<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

In my research, I replicate two fundamental hypotheses established by Jakob et al. (2011): 1) Persons with aphasia (PWA) produce more gestures than healthy control persons (HCP) during interpretation of texts; 2) The more speech-restricted a person with aphasia is, the more gestures he/she produces during the interpretation of a text.
I work with 6 persons with diagnosed aphasia and 10 healthy control persons (or persons with no evident speech deficiency). From a methodological point of view, I point out the necessity to include a description of non-verbal elements in language description and, at the same time, to describe the data of the damage in persons with aphasia. I also introduce some possible perspectives for exploring the categories and the extent of speech damage in persons with aphasia and various ways in which they compensate for verbal deficiency with the aid of gestures. From the viewpoint of data processing methods, on the one hand, I explore the speech parameters: among others, quantity of words, and, on the other hand, the gesture parameters: quantity of gestures, diversity of gestures, etc.
I find that Czech aphasic persons do use gestures to support their restricted verbal production and to substitute for verbal production where they do not have access to any given lexical items. My data also correlate with the general assumptions on speech production when considering different types of aphasia.
</abstract>

The relationship between speech and gestures in persons with aphasia: Evidence from the Czech perspective

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

This paper explores stance complement clauses in the genre of academic discourse, analysing stance complement clauses controlled by verbs in economics research articles written in English by non-native writers. Following Biber’s taxonomy (2006) of common lexico-grammatical features used for stance analyses, the results of the study show that epistemic verbs of certainty and likelihood are an important means of communicating knowledge in this genre and thus, form an inseparable part of academic research writing. Moreover, the study seeks to analyse the contrast between <italic>stance to-infinitives</italic> and <italic>stance that-clauses</italic> in the studied corpus. While <italic>stance that-clauses</italic> relate mainly to the category of certainty; on the contrary, <italic>stance to-infinitive clauses</italic> are consciously or subconsciously chosen to lessen the risk of a face-threatening act and typically refer to writers’ sensory experience (e.g. verbs such as <italic>seem</italic>, <italic>appear</italic>, etc.). The findings suggest that research papers from the field of economics demonstrate a clear preference for factive verbs over non-factive verbs.
</abstract>

Stance complement clauses controlled by verbs in academic research papers

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

This paper examines the use of the modal auxiliaries <italic>can</italic> and <italic>could</italic> in speech acts produced by university students of English. Its aim is to explore syntactic patterns, semantic features and pragmatic functions of utterances containing <italic>can</italic>/<italic>could</italic> in <italic>Corpus of Czech Students’ Spoken English</italic>. Taking account of pragmatic factors, including broader linguistic and extralinguistic context, the analysis attempts to identify the illocutionary forces conveyed by the modalized speech acts excerpted from the corpus dialogues. The findings indicate that the modal verbs are commonly employed as a modifying device in indirect speech acts, particularly in conventionalized directives. As for their frequency of occurrence, <italic>can</italic> proves to be a widely used modal auxiliary in spoken learner discourse, whereas the more remote <italic>could</italic> appears in the corpus much less frequently in that it is associated with a higher degree of diffidence.
</abstract>

Modalized speech acts in a spoken learner corpus: The case of <italic>can</italic> and <italic>could</italic>

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

The present work seeks to contribute to the fields of translation and bilingual acquisition focusing on the particular case of natural translation/interpreting of a single Slovak/English/German balanced trilingual child between 0;03 and 8;01 years. Natural interpreting is a strategy used by bilinguals whereby a message expressed in one language (source language = SL) is reproduced in another (target language = TL). Our study is based on two premises: 1. Translation in a bilingual child is an innate skill which can be acquired without formal training and is developed through guidance and practice (Harris, 1978); and 2. Natural interpreting can occur within different combinations of languages. We address the issue of bilingual competence and in particular the relationship that exists between linguistic competence and performance in the process of interpretation activity in the bilingual child. The first aim of the study is to reveal the social-academic context and the main sources of linguistic input, which had an important effect on the speech development of the child. The second aim of the study is to show that a trilingual child was able to become a sophisticated interpreter as she gradually moved through stages of pre-translation, autotranslation and transduction to more complex forms of interpretation (Harris and Sherwood, 1978; Harris, 1976 and 1978). The third aim of the study is to document the types of errors produced by the child and through error analysis and statistical data reveal whether these errors may hinder the communication of accurate meaning in the TL. The translation competence of the bilingual child is analysed via different types of spontaneous, elicited and experimental data gathered from the child’s longitudinal production recorded by the researcher in diary annotations, audio recordings and video recordings. Examples of the child’s interpretations presented in this paper are transcribed in the CHAT format. The results of our study demonstrate that a trilingual child acquiring three languages in a bilingual community with the bilingual-monolingual interaction strategy used by parents at home can become a competent interpreter by the age of 8;01 years and deliver messages quite accurately in the TL regardless of the directionality of interpretation. The results of error analysis show that the type of errors produced by the child in the process of interpretation are mainly morphological and occasionally syntactic or intrusion errors, which do not lead to misinterpretation of the meaning of original message in the TL.
</abstract>

The skill of natural interpreting in a trilingual child

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

Perfume descriptions serve as an important persuasive tool in fragrance advertising. Scents traditionally elude clear verbal description, yet perfumes are nowadays frequently sold online, with no direct olfactory experience on the part of the consumer at the point of purchase. The products are thus often represented by metaphorical means depicting a desirable experience or portraying attractive identities of wearers, including stereotypical images of men and women. This article analyses 80 e-shop fragrance descriptions equally divided among adverts targeted at males and females. The sample texts were collected randomly from British and American e-shops, with the primary research objective to determine how male and female identities are reflected in these descriptions. The method of discourse analysis was applied and the AntConc 3.4.4 toolkit was used to calculate the frequency of words and their collocations. It was found that current female perfume descriptions on e-shops generally suppress gender stereotypes quite successfully, while gender stereotyping is more prominent in male perfume descriptions. The possible causes as well as ramifications of this disparity are also discussed.
</abstract>

Katarína Nemčoková Katarína Nemčoková Tomas Bata University in Zlín

Gender identities in e-shop perfume descriptions

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

The study identifies, classifies and analyses errors in machine translation (MT) outputs of journalistic texts from English into Slovak, using error analysis. The research results presented in the study are pioneering, since the issue of machine translation – with its strong interdisciplinary character and novelty – has not yet been studied in the Slovak academic environment. The evaluation of the errors is based on a framework for classification of MT errors devised by Vaňko, which was arranged for the Slovak language. The study discusses and explains the issues of sentence structure, including predicativeness, syntactic-semantic correlativeness, and a modal and communication sentence framework. We discovered that the majority of the errors are related to the categories of agreement, word order and nominal morpho-syntax. This fact clearly correlates with features of journalistic texts, in which nominal structures and nouns in all realizations are used to a great extent. Moreover, there are some serious differences between the languages which limit and affect the quality of translation.
</abstract>

Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra

Sentence-structure errors of machine translation into Slovak

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Topics in Linguistics

 Topics in Linguistics is a double-blind, peer-reviewed international scientific journal issued twice a year by the Department of English and American Studies, the Faculty of Arts, at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra.  The journal aims to foster interdisciplinary, cross-linguistic and cross-cultural approaches to language research. Topics in Linguistics seeks to publish high-quality, original papers which adopt diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives in exploring a wide range of current issues in linguistic studies. Although papers on world languages are considered, we especially encourage submissions dealing with the majority and minority languages spoken in Europe.  Subject areas of study include, but are not limited to:   general linguistics (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics)  interfaces with general linguistics (neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics)  cognitive linguistics  comparative linguistics  corpus linguistics  applied linguistics  stylistics  (critical) discourse analysis  intercultural communication   Topics in Linguistics is published in English. Authors are requested to submit their papers (doc. format) anonymously. The authors will receive an automatic confirmation email and are notified within one month of submission of the results of the initial screening of their manuscript.From Volume 13, 2014 onwards, Topics in Linguistics has been published by De Gruyter Open (now Sciendo). Since 2016 Topics in Linguistics has been an electronic-only journal.  Acceptance Rate (2020-2021)   11.85%   Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 