Volume 64, Issue 2

With the advent of large web-based corpora, Russian linguistics steps into the era of “big data”. But how useful are large datasets in our field? What are the advantages? Which problems arise? The present study seeks to shed light on these questions based on an investigation of the Russian paucal construction in the RuTenTen corpus, a web-based corpus with more than ten billion words. The focus is on the choice between adjectives in the nominative ( dve / tri / četyre starye knigi ) and genitive ( dve / tri / četyre staryx knigi ) in paucal constructions with the numerals dve , tri or četyre and a feminine noun. Three generalizations emerge. First, the large RuTenTen dataset enables us to identify predictors that could not be explored in smaller corpora. In particular, it is shown that predicates, modifiers, prepositions and word-order affect the case of the adjective. Second, we identify situations where the RuTenTen data cannot be straightforwardly reconciled with findings from earlier studies or there appear to be discrepancies between different statistical models. In such cases, further research is called for. The effect of the numeral ( dve , tri vs. četyre ) and verbal government are relevant examples. Third, it is shown that adjectives in the nominative have more easily learnable predictors that cover larger classes of examples and show clearer preferences for the relevant case. It is therefore suggested that nominative adjectives have the potential to outcompete adjectives in the genitive over time. Although these three generalizations are valuable additions to our knowledge of Russian paucal constructions, three problems arise. Large internet-based corpora like the RuTenTen corpus (a) are not balanced, (b) involve a certain amount of “noise”, and (c) do not provide metadata. As a consequence of this, it is argued, it may be wise to exercise some caution with regard to conclusions based on “big data”.

In this paper, I focused on the translation work by František Benhart which, due to its extensiveness, was of crucial importance to the reception of Slovenian literature in the Czech cultural environment of the second half of the 20th century. The aim of this study is the linguistic analysis of the literary translations of selected literary works of the canon of Slovenian literature into Czech. Translation can be considered to be a cultural transposition, i. e. a transfer of the text and cultural environment from the source language into the text and cultural environment of the target language. In the analyses, I focused on some partial issues that either dominated in the particular text (expressivity, phraseology, idiomatic or proper names) or occurred across the texts analysed (realia) and in this context, I searched for his specific translation solutions. I also examined short excerpts of the original text and its translated counterpart looking for the presence of stylistically marked elements. Based on the results of individual analyses, I presented Benhart’s specific translation approaches and I attempted to summarize and indicate the basic features of his translation method. Furthermore, my second objective was to point out the possible consequences of Benhart’s translation method for the reception of the Slovenian literature in the Czech cultural environment.

This paper is an attempt to elaborate the various functions of the -n-\-t- participles in Polish periphrastic constructions with the verb mieć ‘to have’. Starting with the well-known basic assumption that there are significant tensions between different adjectival and verbal features of the participles in various constructions an attempt to the thorough analysis and description of their argument and event structure in the mieć -constructions with one, two and three place verbs has been made. It has shown that the diathetic ambiguities of the participles are still present in the elaborated forms, which are encoding with transitive verbs above all causative events and in which the agent role cannot be specified at first glance. Therefore other relevant factors, such as object and subject properties, which can largely influence the agent interpretation, should be included in the analysis, too. Furthermore, it is also emphasized that the reorientation of the participles can depend on their position regarding the clause object. The preliminary theses and research results presented in this paper can be further developed and evaluated on data from other Slavonic languages which show comparable constructions with have -verbs.

The aim of the study is to compare translation quality and effectiveness (translator productivity) using measures of the automatic evaluation of machine translation output. The examined translation(s) was a legal text, translated from Slovak (mother tongue) into German. We distinguish human translation (HT), machine translation (MT) and post-edited MT (PEMT). For the evaluation we used our own tool, wherein were implemented the metrics of automatic MT evaluation. Analysis of Variance and Multiply Comparisons (Tukey HSD test) were applied to textual data. The results proved that in terms of productivity, regarding the expert and terminological knowledge of human translators, post-editing of MT is more effective than HT. On the other hand, in terms of quality (sentence structure or stylistics), regardless of time, HT is of a higher quality then MT, but similar to PEMT. The post-editors were affected by grammar and by stylistics of MT output, but post-edited a larger volume of MT than human translators translated.

The present contribution gives an overview of the prose by the Serbian writer Dragoslav Mihailović (1930) from the early skaz narratives to the documentary work Goli otok . This opus shows, as a whole, the following features: Mihailović tells whole life stories, which put more focus on action than on psychological description. Most of the stories are dominated by a subjective point of view and are marked linguistically (dialects, sociolects, vigorous colloquiality). Mihailović’s heroes are mostly on the social fringe, yet the view of these marginalized people is less socially critical than humanistic and individualistic. Most of the fictional characters are based on actual people, whom the writer got to know at close range in the course of his odyssey – the author has become an orphan at a young age and was put into prison on Goli otok island when he was barely 20 years old.

The essay deals with Josef Jedlička’s family chronicle Krev není voda (‘Blood is no water’), regarding the genealogical figures of thought which structure the text and organize the narration of family history. It examines how the Czech author adapts and redefines the traditional genre of the family chronicle for his writing purposes, as well as to what extent the reconstruction of one’s own family history and the narrative about social origin interlock. The thesis is that Krev není voda is an interesting example of a Central European family chronicle that works with a deterministic concept of origin and distinguishes itself from nostalgic, mythologizing representations of one’s own family history.