Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Comparative and general Passive voice'

This thesis brings together two different lines of research, the nature of passive voice, the nature of readability. Commonly, languages have a range of tools for detransitivisation, topicalisation, and impersonalisation, of which passivisation is one (Givón, 1981). Passives have important roles in our language, and prescribing against their use lacks a full understanding of these roles. Much of the concern around passives from writers, editors, and teachers is no more than folklore that has not clearly analysed various writing and reading problems. Many awkward sentences are not awkward because they use passives but because they are wordy, clumsy, or pretentious. Most criticisms have little basis in linguistic theory, and rarely is there more than passing mention of the important role that passives play in communication. Some uses of passives are inappropriate, being vague, ambiguous, or even deceitful. These inappropriate uses of passive voice give the construction a bad name. They have become ammunition for prescriptive grammarians to fire at all uses of passives, often with weak analysis and minimal reference to linguistic theory. ‘Avoid passives’ has become a mantra. I tentatively suggest that there is unlikely to be a cost to processing passives. Given the speed at which the brain processes clauses, any differences in readability (if they exist) must be miniscule. Consequently, I suggest that any differences are unimportant relative to the benefits that appropriately used passives bring to readability. Furthermore, appropriately used passives may actually improve readability, especially when there is greater interest in the passive subject than the active subject, and when the passive serves to connect clauses or sentences.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 1998.
Title from title page screen, viewed July 3, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Russell K. Rutter (chair), James R. Kalmbach, Dana K. Harrington. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 233-248) and abstract. Also available in print.

In this paper, I provide an analysis of Tohono O'odham vowel devoicing with respect to physiological explanation. There are three points in this paper. First, this paper provides data of devoicing (consonants and vowels) in Tohono O'odham. Second, analysis of devoicing in terms of subglottal pressure drop is provided. Third, the devoicing is accounted for within the framework of OT (McCarthy and Prince 1993, Prince and Smolensky 1993). The organization of the paper is as follows. In section 2, the background of the language including both voiced and voiceless vowels is described. In section 3, the data of Tohono O'odham words with voiceless vowels are provided. Then the distribution of devoiced segments is discussed. In section 4, an analysis of devoicing with respect to subglottal pressure drop is presented with schematic diagrams. Then an OT account utilizing phonetic constraints is presented.

It is well known that there are four classes of Japanese vocabulary with respect to its origin; Yamato vocabulary consists of native morphemes, Sino- Japanese consists of borrowed morphemes from Chinese, Foreign is a loanword from a language other than Chinese, and Mimetic describes sounds or manners. Each of these classes has different phonological properties.1 There are three phenomena with respect to the distribution of voice in Japanese. One of them is that post-nasal obstruents in Yamato vocabulary and Mimetic are mostly voiced while those in Sino-Japanese and Foreign are not. I will mainly focus on this property in this paper. However, I will also discuss the other phenomena, namely the compound voicing alternation (Rendaku) and the restriction of voiced sounds in a morpheme (Lyman's Law). These phenomena typically occur with Yamato vocabulary only. Although the domain of each phenomenon largely overlaps with a certain class of lexical origin, they do not match completely with each other. The purpose of this paper is to account for the distribution of voice in Japanese by establishing a constraint ranking that covers Japanese vocabulary of any origin. The organization of the paper is as follows. In section 2, I will present data and four problems to be solved. General tendency of Yamato vocabulary are summarized in 2.1, and many exceptions to the generalization are presented in 2.2. In section 3, I will give an analysis using a unified ranking rather than different rankings depending on origins of the vocabulary. In section 4, I will present two pieces of evidence --- historical and acquisional---to support my claim that Japanese has only one ranking.

For the past twenty years, there has been a growing trend in translation studies to follow a deconstructionist philosophy and give translators authorship of their work. Translation, in this sense, is no longer a target language equivalence of an 'original' text by an author, but rather a creative process of 're-writing.' In this regard, translators have the possibility of showing their own voice in the translation. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether either of the French or English translators (Albert Bensoussan and Suzanne Jill Levine, respectively) of the Cuban novel Tres Tristes Tigres (Barcelona: 1967) intervened in the text to show their own voices; and in Levine's case, whether this intervention corresponded to a declared ideology of 'subversion.' A systematic analysis of the wordplay in Chapters 16, 17 and 18 of the two translations reveal significant differences. Whereas the French translation has only minor adjustments, the English translation shows a large number of alterations to existing source text wordplay as well as additional instances of wordplay. In the final tally, there are almost twice as many instances of wordplay in Levine's English translation than in the Spanish source text. From the results of the analysis and from Levine's own self-portrayal in her book The Subversive Scribe (St. Paul: 1991), it would appear that her extensive intervention in the text is ideologically motivated. However, closer examination of circumstances surrounding the actual translation process reveals that the author, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, greatly influenced the final 're-writing.' Therefore, Levine's translation was not so much subversion as it was a sub-version of the original.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2011.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: When English as a second language (L2) is learnt via classroom instruction, the extent to which learners become proficient depends, in part, on the education system in place and, more specifically, on the methods of instruction. This study set out to compare the efficacy of two focus-on-form methods of L2 instruction, namely enhanced input and traditional teacher-centred instruction, in teaching one typically problematic aspect of English grammar for L2 learners, namely the use of the passive form. The participants comprised two groups of grade 11 Afrikaans-speaking learners in a secondary, Afrikaans-English parallel medium school in the southern region of Gauteng, South Africa. One day before the onset of instruction on the English passive, all potential participants completed a pre-test to assess their existing knowledge of the English passive, in order to allow the members of one group to be paired with the members of the other group. Eight pairs could be found; a total of 16 learners thus participated in the study. Both groups then received 14 lessons (7 hours in total) on the English passive: The Enhanced group received (written) input enhancement in groups, whereas the Traditional group as a whole did copying exercises and received explanations on the formation of the passive structure. Participants wrote a post-test immediately after the end of the instruction period and a delayed post-test nine weeks later. The results of the immediate and delayed post-tests did not indicate a significant difference between the two groups; neither did the learners’ scores improve significantly from the pre-test to the post-tests. Reasons for this lack of improvement are suggested. Classroom observation indicated that learners in the Enhanced group enthusiastically participated in the activities, whereas the Traditional group appeared to be bored after a few lessons. The study also set out to ascertain whether different methods of assessment on the English passive lead to different test marks. It seemed that assessment tasks requiring little writing (such as multiple choice questions) result in higher marks than tasks requiring learners to formulate answers on their own. Although this was a small-scale study, the results suggest that under better circumstances (e.g., more time for instruction and a larger group of participants) it might be useful to conduct similar types of studies to test the effects of enhanced input and/or assessment methods when South African schools change from Outcomes Based Education to the new Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement system in 2012.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Wanneer Engels as tweede taal (T2) deur middel van die klaskameronderrig aangeleer word, hang die vaardigheid wat die leerder verwerf gedeeltelik af van die opvoedkundige sisteem waarbinne T2- onderrig geskied en, meer spesifiek, van die metodes van onderrig wat gebruik word. Die doel van hierdie studie was om die effektiwiteit van twee fokus-op-vorm-metodes van T2-onderrig met mekaar te vergelyk, naamlik verrykte toevoer en tradisionele onderwysergesentreerde onderrig, in die onderrig van een tipies problematiese aspek van die Engelse grammatika, naamlik die gebruik van die passiefvorm. Die deelnemers het bestaan uit twee groepe Afrikaanssprekende graad 11- leerders in ‘n sekondêre, Afrikaans-Engels parallel-medium skool in Suid-Gauteng. Alle deelnemers het een dag voor die aanvang van die onderrig oor Engelse passiefvorme ‘n voortoets afgelê sodat hul bestaande kennis aangaande sulke vorme gemeet kon word. Op grond van hul toetsresultate is die lede van die een groep daarna met die lede van die ander groepe afgepaar. Agt pare is geïdentifiseer; in totaal was daar dus 16 deelnemers. Beide groepe het 14 klasse (7 ure in totaal) se onderrig oor die Engelse passiefkonstruksie ontvang: Die Verrykte groep het geskrewe toevoer in groepsverband ontvang, terwyl die Tradisionele groep verduidelikings oor die vorming van die passief asook afskryf-oefeninge ontvang het. Deelnemers het onmiddellik ná die 14 klasse ‘n na-toets geskryf en nege weke ná instruksie ‘n uitgestelde na-toets. Die resultate van die onmiddellike en uitgestelde na-toets het nie beduidende verskille tussen die groepe aangedui nie. Die leerders se uitslae het ook nie beduidende verskille tussen die onmiddellike- en uitgestelde na-toets getoon nie. Redes vir die gebrek aan meetbare vordering word aangevoer. Klaskamer-observasie het egter getoon dat leerders wat die verrykte toevoer ontvang het, meer entoesiasties aan klaskameraktiwiteite deelgeneem het teenoor die groep wat tradisioneel onderrig is en verveeld voorgekom het. Die studie het ook gepoog om te bepaal of verskillende assesseringsmetodes vir Engelse passiewe lei tot verskillende toetsuitslae. Dit het voorgekom asof assesseringstake wat minimale skryfwerk vereis het (bv. veelvuldige keuse-vrae) tot beter resultate gelei het as die vrae wat van leerders verwag het om self antwoorde te formuleer. Alhoewel die studie van beperkte omvang was, is daar aanduidings dat dit – onder meer geskikte toestande (bv. meer tyd vir instruksie en groter deelnemergroepe) – nuttig sal wees om soortgelyke studies oor verrykte toevoer en/of verskillende assesseringsmetodes uit te voer, veral wanneer Suid-Afrikaanse skole in 2012 van Uitkomsgebaseerde Onderrig na die Assessment Policy Statement-sisteem toe verander.

In our information age, it is of the highest importance that information is easy to understand by as many members of the potential target audience as possible. The present study analyses and compares the readability of 20 newspaper articles, half from the tabloid Daily Mail and the other half from the broadsheet The Daily Telegraph. The methods used to analyse the articles are mathematic readability formulas based on sentence and word length, as well as analyses of the use of the active and the passive voice, type-token ratio, number of clauses per sentence, and linking words. The results do not completely align with each other. Three of the five methods – the readability formulas, the use of the passive voice, and clauses per sentence – suggest that the Daily Mail articles are easier to understand, whereas the type-token ratios imply the opposite, and the linking words results did not show a difference in readability.

Orientador: Suzi Frankl Sperber
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
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Resumo: Análise de seis contos do livro "Primeiras Estórias", de Guimarães Rosa. O ponto de partida da análise foi uma estrutura linguística chamada voz média, uma espécie de síntese entre a voz ativa e voz passiva. Com ponto de partida linguístico, o trabalho se inspira na obra Was Geht Uns Noah An, de Wolfgang Von Schöfer, e tenta resgatar significados de palavras que se perderam ao longo do tempo. Assim, encontra-se um ponto de diálogo com a obra de Suzi Frankl Sperber, que defende que Guimarães Rosa utiliza um recurso que a autora chamou de abertura do sintagma e também o de fundir espaço e personagem na narrativa com o objetivo de potencializar, ampliar os sentidos. A presente dissertação explora as dimensões simbólicas da obra de Rosa, mostrando de que maneira o autor se abria e investigava os mistérios da vida. Foram levantados alguns temas que se repetem em todos os contos, e a partir de uma análise minuciosa sobre os contos, encontra-se um tema principal que é desenvolvido: a importância de viver é compreendida através do aprimoramento da alma - e isso se dá através do conhecimento não de ordem racional, mas prática
Abstract: Analysis of six shorts stories from the book "Primeiras Estórias", written by João Guimarães Rosa. The analysis' starting point was a linguistic structure called "Middle Voice", some kind of synthesis between active and passive voice. This work is inspired in the book from Wolfgang Von Schöfer, Was Geht Uns Noah An, and tries to retrieve some word's meanings that have got lost through time. Therefore, this work was able to dialogue with the work from Suzi Frankl Sperber, who defends that Rosa uses a technique that Suzi has called "syntagm 's opening", and also an important structural characteristic: Rosa merges the space and the character in the narrative, in order to amplify the possible meanings and interpretations. This current dissertation explores the symbolic dimension of six shorts stories from Primeiras Estórias and tries to analyze how the author explored the meaning and mysteries of life. Some subjects were noticed, and after a detailed analysis of each short story, a main subject is found: the importance of living is understood as the development of the soul - and this happens only through the acquisition of practical knowledge
Mestrado
Literatura Brasileira
Mestre em Teoria e Critica Literaria

Orientador: Lucy Seki
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
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Resumo: A presente tese tem por objetivo oferecer uma descrição e análise de aspectos fundamentais da morfossintaxe do Kaiowá (Guarani), que permita um conhecimento plausível de sua gramática. Inicialmente,. a tese tráz considerações à respeito do povo Kaiowá e sua língua, além de tratar da metodologia empregada na pesquisa lingüística de campo. Posteriormente, é apresentada a descrição seguida de análise gramatical do Kaiowá que projetou a pesquisa a uma análise primeira da marcação de caso e de voz inversa. Neste trabalho, defende-se a idéia de que o Kaiowá é uma língua Ativa/Inativa (Cisão Intransitiva), e que a. marcação de caso intra-clausal apresenta cisões motivadas por operações morfossintáticas e pela pragmática, o que resulta em diferentes configurações da marcação de caso na língua: nominativo/acusativo, ergativo/absolutivo ou ergativo/acusativo. Quanto à voz inversa, pode-se concluir que a análise sobre inversão proposta por Payne (1994) para as línguas Tupi-Guarani, aplica-se ao Kaiowá, e, pelo que se observa pelas análises, essa é uma língua de inversão semântica motivada pela hierarquia de pessoa.
Abstract: In this dissertation a description and an analysis of fundamental aspects of Kaiowá (Guarani) morphosyntax are presented. It results in a plausible knowledge of the grammar of this language. First, considerations on Kaiowá people and its language are made. It is also presented a discussion on the methodology adopted in the fieldwork of linguistic research. Second, the description is presented followed by grammatical analysis of Kaiowá that projected the research to a first analysis of case marking and inverse voice. In this dissertation, the idea of Kaiowá as an Active/lnactive (Split-S) is claimed. Splits motivated by morphosyntatic operation and by pragmatics are presented in intra-clausal case marking. It results in different configurations of case marking in the language: nominative/accusative, ergative/absolutive or ergative/accusative. Conceming the voice inverse its is possible to conclude that Payne's (1994) analysis of inversion on Tupi Guaraní languages is to Kaiowá. The semantic inverse motivated by the person hierarchy was also reveled through the analysis.
Doutorado
Doutor em Linguística

Dissertação de mestrado, Processamento de Linguagem Natural e Indústrias da Língua, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Universidade do Algarve, 2014
With the development of the human society and the progress of technology, machine translation not only makes it possible for human to translate one source language to the other target languages automatically, but also makes human communication easier than before. It is undeniable that in recent years machine translation has been improved a lot, however, due to the fact that human language is much more complicated and each language has its uniqueness, machine translation still has a long way to go before it can give a qualified output. As a very important linguistic phenomenon, passive voice has been commonly used in different languages around the world, it is also one of the complicated grammatical aspects for a machine to translate. Take the translation of English and Chinese as an example, since these two languages do not belong to the same family, it is normal that they differ in varied grammatical aspects, including passive voice. In this study, the major differences and similarities of the passive voice in these two languages have been pointed out. In field of machine translation, two machine translation system, Google translator and Baidu translator have been tested with three hundred passive voice sentences taken form a English-Chinese parallel corpus, to see their capacity of translating the passive voice from one language to the other. As a result, all the mistakes have been categorized in order to improve the quality of machine translation.

The subject of this thesis is the analysis and comparison of explicit and implicit means of reference to the general human agent in English and in Czech. In these languages we may find both explicit and implicit means which are used to refer to the general human agent and which are identical to a certain degree. However, especially among the implicit means we may observe rather different structures in both languages. This thesis analyses two sets of data - the excerpts from two English novels with their Czech translations and two Czech novels with their English translations. The total number of examples excerpted is 200, each example being considered with its translation to the other language. The source language of this study is English for which a set of particular explicit and implicit means which we focus on in this analysis was defined. For this reason, also in the case of the Czech originals the examples were excerpted from the English translations and their Czech original versions were found. The samples obtained from both the sets of data were further compared and the analysed means were divided into three groups - instances where the means in English and in Czech were identical, instances where the means were nonidentical and instances where the reference to the general human agent was...