Non-projectivity in English and Czech

Abstract

This thesis analyzes non-projective constructions in English and Czech. It is based on the functional generative description of language and the analysis of material drawn from the Prague Czech-English Dependency Treebank, the Prague Dependency Treebank, and the British National Corpus. The theoretical part provides a brief characterization of phrase structure grammar and dependency grammar together with the definition of the fundamentals of the functional generative description, and the definition of non-projectivity. The analytical section presents a detailed comparative classification of non-projective structures in both languages. Individual types are studied from the perspective of differences between the surface structure and the underlying structure, demonstrating how the substitution of a non-projective clause for a projective one influences the topic-focus articulation and the meaning of the clause. The main objective is to define factors motivating non-projectivity in English and Czech, to compare them, and to determine whether it is marked or neutral type of discontinuity that prevails in each of the two languages.

Tato pnice se zabyva popisem neprojektivnfch konstrukd v angliCtine a cestine. Vychazf z funkcne generativnfho popisu jazyka a studia materialu zfskaneho z Prazskeho cesko-anglickeho zavislostnfho korpusu, Prazskeho zavislostnfho korpusu a Britskeho narodnfho korpusu. Nejprve strucne charakterizuje dYe nejvyznamnejsf koncepce teoretickeho popisu syntakticke struktury vety, syntax zavislostnf a slozkovou. Nasleduje vyklad hlavnfch vychodisek funkcne generativnfho popisu jazyka a definice neprojektivnf konstrukce. Analyticka cast se zabyva komplexnf charakteristikou neprojektivnfch konstrukcf vanglictine a cestine. Podava jejich klasifikaci, u jednotlivych typu probfra rozdfly mezi hloubkovu a povrchovou strukturou vety a ukazuje, jak nahrazenf konstrukce neprojektivnf za projektivnf oVliviiuje aktualnf clenenf vety a jejf vyznam. Hlavnim dIem prace je vymezit faktory motivujid neprojektivitu v obou jazycfch, porovnat je a urcit, zda v danem jazyce prevaZuje neprojektivita pffznakova Ci neutralni, motivovana gramatickymi aspekty jazyka.