Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:33:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Karla Somogyi.pdf: 11668663 bytes, checksum: c4cb050865c7cdf3820798c94aac6099 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-04 / The present thesis has as main objective the study of linguistic-discursive mechanisms involved in establishing the discourse based on veiled sexualization of referents as well as humor in newspapers headlines, to understand more deeply the mechanism of construction of meaning in such texts. To this end, headlines expressing veiled eroticism or obscenity from the popular sensationalist newspaper Meia Hora, published during the Olympic Games of London 2012, were selected as corpus of analysis. The research is founded on the study of Preti (2010) about the discourse based on veiled sexualization and obscenities; on the methodology principles of the French school of Discourse Analysis developed by Maingueneau (2010, 2013), supported by Bakhtin (1992, 1997) and on the studies about human interaction by Grice (1982), Goffman (1967) Brown and Levinson (1987); on Ducrot's (1977, 1987) studies of Linguistic Semantics and on the theory developed by Raskin (1985, 1992) inserted into a new interactional social-cognitive perspective of Text Linguistics, that formulates the semantic-linguistic mechanism of humor. In the present work, we observe that the discourse of veiled sexualization and obscenities explores a semantic-linguistic resource that, at the same time, leads to laughter. This resource is based on the partnership between reader and newspaper, in a way that veiled obscenity and humor are explored in the elaboration of sensationalist headlines to recreate the notified facts, as a strategy to produce empathy and closeness, to please a particular readership who shares the same social values and has linguistic competence to take part in a playful usage of language / A presente dissertação tem por objetivo principal o estudo dos mecanismos linguístico-discursivos envolvidos na instauração do discurso da malícia e do humor nas manchetes jornalísticas, para a compreensão mais profunda do mecanismo de construção de sentido desses textos. Para tanto, foram selecionadas, como corpus de análise, as manchetes maliciosas do jornal popular sensacionalista Meia Hora, veiculadas no período dos Jogos Olímpicos de Londres em 2012. A pesquisa fundamenta-se no estudo de Preti (2010) sobre o discurso da malícia; nos princípios da metodologia da Análise do Discurso de linha francesa desenvolvidos por Maingueneau (2010, 2013), apoiado em Bakhtin (1992, 1997) e nos estudos sobre interação humana de Grice (1982), Goffman (1967) e Brown e Levinson (1987); na Semântica Linguística dos estudos de Ducrot (1977, 1987) e na teoria desenvolvida por Raskin (1985, 1991), inserida em uma perspectiva sociocognitiva interacional da Linguística Textual, que formula o mecanismo semântico-linguístico do humor. No presente trabalho observamos que o discurso da malícia dispõe de um expediente semântico-linguístico que, ao mesmo tempo, leva ao riso e baseia-se na cumplicidade entre leitor e jornal, de forma que a malícia e o humor são explorados na elaboração das manchetes sensacionalistas para recriar os fatos noticiados, como uma estratégia para produzir empatia, aproximação e agradar a um determinado público leitor, que partilha dos mesmos valores sociais e que tem competência linguística e cômica para participar de um jogo lúdico com a linguagem

Thesis (M.Com. (Accounting))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

It is acknowledged that the primary objective of any company should be the creation of shareholder-value. However, it is also recognised that there are other stakeholders, with their own financial and/or non-financial objectives, which could impact on a company's overall financial performance. Management should therefore identify stakeholder-groups which could impact on the company and formulate a model in addressing their objectives. This study integrates elements from the theory of shareholder-value, the agency-theory, the theory of property rights and different stakeholder orientation-models to develop the approach of responsible stakeholder-management in the creation of shareholder-value. Stakeholders can be grouped into economic, social and environmental components. The concept of sustainable development has exploded in recent years. Three main elements of sustainable development were identified, namely economic, social and environmental development, referred to as "Triple Bottom Line (TBL)". Several organisations have started focussing on the concept of sustainability by guiding the development of sustainability policies. However, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has become the de facto global standard for reporting on sustainable development. The concept of TBL, and how the three elements of sustainability could contribute to the maximisation of shareholder-value, is discussed. The results of the empirical study, where the financial performance and shareholder-growth of companies listed on the JSE and which adopted and reported on the GRI-guidelines, were compared to a group of companies in the same index grouping of the JSE that had not formally adopted and reported on the guidelines, identified a clear trend that those reporting on their sustainability policies had had a much better growth in five of the six financial measures used than the comparative group. / Thesis (M.Com. (Accounting))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

It is acknowledged that the primary objective of any company should be the creation of shareholder-value. However, it is also recognised that there are other stakeholders, with their own financial and/or non-financial objectives, which could impact on a company's overall financial performance. Management should therefore identify stakeholder-groups which could impact on the company and formulate a model in addressing their objectives. This study integrates elements from the theory of shareholder-value, the agency-theory, the theory of property rights and different stakeholder orientation-models to develop the approach of responsible stakeholder-management in the creation of shareholder-value. Stakeholders can be grouped into economic, social and environmental components. The concept of sustainable development has exploded in recent years. Three main elements of sustainable development were identified, namely economic, social and environmental development, referred to as "Triple Bottom Line (TBL)". Several organisations have started focussing on the concept of sustainability by guiding the development of sustainability policies. However, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has become the de facto global standard for reporting on sustainable development. The concept of TBL, and how the three elements of sustainability could contribute to the maximisation of shareholder-value, is discussed. The results of the empirical study, where the financial performance and shareholder-growth of companies listed on the JSE and which adopted and reported on the GRI-guidelines, were compared to a group of companies in the same index grouping of the JSE that had not formally adopted and reported on the guidelines, identified a clear trend that those reporting on their sustainability policies had had a much better growth in five of the six financial measures used than the comparative group. / Thesis (M.Com. (Accounting))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Abstract My thesis discusses the semantic and syntactic properties of Finnish verbless expressions of events in the light of two examples, the SOURCE construction (e.g. Oikeusasiamieheltä huomautus lit. ‘From the ombudsman a complaint’) and the GOAL construction (e.g. Pakistanille rangaistus lit. ‘For Pakistan a punishment’). I show that they express dynamic events in a way comparable to finite constructions. However, they are not elliptic structures but genuinely verbless constructions. The study is founded on Cognitive Construction Grammar and frame semantics, and the analysis is based on two types of data and two methods. First, I collected three sets of 500 newspaper headlines mostly from the Finnish Language Bank (the SOURCE construction, the GOAL construction, and several different verbless constructions), and analyzed them intuitively. Second, I collected paraphrases of 15 instances of the SOURCE construction and 20 instances of the GOAL construction in order to obtain information on how other native speakers of Finnish construe the data which I analyzed intuitively by myself. As a result of this experimental semantic test, I had 169–215 paraphrases per instance of the SOURCE construction and 133–165 paraphrases per instance of the GOAL construction. I then analyzed these paraphrases both semantically and syntactically. The thesis comprises four articles. In the article A case in search of an independent life: The semantics of the initial allative in a Finnish verbless construction, I show that the GOAL construction is polysemous and define eight senses for it. With the help of the established senses, I also justify analyzing the construction as an independent argument structure construction and not as an elliptic structure. The article Elävä LÄHDE: Alkuasemaisen ablatiivin merkitystyypit verbittömässä konstruktiossa is a similar treatment of the SOURCE construction for which I define four senses. In the article Mihin verbittömien konstruktioiden merkitystyypit perustuvat? Skemaattiset ja polyseemiset tapahtumanilmaukset, I connect the previous results explicitly with my theoretical framework. I provide an explanation for these constructions’ polysemy and mechanisms of expressing events. Usually, both of these properties of argument structure constructions are associated with verbs. In the joint article Semantic roles and verbless constructions: A Finnish challenge for verb-centered approaches written with Seppo Kittilä, the discussion is extended to cover also other Finnish verbless constructions. The article provides a more theoretical perspective on the topic: we link the dynamic meanings of the constructions to the concept of semantic roles and argue for the view that the concept should be divided into the concepts of argument roles and participant roles. / Tiivistelmä Käsittelen tutkimuksessani suomen kielen verbittömien tapahtumanilmausten semanttisia ja syntaktisia ominaisuuksia kahden esimerkkitapauksen avulla: LÄHDE-konstruktion (esim. Oikeusasiamieheltä huomautus) ja KOHDE-konstruktion (esim. Pakistanille rangaistus). Osoitan, että ne ilmaisevat dynaamisia tapahtumia siinä missä verbilliset konstruktiotkin mutta eivät kuitenkaan ole elliptisiä rakenteita vaan aidosti verbittömiä. Tutkimukseni rakentuu kognitiivisen konstruktiokieliopin ja kehyssemantiikan sekä kahdenlaisen aineiston ja menetelmän varaan. Ensinnäkin koostin pääasiassa Kielipankin osakokoelmista mutta osin myös muista lähteistä kolme 500 otsikon kokoista toteutuma-aineistoa (LÄHDE-konstruktio, KOHDE-konstruktio ja useat erilaiset verbittömät konstruktiot). Niiden analyysi perustuu intuitiiviseen semanttiseen luokitteluun. LÄHDE- ja KOHDE-konstruktiosta käytössäni olivat lisäksi kokeellisen semantiikan tuottamat parafraasiaineistot: selvitin, miten koehenkilöt tulkitsevat 15 LÄHDE-konstruktion ja 20 KOHDE-konstruktion intuitiivisesti analysoimaani toteutumaa. LÄHDE-konstruktion testi tuotti 169–215 parafraasia otsikkoa kohden, KOHDE-konstruktion 133–165. Analysoin ne sekä semanttisesti että syntaktisesti. Tutkimukseni koostuu neljästä artikkelista. Artikkelissa A case in search of an independent life. The semantics of the initial allative in a Finnish verbless construction esitän, että KOHDE-konstruktio on polyseeminen. Määrittelen sille kahdeksan merkitystyyppiä, joiden avulla myös perustelen, miksi kyseessä on itsenäinen argumenttirakennekonstruktio eikä elliptinen rakenne. Artikkelissa Elävä LÄHDE. Alkuasemaisen ablatiivin merkitystyypit verbittömässä konstruktiossa käsittelen vastaavasti LÄHDE-konstruktiota, jolle määrittelen neljä merkitystyyppiä. Artikkelissa Mihin verbittömien konstruktioiden merkitystyypit perustuvat? Skemaattiset ja polyseemiset tapahtumanilmaukset kytken tulokset selvemmin teoreettiseen viitekehykseeni. Selitän, miksi tarkastelemani konstruktiot ilmaisevat tapahtumia ja ovat polyseemisia, vaikka niissä ei ole verbiä, johon sekä tapahtuman ilmaiseminen että argumenttirakennekonstruktion polyseemisyys yleensä yhdistetään. Seppo Kittilän kanssa kirjoittamassani yhteisartikkelissa Semantic roles and verbless constructions. A Finnish challenge for verb-centered approaches laajennamme suomen verbittömien konstruktioiden tarkastelun LÄHDE- ja KOHDE-konstruktion ulkopuolelle ja yhä teoreettisemmalle tasolle. Liitämme verbittömien konstruktioiden tapahtumamerkitykset semanttisen roolin käsitteeseen sekä perustelemme, miksi se pitäisi jakaa argumentti- ja osallistujaroolin käsitteiksi.

Master`s thesis topic is characteristic of office market and it`s distinction among other segments of reality market. Inseparable part of the thesis is also analysis of development between years 1995 and 2013 with orientation toward prague office market and it`s comparison with other european cities. Furthermore thesis discusses options of applicability of initial, reversionary and equivalent yields as comparable figures across investment and geographical markets and application of exit yield for property valuation in discounted cash-flow model. Established facts are applied on office building Rivergarden II-III in dynamically developing district Karlín in Prague 8.

The disclosure of headline earnings is one of the JSE Limited (JSE)’s listing requirements. All listed entities are required to comply with this disclosure requirement. Guidance in the form of The Circular on headline earnings is issued by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA), and is updated every time when there are changes to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The Circular adopts a rules-based approach and specifies what is included and excluded in the calculation of headline earnings. The rules consist of general rules, which apply to all entities other than those industry groups with special provisions such as the life insurance entities. This study questions whether a rules-based headline earnings approach or a principles-based approach is more appropriate for the calculation of headline earnings of listed property entities on the JSE, for economic decision-making purposes. The research method consisted of questionnaires that were sent out to stakeholders. The responses from the CFOs and investment analysts show that principles-based headline earnings guidance is preferred over rules-based headline earnings guidance. / Business Management / M. Phil (Accounting Sciences)

The disclosure of headline earnings is one of the JSE Limited (JSE)’s listing requirements. All listed entities are required to comply with this disclosure requirement. Guidance in the form of The Circular on headline earnings is issued by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA), and is updated every time when there are changes to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The Circular adopts a rules-based approach and specifies what is included and excluded in the calculation of headline earnings. The rules consist of general rules, which apply to all entities other than those industry groups with special provisions such as the life insurance entities. This study questions whether a rules-based headline earnings approach or a principles-based approach is more appropriate for the calculation of headline earnings of listed property entities on the JSE, for economic decision-making purposes. The research method consisted of questionnaires that were sent out to stakeholders. The responses from the CFOs and investment analysts show that principles-based headline earnings guidance is preferred over rules-based headline earnings guidance. / Business Management / M. Phil. (Accounting Sciences)

The rapid growth of text based information on the World Wide Web and various applications making use of this data motivates the need for efficient and effective methods to identify and separate the “main content” from the additional content items, such as navigation menus, advertisements, design elements or legal disclaimers. Firstly, in this thesis, we study, develop, and evaluate R2L, DANA, DANAg, and AdDANAg, a family of novel algorithms for extracting the main content of web documents. The main concept behind R2L, which also provided the initial idea and motivation for the other three algorithms, is to use well particularities of Right-to-Left languages for obtaining the main content of web pages. As the English character set and the Right-to-Left character set are encoded in different intervals of the Unicode character set, we can efficiently distinguish the Right-to-Left characters from the English ones in an HTML file. This enables the R2L approach to recognize areas of the HTML file with a high density of Right-to-Left characters and a low density of characters from the English character set. Having recognized these areas, R2L can successfully separate only the Right-to-Left characters. The first extension of the R2L, DANA, improves effectiveness of the baseline algorithm by employing an HTML parser in a post processing phase of R2L for extracting the main content from areas with a high density of Right-to-Left characters. DANAg is the second extension of the R2L and generalizes the idea of R2L to render it language independent. AdDANAg, the third extension of R2L, integrates a new preprocessing step to normalize the hyperlink tags. The presented approaches are analyzed under the aspects of efficiency and effectiveness. We compare them to several established main content extraction algorithms and show that we extend the state-of-the-art in terms of both, efficiency and effectiveness. Secondly, automatically extracting the headline of web articles has many applications. We develop and evaluate a content-based and language-independent approach, TitleFinder, for unsupervised extraction of the headline of web articles. The proposed method achieves high performance in terms of effectiveness and efficiency and outperforms approaches operating on structural and visual features. / Das rasante Wachstum von textbasierten Informationen im World Wide Web und die Vielfalt der Anwendungen, die diese Daten nutzen, macht es notwendig, effiziente und effektive Methoden zu entwickeln, die den Hauptinhalt identifizieren und von den zusätzlichen Inhaltsobjekten wie z.B. Navigations-Menüs, Anzeigen, Design-Elementen oder Haftungsausschlüssen trennen. Zunächst untersuchen, entwickeln und evaluieren wir in dieser Arbeit R2L, DANA, DANAg und AdDANAg, eine Familie von neuartigen Algorithmen zum Extrahieren des Inhalts von Web-Dokumenten. Das grundlegende Konzept hinter R2L, das auch zur Entwicklung der drei weiteren Algorithmen führte, nutzt die Besonderheiten der Rechts-nach-links-Sprachen aus, um den Hauptinhalt von Webseiten zu extrahieren. Da der lateinische Zeichensatz und die Rechts-nach-links-Zeichensätze durch verschiedene Abschnitte des Unicode-Zeichensatzes kodiert werden, lassen sich die Rechts-nach-links-Zeichen leicht von den lateinischen Zeichen in einer HTML-Datei unterscheiden. Das erlaubt dem R2L-Ansatz, Bereiche mit einer hohen Dichte von Rechts-nach-links-Zeichen und wenigen lateinischen Zeichen aus einer HTML-Datei zu erkennen. Aus diesen Bereichen kann dann R2L die Rechts-nach-links-Zeichen extrahieren. Die erste Erweiterung, DANA, verbessert die Wirksamkeit des Baseline-Algorithmus durch die Verwendung eines HTML-Parsers in der Nachbearbeitungsphase des R2L-Algorithmus, um den Inhalt aus Bereichen mit einer hohen Dichte von Rechts-nach-links-Zeichen zu extrahieren. DANAg erweitert den Ansatz des R2L-Algorithmus, so dass eine Sprachunabhängigkeit erreicht wird. Die dritte Erweiterung, AdDANAg, integriert eine neue Vorverarbeitungsschritte, um u.a. die Weblinks zu normalisieren. Die vorgestellten Ansätze werden in Bezug auf Effizienz und Effektivität analysiert. Im Vergleich mit mehreren etablierten Hauptinhalt-Extraktions-Algorithmen zeigen wir, dass sie in diesen Punkten überlegen sind. Darüber hinaus findet die Extraktion der Überschriften aus Web-Artikeln vielfältige Anwendungen. Hierzu entwickeln wir mit TitleFinder einen sich nur auf den Textinhalt beziehenden und sprachabhängigen Ansatz. Das vorgestellte Verfahren ist in Bezug auf Effektivität und Effizienz besser als bekannte Ansätze, die auf strukturellen und visuellen Eigenschaften der HTML-Datei beruhen.

The rapid growth of text based information on the World Wide Web and various applications making use of this data motivates the need for efficient and effective methods to identify and separate the “main content” from the additional content items, such as navigation menus, advertisements, design elements or legal disclaimers. Firstly, in this thesis, we study, develop, and evaluate R2L, DANA, DANAg, and AdDANAg, a family of novel algorithms for extracting the main content of web documents. The main concept behind R2L, which also provided the initial idea and motivation for the other three algorithms, is to use well particularities of Right-to-Left languages for obtaining the main content of web pages. As the English character set and the Right-to-Left character set are encoded in different intervals of the Unicode character set, we can efficiently distinguish the Right-to-Left characters from the English ones in an HTML file. This enables the R2L approach to recognize areas of the HTML file with a high density of Right-to-Left characters and a low density of characters from the English character set. Having recognized these areas, R2L can successfully separate only the Right-to-Left characters. The first extension of the R2L, DANA, improves effectiveness of the baseline algorithm by employing an HTML parser in a post processing phase of R2L for extracting the main content from areas with a high density of Right-to-Left characters. DANAg is the second extension of the R2L and generalizes the idea of R2L to render it language independent. AdDANAg, the third extension of R2L, integrates a new preprocessing step to normalize the hyperlink tags. The presented approaches are analyzed under the aspects of efficiency and effectiveness. We compare them to several established main content extraction algorithms and show that we extend the state-of-the-art in terms of both, efficiency and effectiveness. Secondly, automatically extracting the headline of web articles has many applications. We develop and evaluate a content-based and language-independent approach, TitleFinder, for unsupervised extraction of the headline of web articles. The proposed method achieves high performance in terms of effectiveness and efficiency and outperforms approaches operating on structural and visual features. / Das rasante Wachstum von textbasierten Informationen im World Wide Web und die Vielfalt der Anwendungen, die diese Daten nutzen, macht es notwendig, effiziente und effektive Methoden zu entwickeln, die den Hauptinhalt identifizieren und von den zusätzlichen Inhaltsobjekten wie z.B. Navigations-Menüs, Anzeigen, Design-Elementen oder Haftungsausschlüssen trennen. Zunächst untersuchen, entwickeln und evaluieren wir in dieser Arbeit R2L, DANA, DANAg und AdDANAg, eine Familie von neuartigen Algorithmen zum Extrahieren des Inhalts von Web-Dokumenten. Das grundlegende Konzept hinter R2L, das auch zur Entwicklung der drei weiteren Algorithmen führte, nutzt die Besonderheiten der Rechts-nach-links-Sprachen aus, um den Hauptinhalt von Webseiten zu extrahieren. Da der lateinische Zeichensatz und die Rechts-nach-links-Zeichensätze durch verschiedene Abschnitte des Unicode-Zeichensatzes kodiert werden, lassen sich die Rechts-nach-links-Zeichen leicht von den lateinischen Zeichen in einer HTML-Datei unterscheiden. Das erlaubt dem R2L-Ansatz, Bereiche mit einer hohen Dichte von Rechts-nach-links-Zeichen und wenigen lateinischen Zeichen aus einer HTML-Datei zu erkennen. Aus diesen Bereichen kann dann R2L die Rechts-nach-links-Zeichen extrahieren. Die erste Erweiterung, DANA, verbessert die Wirksamkeit des Baseline-Algorithmus durch die Verwendung eines HTML-Parsers in der Nachbearbeitungsphase des R2L-Algorithmus, um den Inhalt aus Bereichen mit einer hohen Dichte von Rechts-nach-links-Zeichen zu extrahieren. DANAg erweitert den Ansatz des R2L-Algorithmus, so dass eine Sprachunabhängigkeit erreicht wird. Die dritte Erweiterung, AdDANAg, integriert eine neue Vorverarbeitungsschritte, um u.a. die Weblinks zu normalisieren. Die vorgestellten Ansätze werden in Bezug auf Effizienz und Effektivität analysiert. Im Vergleich mit mehreren etablierten Hauptinhalt-Extraktions-Algorithmen zeigen wir, dass sie in diesen Punkten überlegen sind. Darüber hinaus findet die Extraktion der Überschriften aus Web-Artikeln vielfältige Anwendungen. Hierzu entwickeln wir mit TitleFinder einen sich nur auf den Textinhalt beziehenden und sprachabhängigen Ansatz. Das vorgestellte Verfahren ist in Bezug auf Effektivität und Effizienz besser als bekannte Ansätze, die auf strukturellen und visuellen Eigenschaften der HTML-Datei beruhen.