| Title: | The use of determiners in English historical texts: example of the book Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945 |
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| Authors: | ID Milošič, Karmen (Author)
ID Plemenitaš, Katja (Mentor) More about this mentor...  |
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| Files: |  UNI_Milosic_Karmen_2013.pdf (1,84 MB)
MD5: B6ED6B12696C3A2E5F261B4525E0E86A
PID: 20.500.12556/dkum/ddfdcae9-c9ea-436b-a146-1513e683cc73
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| Language: | English |
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| Work type: | Undergraduate thesis |
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| Typology: | 2.11 - Undergraduate Thesis |
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| Organization: | FF - Faculty of Arts
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| Abstract: | The theoretical part of the thesis is based on Biber's Grammar of spoken and written English (1999), and Blaganje's Modern English Grammar (2005). I examined all types of determiners which can function as a modifier in a nominal phrase. So, the focus was on articles, possessive determiners, demonstrative determines, quantifiers, numerals, semi-determiners and wh-determiners. In theoretical part I presented the use of these determiners across different registers (prose, academic literature, fiction, news).
The main purpose of the empirical part was an analysis of nominal phrases in order to get data about the use of determiners in English historical texts. The analysis was based on a passage consisting of 5 pages from Tony Judt's Postwar: A history of Europe Since 1945 (2005). In the analysis I focused on those nominal phrases which functioned in a sentence as a subject or an object.
An analysis of the selected passage of the historical text gave the following results.
The most headwords in a nominal phrase are premodified by an article, adjective or some other noun on noun phrase, while the most common postmodifier is a prepositional phrase. Among articles, the most frequently used is the definite article. The most frequent use of the zero article is with unique reference, of the definite article with cataphoric and of indefinite article with specific reference. Possessive determiners are, as is typical for academic writing, quite rarely used in the analyzed passage. More frequent are those with non-human reference (its, their). Also the use of demonstrative determiners is in the analyzed passage consistend with the use of demonstrative determiners in academic prose in general. In my analysis I found only a few quantifiers functioning as a determiner in a nominal phrase. The quantifier both is the most frequently used quantifier. Surprisingly, there are only four examples of numerals in the selected historical text as a part of a nominal phrase. But my assumption that there will be more examples of cardinals than ordinals was correct. Semi-determiners are very rare, I found only two examples of the semi-determiner other as a premodifier in a nominal phrase. There are no examples of such, which is otherwise the most frequent semi-determiner in academic prose. There were no cases wh-determiners as a part of a nominal phrase found in the analyzed passage. Wh- determiners are used only as a part of a postmodifying structure in a relative clause.
The research was carried out manually, while the statistical results are shown in graphs made by the computer. The methods used in thesis are the descriptive method and causal non-experimenting method. |
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| Keywords: | noun phrase, determiners, articles, possessive determiners, demonstrative determines, quantifiers, numerals, semi-determiners, wh-determiners, determiners in historical texts |
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| Place of publishing: | Ptuj |
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| Publisher: | [K. Milošič] |
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| Year of publishing: | 2013 |
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| PID: | 20.500.12556/DKUM-40272 |
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| UDC: | 811.111(043.2) |
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| COBISS.SI-ID: | 19893512 |
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| NUK URN: | URN:SI:UM:DK:IO5YWYRR |
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| Publication date in DKUM: | 04.06.2013 |
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| Views: | 2166 |
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| Downloads: | 108 |
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| Metadata: |    |
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| Categories: | FF
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