One of the main characteristics of German technical language is the nominal style, which includes complex pre-nominal and post-nominal extended modifiers. A commonly held view is that these are less common in Swedish due to language-specific restrictions and preferences. As such, they may pose a challenge to Swedish translators. This essay examines this particular problem and focuses on the translation of four different complex extended modifiers: adjectival, participial, genitival and prepositional.The aim of this study was to determine which syntactic structures are used when these modifiers are translated into Swedish and to identify shifts using the concept “grammatical metaphor”, thereby focusing on the degree of grammatical metaphoricity. For the purposes of this study, a chapter of the technical book Neues Bauen mit Stroh in Europa by Gruber, Gruber and Sentler was translated into Swedish and then analysed with the above-mentioned aims in mind.The study showed that out of the 117 noun phrases with extended complex modifiers in the source text 21 were transposed into a less explicit, direct structure and more metaphorical language. The metaphorization was in some cases a result of simplification/omission of less dense semantic material and/or the translation into compounds. In 46 cases, the extended modifiers showed the same degree of grammatical metaphoricity as the source language expression and thus were re-metaphorized. In the remaining cases, a verbal or more explicit structure was chosen in the translation. This especially proved to be the case with pre-nominal extended adjectival and participial modifiers.

In the past few decades, the investigation of grammatical change using electronic corpora has made headway internationally. Although linguists previously believed that grammatical changes progress too slowly to observe, this method enables linguists to investigate even recent, or ongoing, changes. However, no comprehensive study of recent and ongoing grammatical changes in Afrikaans has appeared yet. Also, when comments about ongoing changes are made, it is usually based on anecdotal evidence, with a focus on English influence. In this study, the method of short-term diachronic comparable corpus linguistics is used to investigate grammatical changes in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010. Four corpora were collected to this end, representing language use from 1911-1920, 1941-1950, 1971-1980 and 2001-2010. Additionally, quantitative grammaticography is used to take into account possible effects of prescriptive sources. Two research questions are adressed in this study: the first inquires into the nature and extent of grammatical changes in selected grammatical categories in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010; the second wants to clarify the differences and similarities between internal and external language change, and in the light thereof establish to which extent external change, and specifically English influence, is relevant for grammatical changes in Standard Afrikaans during the past century. The theoretical framework within which language use and change is investigated in this study is cognitive linguistics, specifically emergent grammar and the exemplar model. Changes that become apparent from the data are described and explained in terms of processes of change and forces of change, and linked to the principles of cognitive linguistics. Three broad grammatical categories are investigated: temporal reference, pronouns and the genitive. Even though there is an extent of stability in each of the categories, there are also several bigger and smaller changes that give an overview of the nature of grammatical change in written Standard Afrikaans in the past century. These changes can be divided into different categories. The first type of change has to do with formalisation and colloquialisation – in broad strokes, there are signs of formalisation between the first two periods, during which the standard variety was being established, causing some features associated with formality to increase (e.g. passive constructions). However, at the end of the century there are signs of colloquialisation between the last two periods, where some formal features decrease (e.g. the formal second person pronoun u "you"), and some informal features increase (e.g. nou "now" as discourse marker). The second type of change is analogy, causing greater regularity and/or uniformity in a paradigm. For instance, obsolescent preterite forms (had "had", wis "knew") were replaced by regular forms (het/het gehad, het geweet). The last of the Dutch genitive was also replaced by the Afrikaans genitive with se "'s" and van "of". The third type of change is driven by speakers' desire to be expressive. Some of the pronouns specialise increasingly, meaning that they are used less and less for functions other than their main function, and other options are used less and less for that function. Examples of this is the third person pronoun dit "it", the shortened forms jul "you/your" and hul "they/their", and the indefinite pronouns almal "everybody", alles "everything" and elkeen "each one". A next type of change is actually a combination of different processes and forces: grammaticalisation. There are several instances of grammaticalisation: the use of gaan "go" for future reference, the use of dis "it's" rather than dit is "it is", the use of mens "human" rather than 'n mens "a human" as generic pronoun, the use of indefinite pronouns with enig- "any" like enigiets "anything", enigiemand "anybody", enigeen "anyone", and the use of the genitive particle se "'s". The last type of change is externally motivated change. Contrary to the view the Afrikaans literature in general promotes, there is only one instance of confirmed English influence in the data of this study: the increasing use of -self with reflexive pronouns, rather than the bare object form. However, there are instances of extra-linguistic influence, like standardisation that caused large scale variation reduction between the first and the second period, and the influence of feminism that can be seen in decreasing linguistic sexism, particularly with regard to generic pronouns. The conclusion in the end is that the process of internally motivated change and contact-induced change is not different – an innovation can originate from another language (overt transfer), or an internal innovation can be promoted through bi- or multilingualism (covert transfer); however, the same principles, processes and forces of change are at play, irrespective of how many languages are involved.

In the past few decades, the investigation of grammatical change using electronic corpora has made headway internationally. Although linguists previously believed that grammatical changes progress too slowly to observe, this method enables linguists to investigate even recent, or ongoing, changes. However, no comprehensive study of recent and ongoing grammatical changes in Afrikaans has appeared yet. Also, when comments about ongoing changes are made, it is usually based on anecdotal evidence, with a focus on English influence. In this study, the method of short-term diachronic comparable corpus linguistics is used to investigate grammatical changes in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010. Four corpora were collected to this end, representing language use from 1911-1920, 1941-1950, 1971-1980 and 2001-2010. Additionally, quantitative grammaticography is used to take into account possible effects of prescriptive sources. Two research questions are adressed in this study: the first inquires into the nature and extent of grammatical changes in selected grammatical categories in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010; the second wants to clarify the differences and similarities between internal and external language change, and in the light thereof establish to which extent external change, and specifically English influence, is relevant for grammatical changes in Standard Afrikaans during the past century. The theoretical framework within which language use and change is investigated in this study is cognitive linguistics, specifically emergent grammar and the exemplar model. Changes that become apparent from the data are described and explained in terms of processes of change and forces of change, and linked to the principles of cognitive linguistics. Three broad grammatical categories are investigated: temporal reference, pronouns and the genitive. Even though there is an extent of stability in each of the categories, there are also several bigger and smaller changes that give an overview of the nature of grammatical change in written Standard Afrikaans in the past century. These changes can be divided into different categories. The first type of change has to do with formalisation and colloquialisation – in broad strokes, there are signs of formalisation between the first two periods, during which the standard variety was being established, causing some features associated with formality to increase (e.g. passive constructions). However, at the end of the century there are signs of colloquialisation between the last two periods, where some formal features decrease (e.g. the formal second person pronoun u "you"), and some informal features increase (e.g. nou "now" as discourse marker). The second type of change is analogy, causing greater regularity and/or uniformity in a paradigm. For instance, obsolescent preterite forms (had "had", wis "knew") were replaced by regular forms (het/het gehad, het geweet). The last of the Dutch genitive was also replaced by the Afrikaans genitive with se "'s" and van "of". The third type of change is driven by speakers' desire to be expressive. Some of the pronouns specialise increasingly, meaning that they are used less and less for functions other than their main function, and other options are used less and less for that function. Examples of this is the third person pronoun dit "it", the shortened forms jul "you/your" and hul "they/their", and the indefinite pronouns almal "everybody", alles "everything" and elkeen "each one". A next type of change is actually a combination of different processes and forces: grammaticalisation. There are several instances of grammaticalisation: the use of gaan "go" for future reference, the use of dis "it's" rather than dit is "it is", the use of mens "human" rather than 'n mens "a human" as generic pronoun, the use of indefinite pronouns with enig- "any" like enigiets "anything", enigiemand "anybody", enigeen "anyone", and the use of the genitive particle se "'s". The last type of change is externally motivated change. Contrary to the view the Afrikaans literature in general promotes, there is only one instance of confirmed English influence in the data of this study: the increasing use of -self with reflexive pronouns, rather than the bare object form. However, there are instances of extra-linguistic influence, like standardisation that caused large scale variation reduction between the first and the second period, and the influence of feminism that can be seen in decreasing linguistic sexism, particularly with regard to generic pronouns. The conclusion in the end is that the process of internally motivated change and contact-induced change is not different – an innovation can originate from another language (overt transfer), or an internal innovation can be promoted through bi- or multilingualism (covert transfer); however, the same principles, processes and forces of change are at play, irrespective of how many languages are involved.

<p>Research has shown that children who have English as a first language acquire grammatical morphemes in a predictable order. Many researchers claim that second language learners also follow a predictable pattern when learning English grammatical morphemes regardless of their linguistic background, and that the same mechanisms are responsible for both first and second language acquisition.</p><p>The aim of this paper was to study Swedish students’ knowledge of English grammatical morphemes, and to compare their knowledge with that of second language learners from other countries as well as with that of first language learners.</p><p>The results show that Swedish students seem to acquire morphemes in a similar way to that of second language learners in general and that they make errors similar to those made by first language learners. For example, the copula was almost fully acquired, while the third person regular and irregular constituted a problem for the students. The most notable exception was the possessive ´s, which Swedish students seem to acquire at an early stage compared to other second language learners.</p>

The aim of this thesis is to show that standard approaches to grammatical case fail to provide an explanatory account of such cases in Estonian. In Estonian, grammatical cases form a complex system of semantic contrasts, with the case-marking on nouns alternating with each other in certain constructions, even though the apparent grammatical functions of the noun phrases themselves are not changed. This thesis demonstrates that such alternations, and the differences in interpretation which they induce, are context dependent. This means that the semantic contrasts which the alternating grammatical cases express are available in some linguistic contexts and not in others, being dependent, among other factors, on the semantics of the casemarked noun and the semantics of the verb it occurs with. Hence, traditional approaches which treat grammatical case as markers of syntactic dependencies and account for associated semantic interpretations by matching cases directly to semantics not only fall short in predicting the distribution of cases in Estonian but also result in over-analysis due to the static nature of the theories which the standard approach to case marking comprises. On the basis of extensive data, it is argued that grammatical cases in Estonian have underspecified semantic content that is not truth-conditional, but inferential, i.e. it interacts with linguistic context and discourse. Inspired by the assumptions of Relevance Theory (Wilson & Sperber 1993, 2002, 2004) and Dynamic Syntax (Cann et al 2005), it is proposed that grammatical cases in Estonian provide procedural information: instead of taking cases to encode grammatical relations directly, and matching them to truth-conditional semantics, it is argued that it is more useful and explanatory to construe case marking in Estonian as providing information on how to process the case-marked expression and interpret it within an immediate discourse (or sentence). This means that grammatical cases in Estonian are seen to encode a heavily underspecified semantics which is enriched by pragmatic processes in context. In this way, certain problematic constructions in Estonian, such as transitive clauses in which the object is marked by either genitive or nominative, depending on number (often referred to as the accusative in the relevant literature, e.g. Ackerman & Moore 1999, 2001; Hiietam 2003, 2004) and constructions in which the nominative occurs on the object both with singular and plural nouns, are shown to have a unitary explanation.

This thesis investigates temporal characteristics of monosyllabic words (je, se, že) in semi-spontaneous dialogues and read speech. Our material consisted of two sets of recordings from six speakers (three men and three women). The speakers read a text first, and this reading was followed by a recording of a spontaneous dialogue. We investigated differences of temporal characteristics of monosyllabic words between the two types of speech. In addition, we also examined how these characteristics are affected by different variables, which included: position in a stress group, presence of stress, presence of pause and speaker's personality. It was found that the type of speech had a significant influence on duration ratio of sounds in examined words je, že. Word se remained unaffected by the type of speech and generally appeared as a very stable element. The type of speech also influenced variability in duration - this variability proved to be higher in spontaneous speech. The type of speech did not affect average duration of words je, se, že. Position in the stress group also proved to have a significant effect on duration of words. This effect was mainly caused by words which created isolated stress groups - words in such position had longer duration than words in other positions. For words je, se...

This thesis, called "Norwegian Place-Names", deals with place-names of all types (for example names of rivers, towns and cities, mountains, lakes, roads) in Norway. The main goal is to explore the names from different points-of-view, provide information about major place-name groups, analyze the best-known names and compare Norwegian and Czech place-names. The language aspects have been emphasized.

The thesis deals with aspectuality in Czech and Dutch. The theoretical part covers the most important widely recognized and widespread theoretical approaches to the issue. It also compares to which stream Czech and Dutch linguists tend to and how the phenomenon is discussed in grammar. The main points of the work are aspect and Aktionsart. Both of them have similar semantic features, which are the main criteria for comparison of these two typologically different languages. Both in Czech and Dutch, the perception of aspect and manner of its expression varies. The aim of this work is to bring the Czech user of Dutch options for how Czech aspectual meanings may be expressed in Dutch. The practical part contains, besides an overview of the language means, also the practical analysis of two fictional texts, which supports answering two questions. First, whether the Dutch translation preserves the concept of Czech aspectual opposites and if so, in what ways. Second, whether the Czech interpreter has tendency to enrich Dutch text with aspects or not. key words: aspect, Aktionsart, Dutch, imperfectivity, perfectivity

Tree-based genetic programming (GP) has several known shortcomings: difficult adaptability to specific programming languages and environments, the problem of closure and multiple types, and the problem of declarative representation of knowledge. Most of the methods that try to solve these problems are based on formal grammars. The precise effect of their distinctive features is often difficult to analyse and a good comparison of performance in specific problems is missing. This thesis reviews three grammar-based methods: context-free grammar genetic programming (CFG-GP), including its variant GPHH recently applied to exam timetabling, grammatical evolution (GE), and LOGENPRO, it discusses how they solve the problems encountered by GP, and compares them in a series of experiments in six applications using success rates and derivation tree characteristics. The thesis demonstrates that neither GE nor LOGENPRO provide a substantial advantage over CFG-GP in any of the experiments, and analyses the differences between the effects of operators used in CFG-GP and GE. It also presents results from a highly efficient implementation of CFG-GP and GE.

Title: Testing the Learning of Restarting Automata using Genetic Algorithm Author: Bc. Lenka Kovářová Department: Department of Software and Computer Science Education Supervisor: RNDr. František Mráz, CSc. Abstract: Restarting automaton is a theoretical model of device recognizing a formal language. The construction of various versions of restarting automata can be a hard work. Many different methods of learning such automata have been developed till now. Among them are also methods for learning target restarting automaton from a finite set of positive and negative samples using genetic algorithms. In this work, we propose a method for improving learning of restarting automata by means of evolutionary algorithms. The improvement consists in inserting new rules of a special form enabling adaption of the learning algorithm to the particular language. Furthermore, there is proposed a system for testing of learning algorithms for restarting automata supporting especially learning by evolutionary algorithms. A part of the work is a program for learning restarting automata using the proposed new method with a subsequent testing of discovered automata and its evaluation in a graphic form mainly. Keywords: machine learning, grammatical inference, restarting automata, genetic algorithms