This theses is dedicated to the use of the verbal paradigms hablara and hablase in contemporary Spanish. We demonstrate that due to historical reasons the usage of paradigm hablara is much wider than that of hablase, which can be used only in the subjunctive meaning. According to the valid linguistic norm, the paradigm hablara (and not hablase) can be used instead of the Past Perfect (although it is not recommended). The same is evidenced with the conditional tense of the modal verbs querer, deber and poder as well as with the main clause of the unreal conditional clauses in the present tense. This means that these two verb paradigms can be arbitralily substituted only when used in the subjunctive function. On the basis of our own frecuency analysis of twenty most used Spanish verbs in the language corpus CREA, we prove that the frecuency of the hablase on average 18% in Spain and 10% in Latin America. Our analysis of this corpus material does not confirm the statement of some linguists that the frecuency of -se form is generally slightly higher in negative sentences. However, our analysis of a parallel corpus InterCorp seems to indicate that it is higher (by 7%) after the conditional conjunction ‚si'.

The aim of this study is to investigate the syntax in Finnish literature for young people in order to arrive at fundamental information about the character of the language in literature of this kind. The corpus consists of three Tiina books by Anni Polva. My method is mainly quantitative, but also comparative. The language of the three books is compared, but the results of this comparison are also contrasted with other Finnish and also Swedish quantitative linguistic investigations. The investigation begins at the sentence and clause levels. To some extent is also considered whether syntactic features occur in main clauses or in subordinate clauses, in narrative text or in dialogues. The length of sentences and clauses is investigated. It appears that the length of sentences stated in clauses (2.2 clauses on averige) and the length of clauses in words (5 words on averige) do not differ from those typical of literature for children or adults. On the other hand the length of sentences stated in words (11 words on averige) is somewhat higher than in literature for children and adults. Active and passive clauses, mode, tense and negation in the clauses are investigated. The results show that the frequency of active clauses is high and the frequency of passive clauses is very low. The frequency of negated clauses is also very high. The most frequent mode is the indicative, followed by the conditional. There are few predicates in the imperative, and there are only isolated instances of predicates in the potential. The use of tenses resembles that in literature for children and adults: most predicates are in the past tense, followed by the present, the pluperfect and the perfect. Main clauses and subordinate clauses of different kinds are dealt with in the investigation. The proportion between main clauses and subordinate clauses is about the same as in the spoken language. The coordinating as well as the subordinating conjunctions are investigated both with regard to the actual occurrences of the conjunctions and with regard to their meanings. The most frequent coordi­nating conjunctions are ja 'and* (55.8 %) and multa 'but' (21.4 %). The classification of the conjunctions according to meaning shows that copulative conjunctions are the most frequent ones (50.7 %). Of the subordinating conjunctions että 'that' (35.7 %) and kun 'when, because' (25.0 %) are the most frequent ones. Semantically explicative conjunctions are the most frequent subordinating conjunctions (27.6 %). Syndetic coordination is most frequent in main clauses (78.8 %) as well as in subordinate clauses (98.9 %). Asyndetic coordination is clearly used as a stylistic device. A large number of different constructions are used in the corpus. Some of them are contracted clauses, some are other constructions which resemble them. The frequency of these constructions is unexpectedly high. The most frequent types of contracted clause are the necessive construction (47.9 %), the participle construction (18.3 %) and the temporal construction (15.3 %). Of the other constructions the modal construction (60.4 %) and the agent construction (12.8 %) are the most frequent ones. The structure of the sentences in the Tiina books is varied and sometimes complex. In all there are 167 different combinations of clauses in the corpus. The most frequent type of sentence consists of one main clause (27.8 %). In the combination of clauses we also find clauses with different degrees of subordination. Grade 1 is the most frequent one (87.1 %). However, there are even instances of grade 4. The position of main clauses and subordinate clauses varies a great deal. They may be mixed at will. The corpus contains a large number of clause combinations which occur once only. / digitalisering@umu

No description available.

My thesis deals with the word order in the contemporary Czech language. The aim is to discover the principles that control the clause order within sentences and to find out to what extent the position of the main and subordinate clauses is fixed. The first section summarizes the work of Czech and Slovak linguists and introduces the principles that apply to the clause order in particular sentences. It defines types of sentences with fixed, usual and loose order. At the end of this part there is an overview of the positions of different types of clauses, which became the springboard for the empirical part. The second section deals with the clause order of selected subordinate sentences. I have chosen a representative sample of connecting expressions. Using materials of the Czech National Corpus I try to outline the contemporary Czech clause order of the most frequent types of clauses following these expressions.