Languages in Contrast - Online First

This paper investigates conceptual and phraseological patterns from a cross-linguistic perspective. The focus of attention is on the fluidic motion uses of the highly polysemous verbs run and τρέχω ‘run’ in English and Modern Greek respectively. They are manner of motion verbs denoting the typically human, fast movement on ground and they are frequently cited in the literature on motion event encoding; yet, their extended use to denote motion of liquids is mentioned only in passing. The study thus provides a comprehensive description of that part of the semantic network of the two verbs that relates to fluidic motion (literally and figuratively). The contrastive approach taken combines cognitive semantics (Frame Semantics, Conceptual Metaphor and Metonymy Theory) with a phraseological view of language. Convergences and divergences are identified at a conceptual and phraseological level through a twofold corpus-based study involving comparable monolingual analysis and parallel corpus investigation.

The present study addresses a topic on the crossroads between contrastive linguistics and translation studies as we seek to investigate how the English verbal gerund is used in translated and non-translated English, as well as how it is translated into German and Dutch. Instead of merely analysing frequencies throughout a corpus, we aim to map out usage profiles and translation strategies through a multi-methodological and multifactorial approach, thereby offering a more contextualized approach to the English verbal gerund. On the basis of data from CroCo and DPC, two parallel and comparable corpora for the language pairs English-German and English-Dutch, a set of over 6,000 verbal gerunds was annotated. A hierarchical configural frequency analysis was conducted to uncover different usage profiles or ‘types’ of verbal gerunds. Second, a conditional inference tree and a random forest analysis were modelled to select the best predictors to help distinguish between a nominal or a clausal translation solution. In addition to providing more insight into the status of English verbal gerunds in translation, this paper offers new perspectives on two broader debates in contrastive linguistics and translation studies, viz. the ‘loose-fit’ or ‘tight-fit’ status of constructions and the treatment of unique items respectively.

This paper is a contrastive corpus-based study of similative demonstratives, a major means of expressing similarity and ad-hoc categorization. It explores the divergence between the Czech demonstrative takový and its English dictionary equivalent such in their “atypical” – extended, or non-phoric – uses. Through the triangulation of comparable fiction texts, their translation (from a bidirectional translation corpus) and spoken language data (from comparable monolingual corpora of spoken English and Czech), converging evidence is found of the development of discourse functions of the Czech takový which shows an increase in its intersubjectivity, not attested with such, but common with the English type nouns sort, kind, and type. These cross-linguistic parallels are not only relevant for current discussions on intersubjectivity and intersubjectification, but they also call for further research on general patterns of ad-hoc categorization.

The present study examines the fate of the neoclassical combining form pseudo- in eight European languages, belonging to Germanic (Danish, Dutch, English, German and Swedish) and Romance (French, Italian, Spanish). In order to gain a better understanding of the synchronic morphological behaviour and productivity of pseudo- words in these languages, we carry out a cross-linguistic corpus analysis and compare the morphological and distributional properties of pseudo-. We also analyse its debonding behaviour and categorical flexibility in the set of languages and correlate this property with its productivity. The results of the corpus study are discussed against the typological background of the so-called Germanic and Romance Sandwiches.