Possible uses of syntactic complexity annotation in a parallel corpus: The case of French -ant forms in converbal function and their Czech counterparts

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Olga Nádvorníková, Alexandr Rosen & Karolína Pavlíková (Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague):

Možnosti využití anotace syntaktické komplexity v paralelním korpusu: příklad francouzských tvarů na -ant v konverbální funkci a jejich českých protějšků (Possible uses of syntactic complexity annotation in a parallel corpus: The case of French -ant forms in converbal function and their Czech counterparts)

Časopis pro moderní filologii 107, 2025, č. 1, s. 80–101

https://doi.org/10.14712/23366591.2025.1.7

The abstract:

This study explores new research opportunities offered by the InterCorp v16ud parallel corpus, annotated using the Universal Dependencies scheme and enriched with syntactic complexity (SC) measures. The analysis focuses on French sentences containing -ant forms (gerund and present participle) and their Czech translations, with participles restricted to adverbial (converbal) usage for comparability. The results show significant SC variation in literary texts, with Czech translations displaying lower values than French originals. Coefficient of variation and correlation analyses suggest that participles may function as stylistic markers, unlike gerunds. At the sentence level, participles are associated with higher SC than gerunds, though the differences are moderate. The contrastive analysis reveals substantial reductions in clausal SC measures in the Czech translations, probably due to the replacement of subordination by coordination. These shifts affect SC information hierarchy, and occasionally temporal relations. The study underscores the potential of InterCorp v16ud for syntactic research in contrastive linguistics and beyond, while emphasizing the multidimensional nature of SC.