This MA thesis examines semantic and syntactic valency of German and English verbal internationalisms starting with the letter M. The term valency denotes the ability of a word, especially a verb, to combine with the particular patterns of other sentence constituents. Valency defines the ability of the verb to open up free spaces in a sentence that must or can be filled. Verbs can therefore determine the overall structure of the sentence, which is why the verb is given a central role within the sentence hierarchy and is considered to be the focal point for the valency theory. Although the focus of this thesis is primarily on the English and German language, it also includes the Slovene and Croatian equivalents of the chosen internationalisms. The contrastive analysis is carried out according to the pattern of verbs by VALBU (2004) and E-VALBU. Each verb variant is provided with meaning, sentence structure and the example from the online corpora.
The analysis shows that most verbal internationalisms in all four languages are both semantically and syntactically completely equivalent and that most of the verbal internationalisms require two obligatory arguments. Some exceptions prove that not all verb variants have international verbal equivalents in other languages, which leads to potential false friends that might be misleading or problematic for language learners and translators.
|
