Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Determination <Linguistik>'

Languages evolve, adapting to pressures arising from their learning and use. As these pressures may be different in different sociocultural environments, non-linguistic factors relating to the group structure of the people who speak a language may influence the features of the language itself. Identifying such factors, and the mechanisms by which they operate, would account for some of the diversity seen in the complexity of different languages. This thesis considers two key hypotheses which connect group structure to complex language features and evaluates them experimentally. Firstly, languages spoken by greater numbers of people are thought to be less morphologically complex than those employed by smaller groups. I assess two mechanisms by which group size could have such an effect: different degrees of variability in the linguistic input learners receive, and the effects of adult learning. Four experiments conclude that there is no evidence for different degrees of speaker input variability having any effect on the cross-generational transmission of complex morphology, and so no evidence for it being an explanation for the effect of population size on linguistic complexity. Three more experiments conclude that adult learning is a more likely mechanism, but that linking morphological simplification at the level of the individual to group-level characteristics of a language cannot be simply explained. Idiosyncratic simplifications of adult learners, when mixed with input from native speakers, may result in the linguistic input for subsequent learners being itself complex and variable, preventing simplified features from becoming more widespread. Native speaker accommodation, however, may be a key linking mechanism. Speakers of a more complex variant of a language simplify their language to facilitate communication with speakers of a simpler language. In doing so, they may increase the frequency of particular simplifications in the input of following learners. Secondly, esoteric communication | that carried out by smaller groups in which large amounts of information is shared and in which adult learning is absent | may provide the circumstances necessary for the generation and maintenance of more complex features. I assess this in four experiments. Without a learnability pressure, esoteric communication illustrates how complexity can be maintained, but there is generally no evidence of how smaller groups or those with greater amounts of shared information would develop comparatively more complex features. Any observable differences in the complexity of the languages of different types of groups is eliminated through repeated interaction between group members. There is, however, some indication that the languages used by larger groups may be more transparent, and so easier for adult learners to understand.

In psychological research, many questionnaires use verbal response scales with vague linguistic terms (e.g., frequency expressions). The words’ meanings can be formalized and evaluated using fuzzy membership functions (MFs), which allow constructing distinct and equidistant response scales. The discriminatory power value of MFs indicates how distinct the functions and, hence, the verbal expressions are. The present manuscript interrogates the threshold of discriminatory power necessary to indicate a sufficient difference in meaning. Using an empirical validation procedure, participants (N = 133) estimated (1) three correspondence values for verbal expressions to determine MFs, and (2) similarities of words by pairwise comparison ratings. Results show a non-linear relationship between discriminatory power and similarity, and fuzzy MFs, as well as the searched-for threshold value for discriminatory power. Implications for the selection of verbal expressions and the construction of verbal categories in questionnaire response scales are discussed.

This project focuses on the acquisition of Italian and Spanish as mother tongues. Chapter 1 explores some of the main theories concerning language acquisition in order to give a general overview about this field of investigation. Chapter 2 presents the main steps of the acquisition of Italian and Spanish during childhood as described by Camaioni (2001) and Hernández Pina (1990). Chapter 3 contains an analysis carried out on several transcripts of natural conversations between children and their parents. Particular attention was paid to understand how Italian and Spanish children acquire definite and indefinite articles between 18 and 30 months of age. The goal of this paper is to understand whether Italian and Spanish children follow the same pattern of language acquisition when articles are considered, given the undoubtable similarity of these two Romance languages. The results of this study suggest that the acquisition of articles by native Italian and Spanish speakers mirrors such similarity. Yet, Spanish children seem faster at learning new uses of articles (i.e. articulated prepositions), but at first they make many more mistakes compared to Italians. This suggests that Spanish children tend to make experiments with the linguistic items they already know in order to increase their linguistic competences. On the other hand, Italians seem slower at learning new features of their mother tongue, but the number of mistakes they make is generally lower, which suggests that they rather stabilize their competences before learning new ones. The analysis also highlights the importance of imitation in the process of language acquisition: children tend to repeat what they hear from their parents to learn new features of their mother tongue. Needless to say, this paper only aims at serving as a springboard for further investigation, since language acquisition remains a fascinating and largely unsolved process.

This document presents a formula selection system for classical first order theorem proving based on the relevance of formulae for the proof of a conjecture. It is based on unifiability of predicates and is also able to use a linguistic approach for the selection. The scope of the technique is the reduction of the set of formulae and the increase of the amount of provable conjectures in a given time. Since the technique generates a subset of the formula set, it can be used as a preprocessor for automated theorem proving. The document contains the conception, implementation and evaluation of both selection concepts. While the one concept generates a search graph over the negation normal forms or Skolem normal forms of the given formulae, the linguistic concept analyses the formulae and determines frequencies of lexemes and uses a tf-idf weighting algorithm to determine the relevance of the formulae. Though the concept is built for first order logic, it is not limited to it. The concept can be used for higher order and modal logik, too, with minimal adoptions. The system was also evaluated at the world championship of automated theorem provers (CADE ATP Systems Competition, CASC-24) in combination with the leanCoP theorem prover and the evaluation of the results of the CASC and the benchmarks with the problems of the CASC of the year 2012 (CASC-J6) show that the concept of the system has positive impact to the performance of automated theorem provers. Also, the benchmarks with two different theorem provers which use different calculi have shown that the selection is independent from the calculus. Moreover, the concept of TEMPLAR has shown to be competitive to some extent with the concept of SinE and even helped one of the theorem provers to solve problems that were not (or slower) solved with SinE selection in the CASC. Finally, the evaluation implies that the combination of the unification based and linguistic selection yields more improved results though no optimisation was done for the problems.
Dieses Dokument stellt ein System vor, das aus einer (großen) gegebenen Menge von Formeln der klassischen Prädikatenlogik eine Teilmenge auswählt, die für den Beweis einer logischen Formel relevant sind. Ziel des Systems ist, die Beweisbarkeit von Formeln in einer festen Zeitschranke zu ermöglichen oder die Beweissuche durch die eingeschränkte Formelmenge zu beschleunigen. Das Dokument beschreibt die Konzeption, Implementierung und Evaluation des Systems und geht dabei auf die zwei verschiedenen Ansätze zur Auswahl ein. Während das eine Konzept eine Graphensuche wahlweise auf den Negations-Normalformen oder Skolem-Normalformen der Formeln durchführt, indem Pfade von einer Formel zu einer anderen durch Unifikation von Prädikaten gebildet werden, analysiert das andere Konzept die Häufigkeiten von Lexemen und bildet einen Relevanzwert durch Anwendung des in der Computerlinguistik bekannten tf-idf-Maßes. Es werden die Ergebnisse der Weltmeisterschaft der automatischen Theorembeweiser (CADE ATP Systems Competition, CASC-24) vorgestellt und der Effekt des Systems für die Beweissuche analysiert. Weiterhin werden die Ergebnisse der Tests des Systems auf den Problemen der Weltmeisterschaft aus dem Jahre 2012 (CASC-J6) vorgestellt. Es wird darauf basierend evaluiert, inwieweit die Einschränkungen die Theorembeweiser bei dem Beweis komplexer Probleme unterstützen. Letztendlich wird gezeigt, dass das System einerseits positive Effekte für die Theorembeweiser hat und andererseits unabhängig von dem Kalkül ist, den die Theorembeweiser nutzen. Ferner ist der Ansatz unabhängig von der genutzten Logik und kann prinzipiell für alle Stufen der Prädikatenlogik und Aussagenlogik sowie Modallogik genutzt werden. Dieser Aspekt macht den Ansatz universell im automatischen Theorembeweisen nutzbar. Es zeigt sich, dass beide Ansätze zur Auswahl für verschiedene Formelmengen geeignet sind. Es wird auch gezeigt, dass die Kombination beider Ansätze eine signifikante Erhöhung der beweisbaren Formeln zur Folge hat und dass die Auswahl durch die Ansätze mit den Fähigkeiten eines anderen Auswahl-Systems mithalten kann.

Many languages, both ancient and modern, make use of devices similar to determinatives in Egyptian by which the meaning of a word can be made more specific. But determinatives are especially rich in their capacity for expression, particularly regarding words for abstract concepts through their extensive use of visually-based metaphor. Egyptological research is only now beginning to explore the many levels at which the system functioned. My thesis centres around the metaphorical usages of three signs - the Seth animal, the panther, and the crocodile. The introduction lays out my aimes, methods, and textual sources. The first chapter sets my analysis against the backdrop of current research, beginning with a discussion of how determinatives have been treated in the past, comparing that with a survey of how modern linguistics has approached comparable systems in other languages, and finally laying out my own approach to the three signs under study. In the following three case study chapters, I first survey the evidence for how each animal was perceived in the 'real' world, before moving into a detailed analysis of their significance in the script, which is based on a contextually-grounded, diachronic study of the distribution patterns of each of the signs in five genres of text from the Old to the New Kingdom. In a final chapter, I compare my conclusions about the three determinatives, discussing their commonalities and singularities, and relaitng the results of the individual case studies to the workings of the system as a whole. My aim is not only to achieve a better understanding of the particular shades of meaning these three animal signs impart to each of the words they determine, thereby leading to a better understanding of these words, but also to examine the wider conceptual metaphors the three determinatives represent.

En este artículo se abordan algunas de las posibilidades que ofrece la lingüística operacional para los estudios diacrónicos de la lengua. Después deuna breve exposición del Proyecto de Universales y Tipología del Institutode Lingüística de la Universidad de Colonia (UNITYP), se presentan los resultados de una investigación realizada bajo este marco teórico: la emergencia y consolidación del sufijo –do como patrón nominalizador en el registro técnico del español. Esta propuesta de análisis es relevante entanto que permitiría apreciar bajo una perspectiva adicional los complejos procesos que subyacen a los fenómenos de cambio lingüístico.
This article addresses some possibilities that operational linguistics offersin relation to the diachronic studies of language. After a brief presentationof the Universal and Typology Project of the Institute of Linguistics atthe University of Cologne (UNITYP for its initials in Spanish), the resultsof an investigation conducted under this framework is presented: theemergence and consolidation of the suffix -do as a standard nominalizer inSpanish technical register. The proposed analysis is relevant to the extentthat it makes possible to assess under an additional perspective the complexprocesses underlying the phenomena of linguistic change.

L2 motivational research may be described as an ongoing quest to identify motivational attributes underlying motivated language learning behaviour. This study employs a novel theoretical and methodological focus in this endeavour: firstly, it applies theories of the self to a motivational exploration of L2 motivation involving first-year students studying towards German degree courses at two major UK universities. Secondly, the study explicitly addresses the time- and context-sensitive nature of motivational attributes. While the majority of L2 motivational studies treat motivational attributes as static and rely heavily on one-off surveys, this study uses a longitudinal mixed-methods approach. Questionnaires were administered at the beginning and at the end of the academic year, and students were interviewed five times over the course of the academic year. Results suggest that the concept of integrative orientation in its traditional sense plays a minor role for these students. The concepts of the ideal L2 self and intrinsic motivation are better suited to capture these students’ motivation for studying German, and together with self-efficacy beliefs they offer a good basis for understanding students’ motivated engagement with language learning throughout the year. However, the data also reveal that considerable changes take place during the course of the year. Importantly, students’ intrinsic motivation significantly decreases and so do self-efficacy beliefs for speaking and listening, a trend concomitant with decreasing effort to engage with language learning. The qualitative data shed light on the motivational changes observed, and provide a detailed and rich picture of the interplay between motivation and contextual factors. Based on the empirical insights gained, a theoretical framework is proposed which links the motivational attributes examined and situates them within multilayered contextual spheres. The thesis concludes by outlining pedagogical suggestions how to counteract decreasing motivation during the first year at university.

This thesis offers a contrastive analysis of the notion of definiteness as conveyed by the system of the article in English and Standard Arabic. Definiteness and other notions associated with it are investigated semantically and syntactically in an attempt to discover how these two languages approach such notions and when the two languages converge and diverge in this respect. To this end, corpus analysis is chosen as a means to inspect these ideas. The corpus, The Brook Kerith, by the Irish writer, George Moore, is chosen for geo-historical and literary reasons: the story takes place in the Holy Land at the dawn of this Christian era. A contrastive analysis of the first chapter along with its translation is analyzed from a pragmatic and semantic perspective. The analysis is followed by statistical and computational analyses. It is found that the article "the" and the Arabic article "al' are used for seemingly the same purpose in the proportion of 76%. The occurrence of the article "a/an" is 96% consistent with indefiniteness in Arabic. However, the use of the "zero article" shows discrepancy as whether to use the article "al" or no article in Arabic. In the last analysis, the cognitive operations underlying usage in both languages are similar. The differences are on the level of the semiotic transformation of these deep operations.

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This paper aims to develop a semantic enunciative study considering the route of meanings constructed by the determinations of the word São Paulo into the enunciative space in that it considering the language events produced by the press, during the Constitutionalist Movement of 1932. This paper is guided by the Semantics of the Events proposed and developed by Eduardo Guimarães (1989, 1999, 2002, 2002a, 2003, 2004, 2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009), wich is a semantic study based on the historicity of language, dismissing the subject from a central position to understand it as someone who is constituted by language and through language.Through its operating mechanisms, the semantics approach presented by Guimarães establishes a relationship with the Discourse Analysis and, in general, with the theories of the subject, joining it then with the French School of Discourse Analysis and with the Argumentative Semantics according to Ducrot perspectives. It is being done a study of the Semantic Domains of Determination of the word São Paulo , considering the way it is denominated by the newspapers "Folha da Manhã" and "Folha da Noite", during the the month of July 1932, when the armed movement was hatched in Brazil. In this sense, the aim is to capture the enunciative events from the statements and analyze them in order to identify , in fact, what has contributed to the significance of the concept of paulistanidade , and the senses that represents São Paulo today.
O presente trabalho objetiva desenvolver um estudo semântico enunciativo considerando o percurso de sentidos construído pelas determinações da palavra São Paulo no espaço enunciativo em que se tomam os acontecimentos de linguagem produzidos pela imprensa, durante o Movimento Constitucionalista de 1932. Colocam-se como princípio norteador os elementos teóricos e epistemológicos da Semântica do Acontecimento proposta e desenvolvida por Eduardo Guimarães (1989, 1999, 2002, 2002a, 2003, 2004, 2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009), uma Semântica fundamentada na historicidade da língua, destituindo o sujeito de uma posição central para compreendê-lo enquanto constituído na e pela linguagem. Por meio de seus mecanismos de funcionamento, a abordagem semântica apresentada por Guimarães estabelece uma relação com a Análise do Discurso, de modo específico, e, em geral, com as teorias do sujeito, filiando-se assim à escola francesa de Análise do Discurso e à Semântica Argumentativa em moldes ducrotianos. Abordando esse acontecimento histórico, que se configura em caráter político e social, enquanto um acontecimento na esfera enunciativa, realiza-se um estudo dos DSDs (Domínios Semânticos de Determinação) da palavra São Paulo a partir da forma como a mesma designa nos textos apresentados pelos jornais "Folha da Manhã" e "Folha da Noite", durante o mês de julho de 1932, momento de eclosão do movimento armado. Nesse sentido, objetiva-se apreender pelos acontecimentos enunciativos dos enunciados a serem analisados, o que, de fato, contribuiu para a significação do conceito de paulistanidade, constituindo assim os sentidos que representam São Paulo na atualidade.

This thesis investigates the system of compounding attested in the earliest written Latvian texts of the 16th and 17th centuries. The philological analysis presented in this work is the first systematic attempt to extensively treat compounds in Old Latvian. The purpose of this thesis is to thoroughly describe the system of compounding of the earliest period of written Latvian. One of the main aims of the analysis provided in this work is to determine whether the Old Latvian compounds were distinguished in terms of their meaning and form. This is why another important aim of this study is to discern the most characteristic formal properties of each category of compounds in Old Latvian. This study also addresses the morphological variation of the components of compounds and seeks to explain why one finds different tendencies of compounding in the texts of this period.    Firstly, it is shown in this thesis that compounds in Old Latvian were clearly distinguished in terms of their meaning. The main semantic types of Old Latvian compounds, which were analyzed in this study, are the determinative compounds, the possessive compounds, the verbal governing compounds, and the copulative compounds. Secondly, it is argued that the aforementioned types of compounds were clearly differentiated in terms of the formal properties of their components. A large number of possessive compounds and verbal governing compounds had the compositional suffix -is (m.)/-e (f.). By contrast, only a handful of determinative compounds had this suffix. In view of the distribution of the suffix found in the Old Latvian compounds, it is suggested that the suffix was originally restricted to adjectival compounds. Furthermore, the different types of compounds in Old Latvian were also distinguished in terms of the first component. In the majority of cases, both the possessive compounds and the verbal governing compounds were coined without linking elements, while the determinative compounds had linking elements to a larger extent. Thirdly, it is proposed in this thesis that a part of linking elements used in the determinative compounds in Old Latvian originated from the original stem vowels of the first components. Thus, it is argued that stem compounds were still attested in the Old Latvian texts, although this Baltic model of coining compounds is no longer visible in Modern Latvian. Lastly, it is suggested that the tendencies of compounding found in the texts under discussion represent dialectal differences. Another contribution of this study is that the Old Latvian compounds are not treated in isolation, but analyzed in drawing parallels with compounds in the other Baltic languages, Lithuanian in particular. Hence, by analyzing common features and similarities between the compounding systems, the Old Latvian compounds are positioned within the context of the Baltic system of compounding.

Cette recherche a deux objectifs, la systématisation de la prosodie fondamentale du japonais langue commune et l’application de ce système prosodique à une méthode didactique. Pour atteindre ces objectifs, nous cernons d'abord un cadre théorique adaptable au japonais en nous fondant sur la théorie de la "Grammaire de l’intonation" de Morel et Danon-Boileau (1998). Ensuite, nous analysons deux types de corpus, les premières phrases d'informations télévisées, dont le style est proche de celui de l’écrit, et des extraits de dialogue spontané. Les résultats de l’analyse du corpus d'écrit oralisé corroborent une hypothèse selon laquelle l’unité discursive, qui est dans l’ordre fondamental des constituants tel que défini par la fonction de détermination correspondant à un marqueur syntaxique/discursif spécifique, doit être réalisée par la prosodie fondamentale conformément à la fonction de détermination. Les indices suprasegmentaux de cette prosodie sont la position et la durée de la pause et la mélodie des séquences du modifiant et du modifié. En application de ce système prosodique, nous proposons une méthode d’enseignement d’accès facile pour l’enseignant et l’apprenant sur les plans théorique et didactique, grâce au critère binaire de la fonction de détermination d'une part, et d’un indice "écrit", le marqueur syntaxique/discursif, d'autre part. L’analyse du corpus d’oral montre que dans l’oral la fonction de détermination n’est pas représentée par le marqueur spécifique ni par la pause, qui sont remplacés par un indice intonatif à la fin du constituant, tandis que la fonction énonciative est réalisée par l’intonation des particules finales
This research has two objectives: a systematization of the fundamental prosody of Japanese as a common language, and an application of this prosodic system to teaching method. To attain these objectives, we first fix a theoretical framework adaptable to Japanese based on the theory "Grammaire de l’intonation" (Intonation Grammar) of Morel and Danon-Boileau (1998). We then analyze two types of corpus, readings of lead sentences of TV news, whose style are close to the written style, and extracts from spontaneous dialogues. The results of analysis of the corpus in uttered-written style corroborate the hypothesis that the discursive unit, which is in the fundamental constituent order defined by the function of determination corresponding to a specific syntactic/discursive marker, must be realized by the fundamental prosody conforming to the function of determination. The supra-segmental indicia of this prosody are the position and the length of pauses and the pitch pattern of sequences of modifier and modified. With application of this prosodic system, we propose a teaching method easily accessible both to the teacher and the learner in theoretical and didactical aspects through the binary criterion of the function of determination and a "written" indicium, the specific syntactic/discursive marker. The analysis of the corpus in spoken style shows that in this style, the function of determination is represented neither by the marker nor by the pause, which are replaced by the intonated indicium at the end of constituent, whereas the enunciative function is realized by intonation of the final particles

This study aims to theoretically investigate the concepts of the interpersonal actions 'to motivate' and 'to manipulate' and also to examine possible differences and similarities between the two. The method used is a conceptual review based on the Self-Determination Theory, related to the concept of motivation, and Machiavellianism, related to the concept of manipu-lation. The results show that 'to motivate', according to Self-Determination Theory, concerns influencing the intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, where intrinsic motivation is related to the feeling of self-determination, inner locus of causality, being or feeling competent and exercise activities for the pleasure of it, whilst extrinsic motivation is related to external locus of cau-sality, external pressure and engaging in activities for the purpose of reaching a goal or re-ward. 'To manipulate' is according to Machiavellianism based on the manipulator doing whatever it takes to reach a certain goal and gain something for himself with no regard of what methods being used. The comparative analysis showed that the crucial difference in how an behaviour is interpreted as either, or both, motivating and manipulative is based on who is doing the interpretation, what information she has and which aspects that are focused on.

Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Meta-Dimension des Rechts auf Menschenwürde lösen eine Fragestellung aus, die die Grenzen der Disziplin des Rechts übertrifft: wie könnte das Transzendentale als ein Aspekt der Bedeutung von Menschenwürde dargestellt werden? Das Beharren auf der nicht-Bestimmung des Menschenbildes oder auf dem Begriff ‚Gott’ in der Präambel des Deutschen Grundgesetzes, wie es sich in der Deutschen Dogmatik widerspiegelt, gepaart mit dem Bestreben nach einer Fall-zu-Fall ad hoc Konkretisierung dessen, was Menschenwürde bedeutet, inspiriert diese Untersuchung von ‚etwas fehlt’ [‘something missing’]. In postmoderner Art und Weise beschreibt diese Geschichte das Gesetz der Menschenwürde als Trojanisches Pferd und bietet hermeneutische und literarische Grundlagen für eine affirmative Haltung gegenüber einer ''leeren'' Rede im juristischen Diskurs. Die Forschungsfrage erweckt und umkreist die polemisch verbrämten Begriffe von ‚Leere’ und ‚Black Box’: Warum erscheint der Rechtsbegriff der Menschenwürde ‚leer’? Oder wie ist er ‚leer’? Warum und wie ist er eine ‚Black Box’? Wie erscheinen Manifestationen des Konzepts abstrakt wie Universalien, aber im Einzelnen konkret? Die ontologischen, sprachlich-analytischen und phänomenologischen philosophischen Erkenntnisse, vorgestellt im ersten Kapitel, bilden die Linse, durch die fünf maßgebliche Fälle des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes – über Abtreibung, lebenslange Freiheitsstrafe, Transsexualität, staatliche Reaktion auf Terroranschläge und die Gewährleistung eines menschenwürdigen Existenzminimums – im zweiten Kapitel analysiert werden. Die philosophischen Quellen werden nicht als Momente im langen Verlauf der Menschenwürde in der Geschichte der Ideen eingeklammert.
The philosophical underpinnings of what may be called the meta-dimension of the law of human dignity trigger a question that surpasses the boundaries of the discipline of law: how could the transcendental as an aspect of human dignity meaning be portrayed? The insistence on non-determination of the Menschenbild [human image] or ‘God’ in the Preamble to the German Basic Law [Grundgesetz] reflected in German legal doctrine, paired with the commitment to case-by-case ad hoc concretization of what human dignity means inspire this story of ‘something missing’. In postmodern fashion, this story portrays the law of human dignity as a Trojan Horse and provides hermeneutic and literary foundations for an affirmative stance towards ‘emptiness’ talk in legal discourse. The research question rekindles and twists polemically framed ‘emptiness’ and ‘black box’ contentions: Why does the legal concept of human dignity appear ‘empty’? Or, how is it ‘empty’? Why and how is it a ‘black box’? How do manifestations of the concept appear abstract as universals and concrete as particulars? The ontological, linguistic-analytical, and phenomenological philosophical insights presented in Chapter One compose the lens through which five benchmark Bundesverfassungsgericht cases – on abortion, life imprisonment, transsexuals, state response to terrorist attacks, and the guarantee of a dignified subsistence minimum – are analyzed in Chapter Two. The philosophical sources are not bracketed as moments in the long course of human dignity in the history of ideas.

Nama is a Khoekhoe-language variety spoken in more than three countries namely Namibia, South Africa, Botswana and Angola. The language was previously called the Nama language, however, for pragmatic reasons, to cater for a Damara/Nama union, it is called Khoekhoegowab in Namibia. As far as I know there has been no comprehensive study on Nama/Damara/Khoekhoegowab. A preliminary study was done by Haacke, Eiseb and Namaseb (1997). However, as can be seen from the title of this study, it was ‘preliminary’ which means the authors are the first to admit that their study was not complete. The aim of this thesis was to undertake an extensive linguistic analysis of Khoekhoegowab as a way to come up with a comprehensive dialectal inventory. The established dialectal inventory will not only help in the linguistic development of Khoekhoegowab, but also in the determination of a standard linguistic code, leading to iv development of materials. This is important in grammatical descriptions needed for literacy material development and language policy implementation. Following Haacke, Eiseb and Namaseb (1997) and Guldenmann (2000, 2003, 2008), the study employed a dialectal difference or comparative approach. Considering the nature of the study, a mixed research design was used to collect the data. The data was drawn from the few available studies on Nama/Damara or Khoekhoegowab dialects such as those by Haacke, Eiseb and Namaseb (1997) and Du Plessis (2009). This was supplemented and complemented by document analysis and the various Khoekhoegowab literature. Interviews of limited key informants and focus groups were undertaken in various regions namely (Hardap, Karas and Kunene). The narratives from these interviews were used to determine the dialects currently in place as well as the differences and similarities. The collected data was then treated to a linguistic and dialectal analysis (cf. Guldenmann 2000, 2003, 2008; Du Plessis, 2009) as a way to discover similarities and differences, which will in turn inform the proposal on a possible standard form and composite orthography. The phonological differences of the three dialects under discussion were identified where the vowel system was discussed. With regard to the plain vowels, an argument was made that the Central Nama and Central Damara are in fact similar in terms of vowel inventory compared to Central Nama and the Bondelswarts dialects. The phonetic aspects of the consonant system of the identified dialects were also discussed. A discussion on clicks and click consonants was also made where a distinction was drawn between plain clicks and complex clicks. The morphosyntax v of Khoehoegowab was also discussed where it was obvious that there were mainly more similarities than differences between the dialects. The phonetic inventories identified in chapters 4 and 5 were assessed using data from different sources such as the Bible, the Social Security booklet, the grade 9 school textbook, Facebook (a social media page), Google maps, Khoekhoegowab orthography (2003), and the Ministry of Health booklet. The aim of this was to account for differences and similarities between various materials in terms of symbols used for writing Khoekhoegowab. There were differences observed which were because of the influence of modern technology (especially the electronic keyboard) on the writing practices of Khoekhoegowab speakers. The proposed orthography takes technological developments into account. As a contribution, this study provides new insight into the issues of voicing, and voiced and voiceless consonants. In terms of theory the handling of tone and length was discussed in detail where it was established that tone is phonemic and not vowel length. The issue of whether or not complex clicks should be treated as units or clicks plus an accompaniment was discussed where I argued that the sounds are co-articulated and should be treated as one. Regarding the orthography, although there is orthography, the existing orthography is clearly not adequate as some of the sounds were not correctly captured. This has an implication on teaching the language in the schools. It will help in the revitalizing of Khoekhoegowab compared to more established Bantu languages.
Philosophiae Doctor - PhD

This dissertation provides the results of a study that reflected on how the creation and dissemination of knowledge about the past was handled by researchers in the late 18th and 19th centuries – a period in history noted for extensive and profound political, social and economic changes all across Europe and the world. It pondered how living and working in an environment of major change may have impacted the researchers and their interpretations of archaeological data. The study examined this issue of ‘environmental’ impact on knowledge creation and dissemination through the prism of a case study on the impact of personal and professional influences on scholarly research within the field of ethnogenetic determination in Hungary. The study considered the processes by which one ethnogenetic theory - the ‛Finno-Ugric Uralian’ ethnogenesis theory (abbreviated to Uralic theory) - came to dominate scholarship in Hungary about the origins of its largest single ethnic group – the Magyars. Applying a new technique called ‛Social Stratigraphic Mapping and Analysis’ (an adaption of the Knowledge Management technique of ‘Social Network Analysis’), the associations of the scholars were profiled using historical biographical data coupled with psychological profiling, to determine those factors – personal, institutional and temporal – that may have affected their views and caused them to adopt a stance on the issue of Magyar ethnogenesis. The study found evidence of manipulation of data and biased views both in the reporting of the data, and in the treatment of the scholars themselves, and that the data manipulation and treatment of the scholars not only impacted on the reporting of the artefact assemblages in the period but has had a lasting impact on Hungarian research into ethnogenesis since that time.

IN ENGLISH This diploma thesis deals with the issue of the rights of national minorities and their application in the inter-war Czechoslovakia. The aim of the diploma thesis is to analyze this question in one particular region. For this purpose I chose a linguistic island surrounded by majority of other languae. Yet I tried to provide a view of as much as possible points of view. This linguistic island should therefore contain a people of surrounding majority who create linguistic minority in observed region. The candidate for the appropriate object exploration is some german linguistic enclave in the middle of czech settlements. Or a region of significant czech minority amid german speaking milieu. As the best option I finally chose so called Wischauer Sprachinsel with a German settlement surrounded by Czech-speaking majority. Since the 19th century, the region began to increase the share of Czech-speaking population, which resulted in matryoshka doll consisting of a minority in a minority, the phenomenon typical for Lands of the Bohemian Crown at this time. However, in order to better explain the issue, I chose to compare the situation in the Wischauer Sprachinsel with another sore point for the Czech ethnographic map. The ideal candidate was Litvínov region in the Sudetenland, which was a mirror...