How often do people, even native speakers, wonder, on hearing a familiar proverb, such as Much Ado about Nothing, what ado in this proverb really means? Most will know the proverb but their knowledge of ado is often restricted to a particular lexical neighbourhood without realising that it is in… read more
This paper introduces InterCorp, a parallel corpus including texts in Czech and 27 other languages, available for online searches via a web interface. After discussing some issues and merits of a multilingual resource we argue that it has an important role especially for languages with fewer native… read more
From a linguistic point of view, spoken corpora should be primary for research but that has not been the case so far. Hence, the problem of what should be included in the corpora has hardly ever been considered. Often it would appear that anything spoken is included on an ad hoc basis. The need… read more
With a brief outline of the history of frequency dictionaries of the past, a renewed need for these dictionaries, based on modern large corpora, is observed. A linguistic background and some criticism of what has been done is offered. It is stressed that, next to the traditional and predominant… read more
The paper examines two kinds of modality exponents and their interlingual relationships, using an aligned parallel minicorpus of two contemporary Czech originals (drama and novel) and their English translations. It focuses on four most frequent Czech adverbial particles of… read more
The paper is concerned with problems of methodology. Against this background, the situation of today's corpora is discussed and some fields are identified as being in a far from satisfactory shape. The place of corpora in linguistics is briefly looked at, suggesting that structuralist tradition is… read more
Against the background of some of the major linguistic problems which demand our attention and which should point to some badly-needed criteria, the brief history and structure of the Czech National Corpus is outlined. The points seen as open include differences between various languages in their… read more