People who learn languages encounter a number of problems, especially with the grammar of the language which can be complicated and which can appear confusing. For many centuries grammarians have tried to discern a basic grammatical system that would be valid for all languages at all times. Unfortunately, this search for a universal grammar has proved futile. It was proved that each language has evolved its own grammatical system and this system serves the needs of this particular language. Thus, it can be stated, that two languages can seldom fully coincide in their grammatical structure, for alongside with common grammatical traits they have a number of grammatical differences as well. This research focuses on the features of the infinitive and infinitival constructions and presents the ways they are translated from English into Lithuanian. The presented examples are selected from the world known fiction pieces: London, J. ‘The Sea Wolf’ and Fitzgerald, F. S. ‘The Great Gatsby’, Galsworthy, J. ‘The Forsyte Saga’ and their translations into Lithuanian. Both, English and Lithuanian verbs have infinitive forms; however, this does not mean they are totally identical. The work highlights that, even though grammatical categories might seem to be identical in both languages, however, they differ in their functions and the extent of lexical items. The difficulties that translators might encounter while rendering the infinitive and infinitival constructions from English into... [to full text]

This paper examines the use of infinitival and gerundial constructions by intermediate Spanish learners. The use of those two patterns creates problems for second language learners at intermediate and advanced levels. However, there are only few studies on their second language acquisition, and fewer focus on Spanish learners. This study tries to resolve this and to this end, I retrieved all hits of the two constructions from the Spanish component of the International Learner Corpus of English (SP-ICLE). I run a distinctive collexeme analysis (DCA) to identify the verbs that are associated with either pattern. The results are discussed at three different levels: (i) the identification of verbs that Spanish learners associate with each construction; (ii) a systematic comparison with previous studies on native speakers to show possible similarities/discrepancies; and (iii) a comparison of the results with findings on German learners to discuss possible effects of language similarity and transfer.

The diploma thesis is concerned with syntactic, semantic and stylistic aspects of the subject of the infinitive. The aim is to examine all forms of realization of the infinitival subject, and to investigate relation between the syntactic function of the infinitive and the form and semantics of its subject. Furthermore, the thesis attempts to characterise and compare fiction and academic prose in terms of realization of the subject of the infinitive. In the theoretical part of the study, the infinitive is introduced as one of the means of complex condensation, and is discussed from a formal and functional point of view. Further, a general characterisation of the subject of the infinitive is presented, focusing on various forms of its realization and on its interpretation. The main part of the study, the corpus-based research, consists in a detailed analysis of 200 instances of an infinitival clause collected from the British National Corpus. Since the study focuses on two different registers, the material is analysed for each of them separately. In the last part of the analysis, the registers are subsequently compared in terms of distribution of syntactic functions of the infinitive and realization of the infinitival subject.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2015-12-17T16:08:01Z No. of bitstreams: 1 adrielibonjourlavioladasilva.pdf: 1760741 bytes, checksum: efcbaa3ab3d79707feca1c417ad959d5 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2015-12-17T18:03:03Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 adrielibonjourlavioladasilva.pdf: 1760741 bytes, checksum: efcbaa3ab3d79707feca1c417ad959d5 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-17T18:03:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 adrielibonjourlavioladasilva.pdf: 1760741 bytes, checksum: efcbaa3ab3d79707feca1c417ad959d5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-06 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Esta dissertação está inserida no projeto Frames e Construções em Contraste (SALOMÃO, SAMPAIO & TORRENT, 2013), o qual é um dos empreendimentos da FrameNet Brasil (FN-Br). Nesse sentido, intenciona verificar, dado o funcionamento do Constructicon do Português Brasileiro (PB) – um repertório de construções disponível online – as possíveis alterações necessárias para aprimorá-lo de modo a possibilitar seu alinhamento a outros Constructicons em desenvolvimento. Dessa maneira, esta dissertação busca embasamento em duas abordagens construcionais: a Gramática Cogntitivista das Construções (GOLDBERG, 1995; 2006; 2013) e a Gramática das Construções de Berkeley (FILLMORE, 2012; 2013). Além disso, discute aspectos relacionados à Semântica de Frames e à proposta de estudos construcionais contrastivos de Boas (2010). No trabalho, as análises partiram da observação dos padrões do Inglês descritos no Constructicon de Berkeley, buscando equivalências em PB. Os achados comparativos levaram à classificação das 69 construções válidas do Constructicon de Berkeley em três grupos: (A) padrões equivalentes, quando tanto a forma quanto o significado são possíveis em PB; (B) parcialmente equivalentes, para as construções que, ainda que semanticamente sejam possíveis nas duas línguas, possuem alguma diferenciação na estrutura e (C) não-equivalentes, quando nenhuma aproximação pôde ser verificada em PB. Posteriormente, foi realizada a comparação entre a construção de Dativo com Inifinitivo (DCI) do PB – que já vem sendo amplamente estudada na FN-Br em trabalhos anteriores (TORRENT, 2009; LAGE, 2013) e sua contraparte do Inglês – a construção Infinitival Relative Modal (FILLMORE, 2008). Nessa análise, foram percebidas algumas especificidades na DCI que precisaram ser atestadas através da aplicação de um Teste de Similaridade Semântica a falantes nativos do PB. Por fim, esta dissertação advoga em favor da realização de análises contrastivas que possam ir além da mera comparação superficial entre a forma e o sentido de construções de línguas distintas, quando da implementação de Constructicons multilíngues. / This dissertation is part of the Frames and Constructions in Contrast project (SALOMÃO, SAMPAIO & TORRENT, 2013), which is developed at FrameNet Brasil and aims to add multilinguality features to the Brazilian Portuguese Constructicon. In this work, we build on two constructional approaches – Cognitive Construction Grammar (GOLDBERG, 1995; 2006; 2013) and Berkeley Construction Grammar (FILLMORE, 2012; 2013) – so as to analyze to what extent Boas' (2010) proposition of contrastive constructional analysis can be applied to multilingual constructicography. In the study, the analyses were based on the English patterns described in Berkeley Construction, seeking equivalence in Brazilian Portuguese. Comparative findings led to the classification of the 69 valid constructions of the Berkeley Constructicon in three groups: (A) equivalent patterns, when both the form and the meaning are possible in BP; (B) partially equivalent, when constructions, despite being semantically possible in the two languages, bear some difference in the structure and (C) non-equivalent, when no link can be found between English and BP constructions. Subsequently, the comparison was made between the Dative with infinitive construction in BP – which has already been largely studied by FrameNet Brasil (TORRENT, 2009; LAGE, 2013) and its equivalent in English – the Infinitival Relative Modal construction (FILLMORE, 2008). In this analysis, the application of a semantic similarity test to native speakers of BP showed some peculiarities in the Dative with Infinitive construction not attested for the English construction. Finally, this dissertation argues in favor of performing contrastive analyses that go beyond mere superficial comparison between the form and the meaning of different languages constructions, when implementing Multilingual Constructicons.

This study is an analysis of the translation of a French text regarding the use of pesticides in agriculture. The French text has been translated into Swedish by the author of this paper. There have been some problems in producing an idiomatic translation in some cases. Some of the noun phrases, infinitival phrases and participle phrases were especially complicated to translate. The main purpose of this study is to analyse how these problems were solved in a communicative translation. The analytic framework is mainly based on the works of Eriksson (1997), Ingo (2007), Fredriksson (2011) and Säll (2004).       The French language has a tendency of using infinite phrases, participle phrases and long noun phrases. When translating into Swedish one needs to bear in mind that the finite verb, in the present and past tense, is far more used than the infinite and participle forms. Actions are for example often expressed with finite verbs in the Swedish language. When completing a main clause, you often use a subordinate clause in Swedish. In a French text it is more common to see an infinite phrase as a complement of a main clause.   Noun phrases with many words are often avoided in the Swedish language. As a result, Swedish texts can be shorter compared to French texts. The French language is also said to be more abstract than the Swedish language, because there is not so much semantic value in many of the French words compared to Swedish words. The result is that there can be more words in a French text than in the translated Swedish text. In some cases, you can omit words that are not necessary for the context.

The primary aim of this thesis is to map the syntactic and semantic nature, and the frequency of the Double Passive in Swedish. The results showed that the Double Passive is a control construction where the internal argument (OBJ) of the embedded verb is raised to subject of the s-passive matrix verb, and the verb of the infinitival complement co-occurs as an s-passive infinitive. In the thesis Lexical functional grammar (LFG) is used as a model for semantic and syntactic analysis. The analysis showed that when the AGENT in a Double Passive construction is suppressed, it creates an argument structure that triggers an equi verb to occur as a raising verb (cf. Ørsnes 2006:404). Overt agents within constructions containing the Double Passive showed an even lower frequency than the low frequencies documented in previous research of passive constructions by Silén (1997) and Laanemets (2010). The lower frequency is partly a result of the fact that agents in a Double Passive construction are suppressed twice. The results of a corpus study showed a frequency of 3.57 % of overt agents within constructions containing Double Passives. The complementizer att ‘to’ in the subordinated infinitive clause of a Double Passive is overtly expressed, partly depending on the degree of modality of the matrix verb (cf. Sundman 1983; Teleman 1999; Lagerwall 1999), and the degree of semantic bonding between the matrix verb and the complement (Givón 2001b). The data (matrix verbs) collected in the corpus study were analysed according to a categorising-system in SAG (Teleman et al. 1999) and in Givón (2001a) and Givón (2001b). The matrix verbs with strong nominal (lexical) properties, e.g. planera ‘plan’, showed a high frequency of co-occurrence with full infinitives, as compared to matrix verbs with largely grammatical meaning, e.g. avse ‘intend’. / Det primära syftet med denna uppsats är att kartlägga dubbelpassiv-konstruktionens syntaktiska och semantiska natur samt frekvens i det svenska språket. Resultaten visade att dubbelpassiven är en kontrollkonstruktion där det inbäddade verbets interna argument (OBJ) lyfts till positionen som det s-passiva matrisverbets subjekt, och där verbet i infinitivsatsen uttrycks som en s-passiv infinitiv. I uppsatsen används Lexical functional grammar (LFG) som modell för semantisk och syntaktisk analys. Analysen visade att då AGENTEN undertrycks, så skapas en argumentstruktur som får ett equi-verb att framträda som ett raising-verb (jmfr Ørsnes 2006:404). Explicita agenter, i konstruktioner med dubbelpassiver, visade en ännu lägre frekvens än den redan låga frekvens som dokumenterats i tidigare forskning om passiv-konstruktioner av Silén (1997) och Laanemets (2010). Den lägre frekvensen, är delvis ett resultat av faktumet att agenterna i en dubbelpassiv-konstruktion undertrycks två gånger. Resultaten av en korpusstudie visade att frekvensen av explicita agenter, i konstruktioner som innehåller dubbelpassiver, uppgick till 3.57 %. Komplementeraren "att" i den underordnade infinitivsatsen i en dubbelpassiv uttrycks explicit – delvis beroende på matrisverbens modala egenskaper (jmfr. Sundman 1983; Teleman 1999; Lagerwall 1999), samt beroende av grad av semantisk länkning mellan matrisverbet och komplementet (Givón 2001b). Den insamlade datan (matrisverb) i korpusstudien analyserades enligt ett kategoriseringssystem hämtat ur SAG (Teleman et al. 1999), Givón (2001a) och Givón (2001b). Matrisverb med starka nominella (lexikala) egenskaper, till exempel planera, visade en högre frekvens i förekomst med fullständiga infinitivsatser, i jämförelse med mer funktionella matrisverb som avse.