired by the merger remnant. We propose useful tools for the analysis of black holes in the dynamical and isolated horizon frameworks and shed light on how the final merger of apparent horizons proceeds after a common horizon has already formed. We connect mathematical theorems with data obtained from numerical simulations and provide a first glimpse on the behavior of these surfaces in situations not accessible to analytical tools. We study electro-magnetic counterparts of super-massive binary black-hole mergers with fully 3D general relativistic simulations of binary black-holes immersed both in a uniform magnetic field in vacuum and in a tenuous plasma. We find that while a direct detection of merger signatures with current electro-magnetic telescopes is unlikely, secondary emission, either by altering the accretion rate of the circumbinary disk or by synchrotron radiation from accelerated charges, may be detectable. We propose a novel approach to measure the electro-magnetic radiation in these simulations and find a non-collimated emission that dominates over the collimated one appearing in the form of dual jets associated with each of the black holes. Finally, we provide an optimized gravitational wave detection pipeline using phenomenological waveforms for signals from compact binary coalescence and show that by including spin effects in the waveform templates, the detection efficiency is drastically improved as well as the bias on recovered source parameters reduced. On the whole, this disseration provides evidence that a multi-messenger approach to binary black-hole merger observations provides an exciting prospect to understand these sources and, ultimately, our universe. / Schwarze Löcher gehören zu den extremsten und faszinierensten Objekten in unserem Universum. Elektromagnetische Strahlung kann nicht aus ihrem Inneren entkommen, und sie bilden die kompaktesten Objekte, die wir kennen. Wir wissen heute, dass in den Zentren der meisten Galaxien sehr massereiche schwarze Löcher vorhanden sind. Im Fall unserer eigenen Galaxie, der Milchstrasse, ist dieses schwarze Loch ungefähr vier Millionen mal so schwer wie unsere Sonne. Wenn zwei Galaxien miteinander kollidieren, führt dies auch dazu, dass ihre beiden schwarzen Löcher kollidieren und zu einem einzelnen schwarzen Loch verschmelzen. Das Simulieren einer solchen Kollision von zwei schwarzen Löchern, die Vorhersage sowie Analyse der von ihnen abgestrahlten Energie in Form von Gravitations- und elektromagnetischen Wellen, bildet das Thema der vorliegenden Dissertation. Im ersten Teil dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir die Verschmelzung von zwei schwarzen Löchern unter verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten. Wir zeigen, dass Ungleichmässigkeiten in der Geometrie des aus einer Kollision entstehenden schwarzen Loches dazu führen, dass es zuerst beschleunigt und dann abgebremst wird, bis diese Ungleichmässigkeiten in Form von Gravitationswellen abgetrahlt sind. Weiterhin untersuchen wir, wie der genaue Verschmelzungsprozess aus einer geometrischen Sicht abläuft und schlagen neue Methoden zur Analyse der Raumzeitgeometrie in Systemen vor, die schwarze Löcher enthalten. Im zweiten Teil dieser Arbeit beschäftigen wir uns mit den Gravitationswellen und elektromagnetischer Strahlung, die bei einer Kollision von zwei schwarzen Löchern freigesetzt wird. Gravitationswellen sind Wellen, die Raum und Zeit dehnen und komprimieren. Durchläuft uns eine Gravitationswelle, werden wir in einer Richtung minimal gestreckt, während wir in einer anderen Richtung minimal zusammengedrückt werden. Diese Effekte sind allerdings so klein, dass wir sie weder spüren, noch auf einfache Weise messen können. Bei einer Kollision von zwei schwarzen Löchern wird eine grosse Menge Energie in Form von Gravitationswellen und elektromagnetischen Wellen abgestrahlt. Wir zeigen, dass beide Signale in ihrer Struktur sehr ähnlich sind, dass aber die abgestrahlte Energie in Gravitationswellen um ein Vielfaches grösser ist als in elektromagnetischer Strahlung. Wir führen eine neue Methode ein, um die elektromagnetische Strahlung in unseren Simulationen zu messen und zeigen, dass diese dazu führt, dass sich die räumliche Struktur der Strahlung verändert. Abschliessend folgern wir, dass in der Kombination der Signale aus Gravitationswellen und elektromagnetischer Strahlung eine grosse Chance liegt, ein System aus zwei schwarzen Löchern zu detektieren und in einem weiteren Schritt zu analysieren. Im dritten und letzen Teil dieser Dissertation entwickeln wir ein verbessertes Suchverfahren für Gravitationswellen, dass in modernen Laser-Interferometerexperimenten genutzt werden kann. Wir zeigen, wie dieses Verfahren die Chancen für die Detektion eines Gravitationswellensignals deutlich erhöht, und auch, dass im Falle einer erfolgreichen Detektion eines solchen Signals, seine Parameter besser bestimmt werden können. Wir schliessen die Arbeit mit dem Fazit, dass die Kollision von zwei schwarzen Löchern ein hochinteressantes Phenomenon darstellt, das uns neue Möglichkeiten bietet die Gravitation sowie eine Vielzahl anderer fundamentaler Vorgänge in unserem Universum besser zu verstehen.

This diploma thesis examines the Czech expression copak and its translation counterparts. It focuses on the individual functions and meanings of copak and the ways these are expressed in the English translation. The aim of the present paper is to determine to what extent the discourse meanings of copak as a particle are maintained in the translations and what means English uses to do so. Regarding the pronominal function of copak, the main issue is to examine whether the postfix -pak is reflected in the English translations or not and what equivalents are used in comparison to the forms without the postfix. Another objective is to analyse the English counterparts according to their formal representation and define their discourse functions in respect to the discourse meanings of the Czech originals containing copak. The research carried out in the present thesis was based on material drawn from the parallel corpus InterCorp. A total of 240 examples with the expression copak was excerpted with the English translations aligned to them. The analysis was divided into five parts, according to the particular word class of copak. Particles proved to be the most productive word class, as they provided 187 examples and 25 different translation counterparts, negative question being the most frequent one. The...