Legal draftsmen achieve the dual characteristics of thel egislative genre, viz. precision and all-inclusiveness, by the use of various linguistic devices, among which are (i) common words with uncommon meanings; (ii) binomial and multinominal expressions; (iii) nominalization; and (iv) qualifications. Whilst these four devices are very effective for their intended purpose, they often cause lexical, semantic or syntactic problem in the comprehension and translation of texts. This thesis explores, by analysis of the corpus, the different nature and extent of such problems caused by the above four devices in the translation of legislative texts from English to Chinese. Analyses in the thesis reveal that translation problems caused by the first two of the four devices mentioned above are mainly lexical in nature, though binomials contained in qualifications may sometimes also lead to semantic ambiguity. Translation problems arising from the use of nominalization or the use of qualifications are primarily semantic in nature, and are basically a problem of handling the various semantic units in the clauses. They can occur in both the comprehension stage and the actual rendering stage of the translation process. In the former, the problem lies in the difficulty in unpacking the various semantic units in the clauses, especially in the syntactically interrupted clauses where syntactic discontinuities are caused by the use of qualifications. in the latter, the difficulty lies in the syntactic re-arrangement of those units in the target language text in a manner syntactically acceptable to the target language while strictly in accordance with each semantic relationship intended by the source language text. Both the use of nominalization and the use of qualifications also give rise to some lexical problems. The analyses in the thesis also highlights some of the linguistic and extra-linguistic pre-requisites for a translator of legislative texts, for whom a good common sense and sufficient basic legal knowledge are as important as an extremely high level of proficiency in both the source language and the target language. / Master of Arts (Translation and Linguistics)

The study was concerned with the variable of staging which is a component of text structure. Staging is known to affect the comprehension process of proficient readers. Two passages developed and analysed for staging by Clements (1976) were used in this study to investigate the effects staging has on the readers' comprehension of the passages. The two passages were identical in content and different only in the staging level at which information occurred. Ten experimental texts were developed from Clements' two passages. The texts enabled (i) the comparison of the effects of supplying high, medium or low staged information to the readers on their ability to replace cloze deletions in the rest of the text: and (ii) the comparison of the effects of supplying intact the staging categories Old Topic, New Topic, Old Comment, or New Comment on the readers' ability to replace cloze deletions in the rest of the text. The cloze replacement scores were taken as measures of the readers' comprehension of the text. The subjects used in this study were a mixture of male and female, undergraduate and postgraduate students at Riverina College of Advanced Education. The height of staged information and the staging category of the information were found to have no significant affect upon the readers' comprehension of the texts. However, it is suggested 111 that this may be an artifact of the use of cloze procedure as the measure of comprehension. Suggestions are made for further research to clarify the usefulness of cloze as a research tool in this area and to support or reject the conclusion of this study.

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This doctoral thesis examines the literary series [collection litteraire], considered at one and the same time as a form of publication defined and redefined by the publisher since the invention of the printing press and as a paratextual component that has the ability to act on the process of reading the text: An original aspect of this work is that it combines in the same analysis fields of knowledge that are rarely studied together: the history of the book and of publishing, the sociology of literature and in particular the theory of the literary institution, the theory of paratextuality and reader response theory. This thesis examines separately the two dimensions of the topic but follows a logical progression that concludes with a third section. The first section explores the hypothesis that the literary series is the outcome of a long process of definition and specialization which has accompanied the evolution of French publishing and literature. It then goes on to examine cases illustrating the "convergence" of the two, such as the "Bibliotheque Bleue", the "Bibliotheque universelle des romans", the "Bibliotheque Charpentier", the collections of livraisons illustrees published in the 1850's, the "Collection Michel Levy" and a few collections published by Flammarion and Fayard. Following a rereading of the Genettien paratexte (1987) that reviews and further refines the parameters of the concept (its boundaries, its components and their functions) in order to increase its scope of action, the second section explores in depth the essence of the encounter between the series and literature itself and proposes a theory of the series which positions it in relation to a community of readers and recognizes a different functioning, different risks and effects depending on whether it is destined for a specialized public or the general public. Finally, the third section picks up the historical thread that the first section suspended at the beginning of the 20th century

This project sought to find a rigorous and manageable method for measuring the difficulty of texts in te reo Māori written for children, beyond junior reading material in Māori-medium educational settings. The project examined a range of readability measures based on semantic and/or syntactic features of text, following the work of Warwick Elley (1969) and Richard Benton et al. (1995). Features such as the difficulty of content words, average sentence length, standardised type:token ratios and the use of function words were used in different combinations to create seven methods to measure text difficulty. Teachers’ and students’ ratings of text difficulty, and students’ scores on reading comprehension tasks related to the texts were used as criteria to examine the validity of the readability methods. The findings revealed that indices of either vocabulary load or lexical density when used in combination with the number of function types in the text, produce statistical significance with the criterion measures. Further research is needed to confirm their validity for use in Māori –medium classroom settings. The Māori word lists developed for this project as the basis of the readability approaches have the potential for more widespread analyses of language proficiency measures for students in Māori-medium settings.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-170). / xvi, 170 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1982 / Pacific Islands Studies

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 254 p.; also includes facsimiles, graphics (some col.). Includes bibliographical references (p. 196-205). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 363-378).