Syntactic constancy of the object between English and Czech in fiction and academic prose

Abstract

The present study investigates the constancy of the syntactic function of the object between English and Czech. Syntactic constancy is understood as identical syntactic representation of lexical items in parallel texts taken from different languages. The analysis of instances of syntactic divergence is carried out in order to test the assumption that syntactic structure is hierarchically subordinate to the information structure, i.e. the universal validity of the principle of end focus. The two languages under study, English and Czech, provide typologically suitable subject matter in representing, respectively, an analytic and an inflectional language system which involve different hierarchies of the word order principles. 1 In contrast to previous research, the present treatment is based on a substantially larger corpus (1000 divergent instances) and includes two different stylistic varieties, fiction and academic prose. These two novel aspects are considered to be relevant not only for verifying or modifying the findings obtained from studies investigating other clause elements2 and/or based on fiction alone, but also, more importantly, for capturing and specifying other potential factors conducive to syntactic divergence both in different languages and in different styles.

Tato dizertacni prace se zabyva zkoumanim vetneclenske konstantnosti pfedmetu mezi anglictinou a cestinou. Vetneclenskou konstantnosti se rozumi identicka vetneclenska realizace stejneho lexikalniho prvku ve vice jazycich. Srovnavanim paralelnich textu v anglictine a cestine urcujeme miru vetneclenske konstantnosti pfedmetu, analyzujeme pfipady neshodnych protejsku pfedmetu a hledame pficiny divergence. Na rozdil od dfivejsich studii zkoumame vzorky ze dvou ruznych funkcnich stylu. Vyzkum konstantnosti syntakticke funkce mezi jazyky se provadi se zamerem ovefit hypotezu 0 univerzalni platnosti principu koncoveho postaveni jadra vypovedi. Zde vyuzivame typologickych odlisnosti mezi anglictinou a cestinou, jez se projevuji v odlisne hierarchii slovoslednych principu. Cesky slovosled je urcovan primarne aktualneclenskou funkci, resp. principem zakladniho rozlozeni vypovedni dynamicnosti (VD). V anglictine je vsak primarnim slovoslednYro principem princip gramaticky, ktery muze byt s principem zakladniho rozlozeni VD v rozporu. Zmeny v linearnim fazeni prvku lze ovsem v anglictine dosahnout pomoci ruznych syntaktickych konstrukci. Podle ovefovane hypotezy pfedpokladame snahu 0 dosazeni identickeho linearniho fazeni v obou jazycich, jez se pfi uziti techto syntaktickych prostfedku v anglictine muze projevit...