Cover not available

In:Time in Languages, Languages in Time
Edited by Anna Čermáková, Thomas Egan, Hilde Hasselgård and Sylvi Rørvik
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 101] 2021
► pp. 283–304

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

The expression of time in English and Czech children’s literature

A contrastive phraseological perspective

 | Charles University, Prague
 | Charles University, Prague
 | Charles University, Prague
Published online: 17 September 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.101.12mal
Abstract
This chapter explores the expression of the concept of time in children’s narrative fiction cross-linguistically, comparing Czech and English. Specifically, it analyses multi-word units and patterns which the respective languages employ when referring to time. The new Engrammer software was developed to facilitate the extraction of n-grams with lemmatised cores and positional mobility, making it possible to compare temporal patterns in English with those used in highly inflectional Czech with variable word-order. The results of the study suggest that in children’s fiction in both languages, time plays an important role in structuring the text, frequently creating dramatic effects. Even though the formal means of expressing time may differ between English and Czech (e.g. diminutives in Czech vs. phrasal description in English), register appears to substantially influence the way time is framed in children’s literature in both languages.
Article outline
  • 1.Language comparison, n-grams, and children’s literature
  • 2.Expressing time with adverbials
  • 3.The corpora
  • 4.The method: From frequent temporal expressions via n-grams to temporal patterns
    • 4.1Frequency lists
    • 4.2N-grams
    • 4.3The tool used: Engrammer
    • 4.4Temporal patterns
    • 4.5An illustration of the method: time and doba
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Textual functions of temporal patterns
    • 5.2A contrastive look at temporal patterns
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Corpora and Tools
References (33)
References
Biber, Douglas. 2006. University Language. A Corpus-based Study of University Registers [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 23]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Conrad, Susan & Cortes, Viviana. 2004. If you look at … Lexical bundles in university lectures and textbooks. Applied Linguistics 25: 371–405. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas & Conrad, Susan. 2009. Register, Genre and Style. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Čermáková, Anna & Chlumská, Lucie. 2016. Jazyk dětské literatury: kontrastivní srovnání angličtiny a češtiny. In Jazykové paralely, Anna Čermáková, Lucie Chlumská & Markéta Malá (eds), 162–187. Prague: NLN. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Expressing PLACE in children’s literature. Testing the limits of the n-gram method in contrastive linguistics. In Cross-linguistic Correspondences: From Lexis to Genre [Studies in Language Companion Series 191], Thomas Egan & Hildegunn Dirdal (eds), 75–95. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cortes, Viviana 2008. A comparative analysis of lexical bundles in academic history writing in English and Spanish. Corpora 3(1): 43–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daly, Leslie E. 1998. Confidence limits made easy: Interval estimation using a substitution method. American Journal of Epidemiology 147(8): 783–790. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daneš, František, Hlavsa, Zdeněk, Grepl, Miroslav et al.. 1987. Mluvnice češtiny 3. Skladba. Prague: Academia. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ebeling, Jarle & Ebeling, Signe Oksefjell. 2013. Patterns in Contrast [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 58]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ebeling, Signe Oksefjell & Ebeling, Jarle. 2017. A cross-linguistic comparison of recurrent word combinations in a comparable corpus of English and Norwegian fiction. In Contrasting English and other Languages through Corpora, Markéta Janebová, Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski & Michaela Martinková (eds), 2–31. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan T., Newman, John & Shaoul, Cyrus. 2011. N-grams and the Clustering of Registers. The ELR Journal 5. <[URL]> (11 May 2019). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hasselgård, Hilde. 2017. Temporal expressions in English and Norwegian. In Contrasting English and other Languages through Corpora, Markéta Janebová, Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski & Michaela Martinková (eds), 75–101. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunt, Peter. 2005. Understanding Children's Literature. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunt, Sally. 2015. Representations of gender and agency in the Harry Potter Series. In Corpora and Discourse Studies. Integrating Discourse and Corpora, Paul Baker & Anthony McEnery (eds), 266–284. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karlík, Petr. 2017. Příslovečné určení času. In CzechEncy – Nový encyklopedický slovník češtiny, Petr Karlík, Marek Nekula & Jana Pleskalová (eds). <[URL]> (23 November 2019). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Knowles, Murray & Malmkjaer, Kirsten. 1996. Language and Control in Children’s Literature. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindquist, Hans & Levin, Magnus. 2008. Foot and mouth. The phrasal patterns of two frequent nouns. In Phraseology. An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Sylviane Granger & Fanny Meunier (eds), 143–158. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mahlberg, Michaela. 2013. Corpus Stylistics and Dickens's Fiction. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Navratil, Jiri & Werner Zuhlke. 1997. Double bigram-decoding in phonotactic language identification. In IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Vol. 2, 1115–1118. IEEE. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nikolajeva, Maria. 2004. Narrative theory and children’s literature. In International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, Vol. 1, 2nd edn, Peter Hunt (ed.), 166–178. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: ‎Pearson Longman. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sainsbury, Lisa. 2014. Chronotopes and heritage: Time and memory in contemporary children’s literature. In Modern Children’s Literature. An Introduction, 2nd edn, Catherine Butler & Kimberley Reynolds (eds), 187–201. Houndmills: Palgrave. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schukat-Talamazzini, Ernst-Günter, Hendrych, R. Kompe, Ralf & Niemann Heinrich. 1995. Permugram language models. In Fourth European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (EUROSPEECH), 1773–1776. Madrid. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Šebestová, Denisa & Malá, Markéta. 2019. Expressing time in English and Czech children’s literature: A contrastive n-gram based study of typologically distant languages. In Language Use and Linguistic Structure. Proceedings of the Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium 2018, Joseph Emonds, Markéta Janebová & Ludmila Veselovská (eds), 469–483. Olomouc: Palacký University. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinclair, John. 2004. Trust the Text. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stubbs, Michael. 2007. An example of frequent English phraseology: Distributions, structures and functions. In Corpus Linguistics Twenty-Five Years On, Roberta Facchinetti (ed.), 89–105. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Paul & Sealey, Alison. 2007. Through children’s eyes? Corpus evidence of the features of children’s literature. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 12(1): 1–23. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wild, Kate, Kilgarriff, Adam & Tugwell, David. 2012. The Oxford Children’s Corpus: Using a children’s corpus in lexicography. International Journal of Lexicography 26(2): 190–218. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corpora and Tools
Křen, Michal et al.. 2018. Korpus SYN-7. Prague: Ústav Českého národního korpusu FF UK. <[URL]>Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Milička, Jiří. 2019. Engrammer. <[URL]>Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
BNC Consortium. 2007. The British National Corpus, XML edition. Oxford Text Archive. <[URL]>Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue