Norwegian det-constructions and their translation correspondences in English and German : A contrastive corpus based study of dummy subjects

Mgr. Bohumila Chocholoušová, M.A.

Master's thesis

Abstract:

The aim of this thesis is to introduce a multiple parallel corpus project set up by the University of Oslo. The main research areas behind this project concern contrastive language typology of individual syntactic, lexical and textual devices employed in information processing on the sentence level, as well as discourse structuring on the text level. The languages in focus are Norwegian, English, and German. In a case study of dummy subjects, I will attempt to illustrate that individual construction types often reveal interesting similarities, as well as differences, between the investigated languages. The syntactic patterns under study are often interrelated and the analysis of sentence form in the light of contrastive data often requires a holistic approach treating the level of syntax, lexis and discourse semantics as joint premises. In the article below, I will briefly explore such syntactic patterns as presentatives, clefts, impersonal passives, specifying constructions, extraposition, and other constructions that make use of semantically empty – dummy - subjects. Subject choice may considerably differ in the individual languages, and provides an interesting background for the discussion of the assignment of semantic roles to individual sentence parts. The study is biased towards Norwegian, as all corpus data are taken from the Norwegian part of the corpora mentioned above.

Keywords

korpusová lingvistika, gramatický podmět, kontrastivní lingvistika

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 7. 9. 2007

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 10. 9. 2007
• Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Jana Chamonikolasová, Ph.D.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Master programme / field:
Philology / English Language and Literature