The thesis quantitatively measures the extent to which a selection of speeches of two Dutch and two UK politicians, Thierry Baudet, Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson, contain lexical...Show moreThe thesis quantitatively measures the extent to which a selection of speeches of two Dutch and two UK politicians, Thierry Baudet, Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson, contain lexical and grammatical indicators of a populist communication style.Show less
This thesis looks at positive and negative existentials in Finnish and Hungarian with the help of the framework of Denis Creissels’ 7 types of existentials for the positive constructions, as well...Show moreThis thesis looks at positive and negative existentials in Finnish and Hungarian with the help of the framework of Denis Creissels’ 7 types of existentials for the positive constructions, as well as Croft’s Cycle for the negative constructions. The findings are that neither language fits neatly within Creissels’ types, as both show several different constructions. Finnish has three distinct ways of forming existentials: ‘olla + locative’, ‘olla + agent participle of olla + locative’, or a ‘copula only’ construction. Hungarian has two different ways of forming existentials: with ‘lenni + locative’, as well as a ‘copula only’ construction. Not every construction is grammatical in every context. Often existentials cannot be clearly separated from locatives and possessives. Generally, word order and context work together with a specific construction to somewhat differentiate it from other constructions. However, multiple interpretations of a single construction are often possible, so this is not absolute. These findings go against multiple claims often made in conventional literature.Show less
In the study of the left periphery, the syntax of exclamatives is often overlooked. Although research on exclamatives exists (You 2014; Villa-García 2015), comparative research, such as that of Ono...Show moreIn the study of the left periphery, the syntax of exclamatives is often overlooked. Although research on exclamatives exists (You 2014; Villa-García 2015), comparative research, such as that of Ono & Lasnik (2006), is still even more sparse. In this paper, the left periphery of English and Spanish exclamatives will be explored. By comparing and contrasting data from the two languages, this thesis seeks to further expand upon our knowledge of the left periphery of exclamatives. Using the split CP hypothesis, first proposed by Rizzi (1997), as a framework, this paper specifically focuses on how complementizers are distributed within the left periphery of the exclamative. It explores the identification of exclamatives using the clause type’s syntactic and semantic properties as defined in Zanuttini & Portner (2003). In addition, this paper establishes that A-bar movement occurs in both English and Spanish exclamatives, while head movement occurs only in the latter. I construct data consisting of wh-exclamatives with various word orders and use native speaker input to determine whether these examples are grammatical. Based on these results I analyse the distribution of the constituents that undergo movement. The paper concludes that the syntactic structure of Spanish exclamatives can allow for topicalization and focalization, whereas that of English exclamatives cannot, and it proposes that the complementizers of English exclamatives are positioned higher than those of Spanish exclamatives without the emphatic particle que.Show less
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” The opening sentence of one of Jane Austen’s most famous romantic novel Pride...Show more“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” The opening sentence of one of Jane Austen’s most famous romantic novel Pride and Prejudice does not only claim a universal truth on love and marriage, it also provides insight into the perceptions of love and the norms and values that govern love in the 19th Century, as does the entire novel. However, society and the social-cultural norms governing it have changed immensely since the nineteenth-century world of Pride and Prejudice, it is therefore more than likely that a modern contemporary audience, without any social-historical or cultural background, would not fully understand the social and cultural setting of the novel. Furthermore, the practice of and ideas surrounding translation also underwent great change. This thesis researches whether the changes in socio-cultural norms and perceptions are noticeable in diachronic research of romantic literature in translation, on either a linguistic (stylistic) or cultural level, by conducting a comparative study of Dutch translations of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.Show less
