Translating Phrasal Verbs into Czech

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of Englishand American StudiesEnglish Language and Literature

Mgr. Jarmila Dezortov

Phrasal Verbs and Their Translations into Czech

(A corpus-based study)

Masters Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Renata Kamenick, Ph.D.

2010I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

..

Authors signatureAcknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor , Mgr. Renata Kamenick, Ph.D., for her kind help, valuable advice and encouragement.

Table of Contents

3Introduction

51. Phrasal Verbs in English

51.1Definitions

61.2Characteristic Features of Phrasal Verbs

71.3Defining VocabularyAdverbs, Prepositions and Adverb-Preposition Words

81.4Phrasal Verbs and Their Meanings

132. Categories of Phrasal Verbs and Their Influence on Syntax

132.1Categories of Phrasal Verbs

152.2 The Syntactic Behaviour of Phrasal Verbs

152.2.1Intransitive Phrasal Verbs

152.2.2Transitive Phrasal Verbs

162.2.3Phrasal Verbs which are Both Transitive and Intransitive

172.3 The Position of the Object in Separable Phrasal Verbs

182.4Phrasal Verbs and Style

202.5Frequent Phrasal Verbs

243. Dictionaries Suitable for Research of Phrasal Verbs

243.1Dictionaries

263.2Monolingual Dictionaries

26Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus

27Oxford Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs

273.3 Bilingual Dictionaries

27Velk anglicko-esk slovnk (LEDA 2006) by Josef Fronek (Comprehensive English-Czech Dictionary)

29Lexicon 5 Platinum

30Anglicko-esk slovnk frzovch sloves (Luk Vodika)

32Web MetaTrans Multilingual Meta-Translator

344. Electronic Tools

344.1What is a Corpus?

354.2Types of Corpora

384.3 Corpora Projects

38World English Corpus

39Oxford Corpus of the English Language

40The Czech National Corpus

40The InterCorp Corpus

42Kacenka

43Kacenka 2

44Other Corpora

455.Practical Part

455.1Introduction

455.2Hypotheses

455.3The Method of Research

475.4CARRY OUT

515.5GO BACK

565.6 GO ON

625.7PICK UP

685.8SET UP

745.9Data Analysis and Conclusions

765.10Practical Tips for Translating Phrasal Verbs

78Conclusion

81Bibliography

1RESUME

2RESUM

4APPENDICES

Introduction

Phrasal verbs are generally considered one of the areas of the English language which is very hard for non-native speakers to master. As long as the meaning of the phrasal verb in a sentence is literal they are not considered a problem. However, when it comes to their idiomatic and non-literal meanings, speakers of English as a foreign language often need assistance with finding the right translations or at least with discovering the meaning of the phrasal verbs in the given context. The aim of the present thesis is to introduce the concept of phrasal verbs and examine and assess the suitability of available tools for investigating English phrasal verbs and their translations into Czech.

The thesis is divided into two parts: theoretical and practical. The theoretical part consists of four chapters. Its aim is to provide information on phrasal verbs, dictionaries and corpora. The theoretical part is the basis for research in the practical part.

In the first chapter the term phrasal verb is defined and characteristic features are listed. This is followed by definitions of other related terms which are important for this thesis, e.g. the differences between particles and prepositions are explained. The first chapter concludes with two subchapters which deal with semantics of phrasal verbs. The subchapter Phrasal Verbs and Their Meanings explains how phrasal verbs are created. It mentions the role of particles in phrasal verbs and how awareness of particle meanings can help EFL speakers understand phrasal verbs.

In the second chapter phrasal verbs are divided into categories which are described. Style and syntax are also taken into account. The syntactic part focuses on the position of the object in separable phrasal verbs. The subchapter Frequent Phrasal Verbs is concerned with research on phrasal verbs and their frequency in English and in the English language of EU documents. The translations of the first five most frequent phrasal verbs are then examined in the practical part of this thesis.

In the third chapter differences between monolingual and bilingual dictionaries are dealt with and dictionaries which are available for Czech speakers and can be used for looking up phrasal verbs are described. These dictionaries are then used in the practical part of the thesis.

The last chapter in the theoretical part deals with corpora. It introduces the term corpus and describes important corpora projects.

The theoretical part of the thesis serves as a basis for the practical part. Dictionaries and corpora are used to analyse how some phrasal verbs are translated into Czech. The research is carried out using five most frequent phrasal verbs chosen according to a paper published by Gardner and Davies (carry out, go back, go on, pick up, set up). Translations of these phrasal verbs into Czech were looked up in dictionaries and then compared with translations retrieved from parallel corpora (InterCorp, Kacenka and Kacenka 2). The outcome of this research should serve as a source of inspiration for translators from English into Czech and for readers interested in the multitude of potential translations.

1. Phrasal Verbs in English1.1Definitions

According to Alexander (1988: 152), one of the most common characteristics of the English verb is that it can combine with prepositions and adverb particles. Thus this category of English verbs is worth investigating. According to Alexander, these verbs are called phrasal verbs.

In his Phrasal Verb Organiser Flower (2002: 7) gives a simple definition of phrasal verbs aimed at EFL learners: A phrasal verb is a verb plus one or two particles. Alexander describes a phrasal verb as any commonly used combination of verb + preposition or verb + adverb particle. Povey (1990: 5) defines the term phrasal verb as a combination of an ordinary (one-word) verb (e.g. come, give, put) and an adverbial or prepositional particle (e.g. in off, up), or sometimes both, which constitutes a single semantic and syntactic unit. Both Alexander and Povey state that the term phrasal verb is nowadays used to cover all three categories: phrasal verbs (combining with an adverbial particle e.g. go off), prepositional verbs (combining with a prepositional particle e.g. come across) and phrasal prepositional verbs (combining with both e.g. put up with). Kraus (2002: 27) defines phrasal verbs as verbs combined with adverbial particles only (not with prepositions).

Dempsey et al. define phrasal verbs as verbs plus one or more particles that behave as a syntactic and semantic, and often idiomatic, unit. Greenbaum (1974: 629) defines a phrasal verb as a multi-word verb in which a verb is combined with an adverb to form an idiomatic unit.

To sum up, the term phrasal verb is used in two senses:

in the broad sense verb-combinations with adverbial particles or prepositions

in the narrow sense verb-combinations with adverbial particles only

Further on, Alexander, who defines phrasal verbs in the broad sense, then states 3 types of combinations (1988: 152):

essential combinations e.g. listen to non-essential combinations not essential but reinforce the meaning of the verbs (e.g. to drink up)

idiomatic combinations the primary meaning of a verb completely changes and a new verb is formed (e.g. to make up = to invent)Sroka (1972: 13) also mentions several alternative terms used for the category of phrasal verbs. These include: compound verbs, group-verbs, verb-adverb combination, phrasal verbs, merged verbs, verb-adverb locution, separable compounds, poly-word verbs, separable verbs. Currently, the term phrasal verb prevails and many of Srokas terms are not applicable anymore. Occasionally, the terms compound verbs and group-verbs are encountered. For this reason the term phrasal verbs is used throughout this thesis.1.2Characteristic Features of Phrasal Verbs

This chapter attempts to sum up the characteristic features of phrasal verbs as outlined in the book Phrasal Verbs and How to Use Them. According to Povey (1990: 811), there are certain features that are common to all phrasal verbs.

1. Replaceability by a one-word verb this criterion is used to include verbs in the category of phrasal verbs as not all phrasal verbs have their one-word synonym (e.g. to make up apply cosmetics)

2. Idiomaticity this criterion does not apply to all combinations because not all phrasal verbs are idiomatic (e.g. Increased transport costs will put up prices.)3. Passivization or the possibility of passive formation is characteristic of transitive phrasal verbs (e. g. Rita looked after the children. - The children were looked after.)4. Questions formed from phrasal verbs have the pronominal form (who (m) or what and not an adverbial form (e.g. where). This fact distinguishes phrasal verbs from one-word verbs with prepositional phrases (e.g. John called up the man. X John called from the office, Who (m) did John call up? X Where did John call from?)

5. Adverbial particle (unlike an ordinary adverb) in phrasal verbs can usually stand before a noun object (e.g. Call up the secretary. or Call the secretary up.)6. Stress is a criterion that differentiates between adverbial particles and prepositions. (The differences between adverbial particles and prepositions are explained in the following subchapter.)

The criteria suggested by Povey show that it is very difficult to distinguish between phrasal verbs on the one hand and verbs with adverbs or prepositions on the other. 1.3Defining Vocabulary Adverbs, Prepositions and Adverb-Preposition Words

This section deals with the difference between adverbs and prepositions.

Sroka (1972: 37) in his work The Syntax of English Phrasal Verbs uses the following three distributional classes of particles for his research:

Adverbs: away, back, forth, forward, out

Prepositions: at, for, from, into, of, upon, with

Adverb-Preposition words: about, across, along, around, by, down, in, off, on, over, past, round, to, through, under, up

According to Alexander (1988: 122), the word adverb (ad-verb) suggests the idea of adding to the meaning of a verb. They specify the action in a sentence by modifying a verb i.e. by telling us how, when, where, etc. something happens or is done e.g. She sent him away. Prepositions are used in front of nouns or noun phrases, pronouns or gerund to express a relationship between one person, thing, event, etc. and another (Alexander 1988: 144). Prepositions always have an object.

Certain words, such as in, off, up, function either as prepositions or as adverb particles. When such words are followed by an object, they function as prepositions; when there is no object, they are adverbial particles:

preposition: The children are in the house.

adverb: The children have just gone in. (Alexander 1988: 123)

According to Quirk et al. (1974: 818), a sentence with a verb with a prepositional phrase can be analyzed in two different ways. He analyses the example sentence He looked at the girl. The prepositional phrase looked at the girl can be regarded as adverbial, or the sentence can be divided into a phrasal verb looked at and prepositional object the girl. The two analyses can be regarded as different, but equally valid and complementary ways of looking at the same structure. (Quirk et al. 1974: 818).

1.4Phrasal Verbs and Their Meanings

In her article Metaphor and Phrasal Verbs Moon claims that many phrasal verbs are metaphorical (2005: LS5). Metaphorical means non-literal language use, in which one thing is described in terms normally associated with something else (Anderson, Corbett 2009: 196). The fact that phrasal verbs are metaphorical can help translators understand a phrasal verb without knowing the exact translation into Czech.

The following list provides a simple overview of the most common particles and the meanings they have in phrasal verbs, including their metaphorical meanings based on Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus. A more detailed review with examples is provided in the dictionary.

Particles and their meanings

AROUND

1. move (move in many directions)

2. spending time (spend time doing nothing, or without having a clear purpose)

3. turning (turn to face the opposite direction)

4. surrounding (surround someone or something)

5. avoiding (avoid a problem or subject)

6. treating badly (treat someone who has less authority in an unkind way)

AWAY

1. moving (move farther from a person, place, or thing)

2. making someone or something move (make someone or something move farther from a person, place, or thing)

3. continuous action (do something continuously or with a lot of effort, especially something boring or difficult)

BACK

1. returning (return to a place or position)

2. moving backwards (move away from the front)

3. preventing (prevent someone from moving forwards)

DOWN

1. moving downwards to a lower position (move to a lower place or position)

2. placing something on a surface (set something on a surface)

IN

1. entering a place or space (enter a room, a building etc, or let someone do this)

2. putting something into a space (put something into a space, a container etc)

3. inside, not outside (inside a building or other place, not outside it)

4. keeping inside, preventing from leaving (prevent someone from leaving a room, a building etc)

5. moving inwards (move inwards towards a certain point)

INTO

1. entering (enter a room, a building etc)

2. inserting (put someone inside a room or container, or through a surface)

3. hitting (hit someone or something that you are moving towards)

OFF

1. leaving (go away: leave a place or position)

2. removing (remove or get rid of something)

3. starting (start happening, or start doing something)

4. finishing, stopping (finish or complete something)

5. preventing, keeping away (separate something from someone or something else, in order to keep it private, stop people entering it etc)

6. getting out (get out of a bus, train, plane etc, or let someone do this)

ON

1. touching (be supported by the surface of something, or move into this position

2. starting (start, or make something start or happen)

3. continuing (continue to move forward)

OUT1. leaving (leave a place or space)

2. removing (remove something from a room, container etc, remove things, especially so that nothing is left)

3. preventing (prevent someone from entering)

4. outside, not inside (not involving people from ininside an organization, away from your home, especially for pleasure, not inside your house or a building)

5. moving outwards (move out from the centre in all directions, give or send things from a central point, distribute something)

OVER

1. moving across (move across an area from one side to the other)

2. moving beyond (flow over the edge and out of a container)

3. falling (fall, or make something fall)

4. changing (change to a different position, direction, activity etc.

THROUGH

1. passing from one side to the other (pass from one side or end of somehing to the other)

UP

1. moving upwards (move to a higher place, or make someone or something do this)

2. doing something completely (finish something, or do something completely)

3. fastening, preventing, or restricting (fasten, block, cover, or restrict someone or something)

4. beginning to happen, exist or appear (start happening or existing, appear unexpectedly)

5. moving closer to someone or something (move closer in time or space to someone or something)

2. Categories of Phrasal Verbs and Their Influence on Syntax

2.1Categories of Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs can be divided into categories which affect their syntactic behaviour.

Like other verbs, phrasal verbs can be:

transitive (followed by a noun or pronoun that is the object of the verbs)

intransitive (with no object)

both transitive and intransitive (Potter 2005: LS3).

Transitive verbs are verbs that do not have a complement. When a verb has a direct object, it is transitive. Some verbs can function either as transitive or intransitive (e.g.I(S) am eating (V). x I (S) am eating my lunch (O).) (Greenbaum 1990: 63).

A more detailed distribution is provided by Povey (1990: 14)

IntransitiveTransitive

with adverbial particleIA: The alarm clock went off at 7 oclock.TA: John

looked up the word in the dictionary.

looked the word up.

looked it up.

TAPO: John

has given up smoking.

Has given it up.

TAOP: John

got his point across very well.

got it across.

with prepositional particleIP:

I came across an interesting expression yesterday,

I came across it yesterday.TP: The instructor

put my sister off swimming,

put her off swimming.

put her off it.

with adverbial and prepositional particleIAP:

Mary put up with the interruptions cheerfully.

Mary put up with them cheerfully.TAP:

You shouldnt

take your resentment out on the child.

take it out on the children.

take it out on them.

Table 1

2.2 The Syntactic Behaviour of Phrasal Verbs

This chapter describes the division of phrasal verbs with regard to their syntactic behaviour. This information is helpful when identifying phrasal verbs in corpora and is thus instrumental in the practical part of the thesis.

The syntactic behaviour differs following the categories the phrasal verbs are part of (Potter 2005: LS.2 LS4).

2.2.1Intransitive Phrasal Verbs

Intransitive phrasal verbs do not have objects and always stay together.

E. g. We have recorded a new album, and its coming out in the spring.

I had the chance to change jobs, but I let it slip by.

2.2.2Transitive Phrasal Verbs

Within the group of transitive phrasal verbs four types of syntactic behaviour can be observed:

1. Separable phrasal verbs form the largest group of transitive phrasal verbs. The object is placed either between the verb and the particle, or after the particle.

E.g. Just pack your bags and load up the car. Ill load the car up while you lock the door.

If the object is a pronoun, it must go between the verb and the particle.

E.g. You bring the car round and Ill load it up. (You bring the car round and Ill load up it.)

2. A group of phrasal verbs where the object (a noun, a noun phrase, or a pronoun) must go between the verb and the particle.E.g. The two women are so similar that only their husbands can tell them apart. I can hardly tell the two women apart. (I could hardly tell apart the two women.)

3. A group of transitive phrasal verbs where the object (a noun, a noun phrase, or a pronoun) must go after the particle or particles. This group includes all prepositional and phrasal-prepositional verbs:

E.g. I bumped into your mother at the supermarket. I bumped into her in the city centre.

There is a small number of phrasal verbs in this category where the particle is an adverb, but these verbs cannot have a pronoun as an object.

E.g. The victim wasnt able to put up much resistance. (The victim wasnt able to put up it.)4. The last group includes three-word phrasal verbs with two objects. One of the objects goes after the verb and the other after the particle or particles.E.g.. She played one boy off against another. That guy at the garage did me out of 50. I have decided to take you up on that job offer.

2.2.3Phrasal Verbs which are Both Transitive and Intransitive

In this category phrasal verbs behave according to whether they are transitive or intransitive, depending on the context.

When they are intransitive, they behave like other intransitive verbs. E.g. Im not very good at adding up in my head. On the contrary, when they are transitive, they behave as described in the section Transitive Phrasal Verbs. E.g. Now add up the number of calories you have eaten. If you add all that up, it comes to about three million.

2.3 The Position of the Object in Separable Phrasal Verbs

Generally, the objects of most transitive verbs can go either between the verb and the particle, or after the particle. There is no difference in meaning or emphasis (Potter 2005: LS.3).

E.g. He picked the phone up and dialled. You can pick up the number and give me a call. However, if the object contains information already known (to the reader or listener) then the object is more likely to be placed between the verb and the particle. If the object provides us with new information it is more likely to come after the particle. This allows the speaker to put more emphasis on the new information.

E.g. Ann slipped the jacked on to see what it looked like. (The jacket has previously been mentioned, the object comes between the verb and the particle.)

She slipped on some flat sandals and made her way downstairs. (Some flat sandals the object has not been mentioned yet and therefore the object comes after the particle.)

An object consisting of more than three or four words usually goes after the particle, regardless of the fact whether the object has already been mentioned.

E.g. Officials are trying to pin down the cause of widespread power cuts in the western states. (NOT Officials are trying to pin the cause of widespread power cuts in the western states.)

Most transitive phrasal verbs can be used in the passive and some of them even require the passive form. Even if the verb is normally separable, when it is in the passive the verb and the particle must stay together. Ive cleaned the place up a bit. The place had been cleaned up.

2.4Phrasal Verbs and StyleDempsey et al. state that phrasal verbs have been identified as a potentially strong indicator of text genre. On the other hand, Fletcher (2005: LS13) expresses the opinion that apart from resolving meaning and grammar problems, teachers and students of English have to decide when it is appropriate to use phrasal verbs. It is often claimed that phrasal verbs are used in informal register. Fletcher states that phrasal verbs are encountered even in quite formal texts and are the most natural-sounding choice.

He provides the example of the verb give up. This phrasal verb occurs in all the following types of texts.

Text typePer million words

academic prose10

fiction30

newspapers30

conversation25

Table 2: This table shows the approximate number of times the verb give up is used per million words of text (Fletcher 2005: LS13)In conclusion it can be said that although in some texts phrasal verbs cannot be encountered as often as in other types of texts, it should not be maintained that formal texts do not include phrasal verbs at all.

According to Fletcher (2005: LS14), there is a large number of phrasal verbs that native speakers use in all registers, including formal and technical. He quotes the Macmillan Defining Vocabulary, which lists 16 phrasal verbs: consist of, deal with, get up (= get out of bed), give up, grow up, happen to, leave out, look for, make up (= invent), pick up, put down (put something on the floor etc), put on (= get dressed), slow down, stick out, take off (= remove clothes), and wake up. Fletcher (2005: LS14) claims that these verbs are included in the Macmillan Defining Vocabulary because they are the most usual and natural ways of expressing these ideas and that most of their single-word equivalents are much less common than the phrasal verbs (e.g. put on don).

Another example is the research performed by Dempsey et al., based on the fact that phrasal verbs have been identified as a potentially strong indicator of text genre and that phrasal verbs are a lexical marker. Their prediction was that phrasal verbs frequency would be a sufficient marker to computationally discriminate between spoken and written texts. They specifically predicted that phrasal verbs appear more often in spoken text than in written text. They expected that phrasal verbs would distinguish text genres in terms of degree of formality and spokenness. The results of their search show that all categories of phrasal verb forms significantly distinguished spoken from written registers. With the exception of 3rd person forms, all categories of phrasal verb forms also distinguished formal from informal registers and between spoken and written registers.

2.5Frequent Phrasal VerbsIdentifying the frequency of certain vocabulary in English or any other language might have very interesting outcomes for speakers of a foreign language. Corpora are one of the most suitable tools for identifying the most frequent vocabulary and can provide the researcher with useful data for an analysis. This chapter will introduce two projects that deal with the frequency of phrasal verbs and are corpus-based.

The first of the two projects is a project aimed at researching phrasal verbs frequency in the British National Corpus by Dee Gardner and Mark Davies (2007). The purpose of their study was to establish a logical rationale for narrowing the scope of phrasal verbs in English language training based on frequencies of actual occurrence in a large representative corpus of English British National Corpus (Gardner, Davies 2007: 340). They aimed to provide data for English language teaching, materials development and testing and for future studies.

PVSensesPVSensesPVSensesPVSenses

Go on5Carry on4Put on9Move in3

Carry out2Go up7Bring out9Look around1

Set up15Get out7Move on1Take down4

Pick up16Take out14Turn back4Put off5

Go back4Come down5Put back2Come about1

Come back5Put down7Go round5Go along3

Go out6Put up8Break up19Look round0

Point out3Turn up5Come along2Set about3

Find out4Get on7Sit up2Turn off3

Come up12Bring up8Turn round3Give in2

Make up8Bring in5Get in5Move out2

Take over8Look back2Come round1Come through4

Come out11Look down5Make out10Move back1

Come on5Bring back2Get off11Break off5

Come in5Break down8Turn down5Get through5

Go down8Take off9Bring down6Give out4

Work out8Go off6Come over1Come off3

Set out3Bring about5Break out5Take in17

Take up13Go in1Go over4Give back1

Get back4Set off7Turn over9Set down6

Sit down3Put out10Go through5Move up2

Turn out12Look out2Hold on5Turn around0

Take on5Take back6Pick out2

Give up12Hold up7Sit back2

Get up8Get down7Hold back5

Look up1Hold out5Put in7

Table 3: The top Phrasal Verbs in the BNC and their word senses:

Note. Total senses = 559. PV = phrasal verb. Consulted Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (Courtney, 1993). WordNet = around. See look around. See turn round.

Anna Trebits (2009) analysed the most frequent phrasal verbs in English language EU documents. She used the following texts and documents to build the corpus (CEUE):

nineteen information booklets (of about 20 pages on average) on different activities of the EU

the annual general report on the activities of the EU in 2006

sample test material from recruitment competitions in all subject areas.

She aimed to find lexical verbs used in phrasal verb constructions, to identify the most frequent phrasal verbs, to determine the number of word-senses associated with the most frequent phrasal verbs and to present the pedagogical relevance of the findings.

From the results of her search (Trebits 2009: 476477) the following should be mentioned:

A learner of English will find one phrasal verb construction in approximately 200 words of text.

11 out of the top 50 lexical verbs in her corpus (e.g. base, bring, call, go, make, open) also function as phrasal verb constructions.

About half of the 25 most frequent phrasal verbs in her corpus are among the 20 most frequent lexical verbs forming phrasal verb combinations in the British National Corpus.

The top 10 phrasal verbs in her corpus account for over 50 per cent of all phrasal verb combinations while the top 25 phrasal verbs make up more than 60 per cent of all phrasal verbs in the EU corpus.

Top 25 phrasal verbs in the CEUE# Of word-senses in the CEUE# Of word-senses in WordNet and LDPV

set up215

set out13

base on11

carry out12

draw up15

focus on11

lay down12

put forward24

open up27

depend on23

make up19

report on11

find out14

call on11

move around12

take up213

follow up12

work on12

break down48

build on11

agree on11

bring about12

go on25

point out13

speed up12

Table 4

The differences between the results are worth noting. There were considerably fewer word-senses in her corpus than in WordNet and LDPV. Trebits (2009: 477) mentions, among others, the phrasal verb set up which has only two different meanings in the CEUE (1 start a business or organization, 2 make arrangements for something to happen) and more than ten in general English.3. Dictionaries Suitable for Research of Phrasal Verbs

This section introduces dictionaries that are suitable for research of phrasal verbs. It begins with general information on dictionaries. As all three hypotheses in the practical part focus on dictionaries (see pp. 45 74), it is necessary to include detailed descriptions of the dictionaries used (both monolingual and bilingual). In this way the results of the research can be evaluated and suggestions for a more suitable structure of phrasal verb dictionaries provided.

3.1Dictionaries

Dictionaries are important companions of translators in their everyday work. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term dictionary as follows:

A book dealing with the individual words of a language (or certain specified classes of them), so as to set forth their orthography, pronunciation, signification, and use, their synonyms, derivation, and history, or at least some of these facts: for convenience of reference, the words are arranged in some stated order, now, in most languages, alphabetical; and in larger dictionaries the information given is illustrated by quotations from literature; a word-book, vocabulary, or lexicon. Dictionaries are reference books on the vocabulary. (Greenbaum 1990: 432).

There are different types of dictionaries. According to Greenbaum (1990: 432) they differ in their

size

organization: they can be arranged alphabetically (from word to meaning) or semantically (from meaning to word), pictorial dictionary (usually limited to nouns and noun phrases)

language: monolingual, bilingual, multilingual, monolingual for foreign learners

specialization: general, specialized (slang, pronunciation, new words, idioms, law etc.)

Greenbaum (1990: 432433) provides a list of types of information that is usually provided by the general dictionary:

1. Spelling

2. Pronunciation

3. Inflections

4. Parts of speech

5. Definitions

6. Usage labels

7. Etymology

Each year a number of new dictionaries are published by local or international publishers. They do not differ only in the languages they work with, but also in various other ways. Some of them are monolingual, other bilingual, some are in pocket editions, others are very extensive, some are general, others specialized etc. To choose the right dictionary for their needs translators need to compare the dictionaries and consider their suitability for the given purpose.

One of the aims of this thesis is to compare and contrast dictionaries which can be used for looking up translations of phrasal verbs. It is necessary to mention that there is a considerable lack of bilingual English-Czech dictionaries specializing in phrasal verbs. Textbooks and grammar books do not usually provide us with translations. For this reason several general dictionaries which are widely used were chosen to find out whether general dictionaries offer a comparable number of meanings to the meanings provided by monolingual dictionaries of phrasal verbs.

3.2Monolingual Dictionaries

Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus

Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus (2005) is a monolingual dictionary of phrasal verbs published by Macmillan Education, Oxford. It was chosen as a basis of this study as it is well organized and thus helps to structure the research.

Apart from the basic information on phrasal verbs, which is common to most dictionaries (e.g. explanation of meaning of phrasal verbs, description of their syntactic behaviour and guidance on register), it also offers additional information, which helps the translator.

This include:

red wordsRed words in the dictionary signal the fact that according to the World English Corpus they belong among 1,000 most frequent phrasal verbs. They are divided into three bands and the words with three stars belong to the 350most frequent phrasal verbs. This helps EFL learners find out how important the phrasal verb is.

menusIf the word has five or more meanings, a menu is provided so that users can find the meaning they are looking for more quickly.

collocation boxesCollocation boxes provide information about collocations.

special explanation of particles.For the twelve most common particles special entries are provided to show how their meanings develop from the literal to the figurative. Moreover, example sentences in this dictionary are taken from a corpus and thus they represent the real use of phrasal verbs in English texts. This dictionary was chosen for the study to provide a systematic list of meanings which serves as a basis for grouping of phrasal verbs.

Oxford Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs

Oxford Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (1993) claims to contain:

over 11,000 references

examples of use taken from a wide range of contemporary sources, many drawn from the new Oxford Corpus of the English Language

synonyms, opposites and related verbs

grammatical codes for each entry showing possible sentence patterns

lists of typical collocates

explanations of unusual features of grammar and usage

This dictionary was chosen to provide further meanings for the given phrasal verbs.

3.3 Bilingual Dictionaries

Velk anglicko-esk slovnk (LEDA 2006) by Josef Fronek (Comprehensive English-Czech Dictionary)The dictionary developed from its predecessors Anglicko-esk slovnk s nejnovjmi vrazy, LEDA 1996 and the Comprehensive Czech-English Dictionary (LEDA 2000). Its target audience are not only Czechs, but also English native speakers. The electronic Velk anglicko-esk slovnk (LEDA 2006, Comprehensive English-Czech Dictionary) (LEDA) aims to clearly show the whole range of English meanings and unambiguously define, as far as possible, every single Czech equivalent.

For the research it is necessary to observe the structure of verb entries and entries with several meanings. This is the description given by the dictionary (LEDA 2006):

Verb entries are further subdivided potentially into transitive, intransitive and phrasal. Phrasal verbs are included as the last of the three possible subsections of the respective verb (sub)entry. Each phrasal verb is highlighted by a square and treated as an individual subentry on a new line. When phrasal verbs are subdivided into vt and vi, these are marked by colour.

hang [h] n v (pt, pp hung [ha]) vt vi hang about or around vi vt hang back vi hang behind vi

When a word has more than one sense (as a particular part of speech), the different senses are distinguished by bold Arabic numerals (in colour); in some cases further subdivisions are marked by letters a, b. etc in colour. Each individual subentry is introduced on a new line.

home [hum] n 1 a) [C,U] [place where one lives] domov, dm b) [house] dm, bytc) find a h. for sth najt pro co msto2 [country] domov, domovina 3 [institution] stav, domov 4 (of plants, animals) habitat, msto vskytu, domov attr adj (cooking, computers) domc adv 1 doma 2 [all the way] drive a nail h. zatlouct hebk;

The principal sources of this dictionary include several monolingual and bilingual dictionaries (see Appendix 1) and they allowed the author to list as many meanings as possible. The main assets of this dictionary are its scope and relevance.

Figure 1 search of the phrasal verb carry out in Velk anglicko-esk slovnk (LEDA 2006) by Josef Fronek (Comprehensive English-Czech Dictionary)

Lexicon 5 Platinum

Lexicon 5 Platinum is an electronic bilingual dictionary. Its data is based on monolingual English and American dictionaries published by Harpers Collins, Oxford University Press, Cassell, Websters etc. It includes collocations, idioms, illustrative sentences, and abbreviations. It claims to have been put together with the help of a corpus of the English language but, unfortunately, the corpus is not specified.

Lexicon 5 Platinum is a general dictionary but it also includes specialized vocabulary. WordNet and Rogets Thesaurus can be accessed directly from the electronic dictionary.

In total the dictionary includes: 220,000 entries; 356,000 word meanings; 188,000 phrases and examples and 946,000 translations into Czech.

Figure 2 search of the phrasal verb carry out in Lexicon 5 PlatinumAnglicko-esk slovnk frzovch sloves (Luk Vodika)

This dictionary was created to fill up the gap in Czech dictionaries (Vodika2002:8). According to the author, there is no bilingual English-Czech dictionary which would specialize in phrasal verbs, or any general dictionary which would go into much detail about them.

The dictionary includes (Vodika2002:14): 12,126entries, with 46,338meanings (from which 13,543 are idioms).

The dictionary includes the following types of data (Vodika2002:14):

1. all types of phrasal verbs where at least one is idiomatic

2. phrasal verbs of depend on, accuse of type which have relatively invariable meanings which are easy to be deducted from meanings of a verb/particle but which must be used only with the preposition given

3. idioms that are based on phrasal verbs (e.g. ruffle someone up the wrong way).

Entries in this dictionary are ordered alphabetically firstly by the main verbs and then by particles. If a phrasal verb appears with both types of particles (adverbial and prepositional) and each of them has a different meaning, then phrasal verbs with the adverbial particle are listed first.

E.g. (Vodika2005:15):

see round1 adv

see round2 prep

see through1 adv

see through2 prep

see to prep

see up adv; prep

see with prep

seek after prep

see for prepMeanings of phrasal verbs are ordered in this way:

Each meaning is given a number.

Small numbers are given to meanings which are deductible from meanings of verbs and particles alone.

Non-deductible meanings are listed after deductible meanings.

Idioms are listed as last.

E.g. (Vodika2005:120)

go far adv

1. jt, chodit, jezdit daleko nap. DO PRCE

2. neform. mt spch; bt spn3. ZSOBY, PENZE vystait, vyjt

4. pispt, pomoci velkou mrou

5. as far as it goes neform. v rmci monost; a na dal

6. go as/so far as neform. jt, zajt tak daleko a NAP A TVRDIT, E VICHNI OKOLO JSOU LHI

7. go too far zajt pli daleko; dovolit si pli mnoho

This dictionary does not provide any illustrative sentences and is not available in electronic form.

Web MetaTrans Multilingual Meta-Translator

WebMetaTrans is an online search engine which makes it possible for its users to search several online dictionaries simultaneously. Its modular design allows the users to add more online dictionaries to their searches easily. The software also uses information from text corpora, WordNet and a morphological analyzer. Thus the information on the searched term is more complex.

The first screenshot shows the Web MetaTrans interface. On the left there is a search window. On the right users can choose the languages (from-into) and the online dictionaries they want to use. The second screenshot shows the search result for the verb carry out. The coloured squares next to the translations display in which dictionaries the translations were found (e.g. The translation uskutenit appears in three dictionaries.)

Figure 3 search of the phrasal verb carry out in Web MetaTrans

Figure 4 the search result for the phrasal verb carry out4. Electronic Tools

This chapter introduces the term corpus. It deals with the types of corpora and differences between them. Further on, some important corpus projects are described.

4.1What is a Corpus?

A corpus (plural: corpora) is a collection of texts designed for linguistic analysis, normally held in electronic form. Corpora vary in size, containing anything from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions word. Corpora are often designed to be representative of a language or genre, that is, they aim to contain a balanced sample of that language or genre. (Anderson, Corbett 194: 2009). ulc (1999: 9) defines a corpus as a collection of all written texts of a given genre or a given person or a collection of information or materials for study purposes. Generally, in linguistics a corpus is a set of evidence of authentic use of language. It serves as a basis for linguistic analysis and description of written and spoken languages. Thanks to the development in technology a new course in linguistics appeared corpus linguistics.

Jamie Keddie lists the following sources as examples of data for corpora: books, magazines, newspapers, emails, television, radio, conversation etc. He proposes that some corpora could consist entirely e.g. of samples of US written English, samples of written British English, of business correspondence, legal contracts, old English or childrens speech.

Anderson and Corbett (2009: 22) claim that (B)y presenting a mass of text in digitised form, and constructing tools to search that mass of text, corpus linguistics brings to the table a set of data and tools that produce results that seem explicit and objective. Results of corpus search form the basis for quantitative analysis and as Anderson and Corbett (2009: 22) continue we can count things, identify frequencies and distributions, and so we can propose, in principle, reliable and generalisable statements about how language works. However, quantitative analysis is often supplemented by interpretative, qualitative analyses of corpus data. Quantitative analysts use corpora not as a source of frequencies but as a source of raw data, which can be quickly and easily assembled (Anderson and Corbett 2009: 22).

Various areas of language are investigated using data from corpora e.g. lexis, grammar, discourse or pronunciation. The results of corpus research are applicable in translation, in linguistic research, English language teaching etc.

4.2Types of Corpora

According to their qualities and to their focus we can distinguish several types of corpora:

1. synchronic corpora x diachronic corpora

A synchronic corpus is a corpus which contains texts all from the same or broadly similar time, which allows the user to investigate the state of the language at that time (Anderson, Corbett 2009: 199). On the contrary, a diachronic corpus is a corpus which samples texts from across a period of time, to enable analysis of how language changes over time (Anderson, Corbett 2009: 194).2. general reference corpora x special purpose corpora

A general reference corpus is one that can be taken as representative of a given language as a whole and can therefore be used to make general observations about that particular language. (Bowker 2002: 11). On the other hand a special purpose corpus focuses on a particular aspect of a language (e.g. a particular subject field, a specific text type).

3. corpora of spoken language x corpora of written language

Corpora of spoken language, as the term suggests, contain samples of spoken language. As examples the following projects should be mentioned: British Academic Spoken English corpus (BASE), Freiburg English Dialect Corpus (FRED), Intonational Variation in English (IviE), The Speech Accent Archive.

The most commonly used corpora of written language include: British National Corpus (BNC), BYU Corpus of Contemporary American English, Lexware Culler corpora, TIME Corpus of American English.

4. smaller corpora x large scale corpora

Even though creating a large corpus takes a lot of time and many copyright issues are involved, large scale corpora are still being produced e.g. the open Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) 410+ million words (US 1990-2010) created by Mark Davies Professor from Brigham Young University (BYU). Smaller scale corpora can be created ad hoc to investigate specialized areas of language.

The issue of size is important. Generally, it can be said that the larger the corpus, the more representative it is. Anderson and Corbett (2009: 6) state that for applications in lexicography, it is important that corpora should be large, usually tens if not hundreds of millions of words in size. OKeefe et al. (in Anderson and Corbett 2009: 7) on size of corpora mention that: In terms of what constitutes a large or a small corpus, it depends on whether it is a spoken or a written corpus and what it is seeking to represent. For corpora of the spoken language, anything over a million words is considered to be large, for written corpora, anything below five million is quite small. However, when choosing the right corpora for research size should be just one of the criteria as researchers might be interested in a special part of language (e.g. spoken language) and then a special corpus with fewer words can be more representative.

5. parallel corpora x comparable corpora

Despite the fact that both terms refer to multilingual corpora and are closely related to translation studies there are certain differences to be mentioned.

They can be defined in this way:

a parallel corpus usually contains the same texts in a number of language versions (Anderson and Corbett 2009: 8), ulc (1999: 82) in his definition mentions the fact that a parallel corpus is often created by an original text and its translation in one or more languages

a comparable corpus is a corpus which contains texts which are functionally equivalent in two or more languages (Anderson and Corbett 2009: 8).

6. learner corporaA learner corpus is according to Jamie Keddie a database of samples of English (or any language) that have been produced by learners. Bowker (2002: 13) suggests that (S)uch corpora can be usefully compared with corpora of texts written by native speakers. In this way, teachers, students or researchers can identify the types of errors made by language learners.7. open x closed corpora

Bowker (2002: 12) defines an open corpus (or a monitor corpus) as one that is constantly being expanded. This type of corpus is often used in lexicography as it is possible to observe current trends in language. On the contrary, a closed (or finite) corpus is one that does not get augmented once it has been compiled (Bowker 2002: 13).4.3 Corpora Projects

This subchapter introduces some of the most commonly used corpora and corpora which are related to this research.

World English Corpus

The World English Corpus was used by Macmillan Publishers to create the Macmillan English Dictionary as well as the Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus. The World English Corpus claims to contain over 220 million words and it was created in the late 1990s. The corpus was created at the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics at the Universit catholique de Louvain in Belgium.

The World English Corpus consists of three parts:

1. a general corpus which includes examples of real spoken and written English taken from a variety of sources across the English-speaking world

2. a learner corpus with examples of English as it is written by advanced learners from all over the world. In this corpus it is possible to find the most common problems of English language students.

3. an ELT corpus contains examples of English currently found in English language course books and readers.

The corpus contains data including British English, American English and world English. The ratio of written to spoken texts is 9:1. The corpus contains the following types of texts: academic discourse, print and broadcast journalism, fiction, recorded conversations (including telephone calls), recorded business meetings, general nonfiction, answer phone messages, emails, legal texts, academic seminars, cultural studies texts, radio documentaries, broadcast interviews, ELT course books, text written by learners of English, including essays and examination scripts.

Oxford Corpus of the English Language

This corpus is used to create Oxford University Press dictionaries. It claims to give the fullest, most accurate picture of the English language today. It represents all types of English, from novels and specialist journals to everyday newspapers and magazines and from Hansard to the language of blogs, emails, and Internet message boards. And, as English is a global language, used by an estimated one third of the world's population, the Oxford English Corpus contains language from all parts of the world. The corpus contains 2 billion words of real 21st century English. The corpus includes texts from the year 2,000 onwards. The corpus consists of the following types of texts: academic papers; technical manuals; journals; newspaper reports, columns, and opinion pieces; corporate websites; magazine articles; novels and short stories; fanzines; underground and counterculture websites; personal websites; blogs; message board postings.

Figure 5 a chart representing the topics included in theOxford Corpus of the English Language

The Czech National Corpus

Despite the fact that the Czech National Corpus is primarily aimed at the Czech language, it should be mentioned in the list of corpora because Czech translators can benefit from the range of texts which are available there.

The Czech National Corpus (CNC) is an academic project which has been carried out by the Institute of the Czech National Corpus (ICNC), Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. The Institute was founded in 1994 and in 1996 it got a grant to create a corpus of the Czech language, i.e. electronically saved, processed and accessed collection of language data in standartised format (ulc 1999: 46). Its results are to be used for creating a large dictionary of the Czech language and for creating other language reference manuals.

Currently, the project houses several corpora. Their description is provided Appendix 2.

The InterCorp Corpus

The InterCorp Corpus is a sub-corpus of the Czech National Corpus (CNC). Its developement is a part of The Czech National Corpus and Corpora of Other Languages research project. The goal of this project is to build up parallel synchronous corpora for most of the languages taught at the Faculty of Arts.

The corpus consists of fiction in Czech and other languages. Recently, political commentaries published at Project Syndicate website have been added. Each of the texts has its Czech counterpart and thus Czech is the pivot language.

In October 2009 the InterCorp Corpus consisted of materials in 21languages plus their Czech counterparts. For English the corpus contained 4,041 thousand Czech words (i.e. 4,705 thousand words in English). This number consists of 34 texts and texts from the Project Syndicate website. While the InterCorp is an open corpus (Bowker, Pearson 2002: 12) it is being constantly developed and nowadays it contains even more materials.

The corpus can be searched in various ways:

searching in one or more languages in parallel

searching by wordform

searching by string of wordforms (a phrase)

searching by CQL expression

searching by lemma (base form) - for some languages

searching by morphosyntactic tag - for some languages

regular expressions as an option

virtual keyboard to type in foreign characters.

The InterCorp corpus provides its users with a wide range of texts. The interface is an invaluable tool for translators in search of the most adequate translations.

Figure 6 selecting materials for a search in the InterCorp

Figure 7 search of the phrasal verb carry out in the InterCorp

Figure 8 the results of the search of the verb carry out in the InterCorpKacenka

Kacenka (abbreviation for Korpus anglicko-cesky - elektronicky nastroj Katedry anglistiky) was created by the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in 1997. The aim of this project was to support research and teaching in the field of translation.

There are 30 literary texts and 2 non-literary texts available in the corpus. Most of the texts were retrieved from Internet resources. Nearly all the Czech texts were scanned with the use of Pro Lector 1.2 (OCR programme). For the contents of the corpus see Appendix 3.

Figure 9 - search of the phrasal verb carry out in the Kacenka

Figure 10 - the results of the search of the verb carry out in the KacenkaKacenka 2

The K2 parallel corpusis an enhancement of the corpus Kacenka. All texts are now available in the Bonito corpus manager. (Rambousek) For a complete list of texts available in Kacenka2 see Appendix 4. The search process is identical with the search in Kacenka, both of which do not allow the use of lemma, unlike the InterCorp where lemma was used. This fact has influenced the numbers of retrieved translations.Other Corpora

The chapter Electronic Tools introduced the corpora used for the practical part of this thesis and the corpora that provided information for the dictionaries studied. However, translators into English can also benefit from monolingual corpora. Among the most commonly used corpora are the British National Corpus (BNC) or the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).

5.Practical Part5.1Introduction

The purpose of the practical part of this thesis is to analyse the translations of phrasal verbs from English into Czech and the dictionaries that Czech translators use. The aim is to compare meanings of phrasal verbs with the meanings given by monolingual dictionaries and further on to compare them with translations of phrasal verbs found in parallel corpora. The results should help the readers choose the most useful dictionaries for their work. The research is carried out on a set of phrasal verbs.

5.2Hypotheses

H1: Czech dictionaries provide only a small number of phrasal verb meanings.

H2: Czech dictionaries do not sort their meanings according to the frequency of phrasal verb meanings.

H3: English-Czech dictionaries of phrasal verbs do not provide more meanings or more complete information on phrasal verbs than general bilingual dictionaries.

5.3The Method of Research

The research process is divided into several steps

1. Identifying Phrasal Verbs Suitable for the Research

Due to the number of tasks which have to be carried out in this research, only a small set (5) of phrasal verbs is examined. These phrasal verbs are chosen according to their frequency. The data used for identifying the most frequent phrasal verbs have been taken from the article Pointing Out Frequent Phrasal Verbs: A Corpus-Based Analysis by Dee Gardner and Mark Davies (2007). In their article, they publish a BNC-based list of 100most frequent phrasal verbs in English. For this study only a set of 5most frequent phrasal verbs is used in order to facilitate a thorough examination of the meanings given by various monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and an analysis of the Czech translations in the corpora mentioned above.

2. Identifying Possible Meanings of Phrasal Verbs

The possible meanings (semantic categories) are taken from the Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus dictionary which lists them in a menu. This list is compared with the meanings given by another monolingual phrasal verb dictionary (Oxford Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs) and forms a basis for the division of the Czech translations retrieved from corpora into categories according to their meanings.

3. Looking up Translations in Bilingual Dictionaries

The following bilingual dictionaries are used to look up the corresponding translations:

Velk anglicko-esk slovnk (LEDA 2006, Comprehensive English-Czech Dictionary by Josef Fronek) Lexicon 5 Platinum Anglickoesk slovnk frzovch sloves (Luk Vodika) Web MetaTrans Multilingual Meta-Translator.For more information on the dictionaries see pp. 2733.4. Comparing Search Results with Semantic Categories

Data retrieved from dictionaries are compared and contrasted with the data retrieved from monolingual dictionaries. The translations from bilingual dictionaries are divided into categories which have been created according to the Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus dictionary.

5. Retrieving Translations of Phrasal Verbs from Parallel Corpora

The following parallel corpora are searched in order to retrieve translations of phrasal verbs: InterCorp, Kacenka and Kacenka 2. The descriptions and screenshots of the search are on pp. 4144.

6. Analysis of Search ResultsThe data retrieved from corpora are analysed according to the following criteria:

Is the search result a phrasal verb?

Does it belong to any of the proposed semantic categories (word meanings)?

7. Comparing and Contrasting Search Results

Search results from bilingual dictionaries and corpora are compared and analysed.

8. Data Analysis and Conclusions

5.4CARRY OUT

Table 4 shows the results of the search for the phrasal verb carry out in the InterCorp, Kacenka and Kacenka 2. The total number of search results was 205. After a manual selection 154 corresponding translations of the phrasal verb into Czech were found. As the results are compared with dictionaries, this list focuses only on translations by a verb and not by other parts of speech (e.g. adjectives or nouns). The translations where the verb was omitted completely are not included either.

Table 4 includes all translations of phrasal verbs by Czech verbs. The retrieved translations also included modulations and verbs with a shift of meaning which are not shown in the following tables as they are not lexicographic equivalents. On the other hand, their presence in corpora can help translators find the most suitable expressions for their texts and can serve as a source of inspiration.

The first line of the table features the corpora used for the research (InterCorp, Kacenka and Kacenka 2). The numbers in brackets indicate the number of phrasal verb occurrences (i.e. 178 in InterCorp, 14 in Kacenka and 13 in Kacenka 2, total = 205 occurrences). The left column lists the translations into Czech by verbs and the numbers in second, third and fourth column indicate the number of their occurrences in the given corpora. The number in the last column gives the total number of the translations found in the corpora used. The last line in the table gives the total numbers of translations of phrasal verbs by a Czech verb. E.g. the most common translation of the verb carry out into Czech is the Czech verb provst / provdt. It occurs 34 times in the InterCorp, twice in Kacenka and twice in Kacenka 2. The total is 38 occurrences out of 154 translations by a verb ( ca. 25 per cent of all translations by verbs into Czech). The same system of analysis is applied with the other phrasal verbs, too.

Translations / Corpora and the number of PV occurrencesIC (178)K1 (14)K2 (13)Total IC+K1+K2 (205)

provst, provdt342238

uskutenit, uskuteovat290433

plnit (koly, rozkazy), vyplnit71210

vynst, vynet6219

vykonat, vykonvat8008

realizovat, zrealizovat6017

odnst5117

probhat4004

spchat3003

prosazovat, prosadit3003

splnit1203

uplatnit2002

vst2002

odvst prci2002

konat2002

zabavit 2002

vyplnit se2002

podat1001

splnit se1001

naplovat1001

pchat1001

dopoutt se1001

zajistit1001

obstarat1001

init1001

vyvjet (innost)1001

zvstovat1001

dodret1001

zvldnout1001

zadit1001

propracovat1001

pistupovat k1001

hledt si neho1001

dopravit0101

Total translations 134911154

Table 4 A list of translations of the verb carry out by a Czech verb. The highlighted verbs are not lexicographic equivalents.

Note: IC = InterCorp, K1 = Kacenka, K2 = Kacenka2

It is worth noting that the search showed 34 various translations of the phrasal verb carry out by Czech verbs for 154 occurrences. Exactly one half of the possible translations occurred only once (17 translations), whereas the remaining 17 translations account for the remaining 137 findings. The first two most frequent translations then account together for about 46 per cent of all translations.

Table 5 shows the semantic categories specified in monolingual dictionaries, their corresponding translations in Czech dictionaries and the translations which could not be added to any of the semantic areas. For a complete list see Appendix 5.

The analysis of bilingual dictionary entries showed 5 different semantic categories in which the phrasal verb carry out is used. The monolingual dictionaries showed only two semantic categories and none of them listed the literal meaning of the phrasal verb (vynst, vynet). Neither did the monolingual dictionaries list two more meanings: provozovat and vydit (obchodn). These two translations were found in the WebMetaTrans dictionary and appear to be more specific than other semantic categories.

Semantic category Czech translations from dictionaries

to do a particular piece of workuskutenit, provst, provdt, konat, realizovat

to do something that you have said you will or that you have been told to dovykonat, splnit, vyplnit, splovat, realizovat, dostt, uinit zadost

vynst ven, vynet

provozovat

vydit (obchodn)

Table 5 semantic categories identified in monolingual categories compared to Czech translations from the chosen dictionaries, divided into semantic categoriesIn Table 6 Czech translations from the dictionaries studied are compared to the translations retrieved from the corpora. The translations are divided according to semantic categories (as in Table 5). The translations which occurred only in corpora are in bold and their frequency is in brackets e.g. vst (4).

Czech translations from dictionariesTranslations from corpora

uskutenit, provst, vykonat, provdt, konat, realizovatprovst, provdt (38), uskutenit, uskuteovat (33), realizovat, zrealizovat (7), odvst prci (2), konat (2), init(1), vyvjet innost (1), zadit (1), probhat (4), vst (2), vyplnit se (2), podat (1), zajiovat (1), obstarvat (1), propracovat (1), hledt si (1), pistupovat (1)

vykonat, splnit, vyplnit, splovat, realizovat, dostt, uinit zadostplnit, vyplnit (10), vykonat, vykonvat (8), splnit (3), naplovat (1), dodret (1), prosazovat, prosadit (3), uplatnit (2), splnit se (1), zvldnout (1)

vynst ven, vynetvynst, vynet (9), odnst (7), dopravit (1)

provozovat

vydit (obchodn)

spchat (3), pchat (1), dopoutt se (1)

Table 6 comparing translations of the verb carry out in the dictionaries and in the corpora. The translations which occurred only in the corpora are in bold and their frequency is in brackets.

A new semantic category, which did not appear in any of the dictionaries, has been created. This category is associated with making an offence (e.g. Similarly, an American citizen carried out the worst terrorist attack in the United States before September 11, 2001. Translated in the InterCorp as: Nejhor teroristick tok ve Spojench sttech ped 11. zm 2001 takt spchal americk oban.)

It is also interesting to note that there were no identical translations in the corpora for the new semantic categories provozovat and vydit (obchodn). The reason for this might either be that the corpora used are not large enough or that the translations are too specific with a shift of meaning and would not be listed in a general dictionary.

5.5GO BACK

Table 7 shows the results of the search for the phrasal verb go back in the InterCorp, Kacenka, and Kacenka 2 parallel English-Czech corpora. The total number of search results was 711. After a manual selection 494 corresponding translations of the phrasal verb into Czech by a Czech verb were found. Table 1 shows the search results. The total of 65 translations of the phrasal verb go back into Czech by a Czech verb was identified. The most common translation was vrtit/ vracet se, which accounts for over 68 per cent of the translations. More than a half of the translations occurred only once (39translations).

The translations with more occurrences in which the context is crucial for understanding are for example:

jt za Ill go back and tell him about it. Translation into Czech: Pjdu za nm a vechno mu povm (Kacenka 2). The tendency with the translation into Czech jt za is that the speaker concentrates on the person and not on the activity of going back. Although the speaker might be literally going back to somebody in this case it is more important that the speaker will see him and tell him about it. It is worth mentioning that as the person is probably very important in the context the pronoun he is used twice in the target text.

vzniknout Giustiniana's friendship with Querini went back to the 1750s, but in those days her heart had belonged entirely to Andrea. Translated into Czech in the InterCorp as: Giustinianino ptelstv s Querinim vzniklo ji v padestch letech, ale tenkrt jej srdce patilo zcela Andreovi. The translation vzniknout substitutes the more exact translation sahat do which in the Czech language does not collocate with the noun ptelstv.

lett Would you rather go back to Bologna? Translated into Czech in Kacenka 2 as: Chtl byste snad radji lett zase na Bolou? This translation illustrates the tendency in Czech to specify which means of transport is used during the activity of going back or going again (according to the context).

jt k - Pearson had gone back to his desk and picked up the telephone. Translated into Czech in the InterCorp as: Pearson el ke svmu stolu a zvedl sluchtko telefonu. In this case the translator used a more general term and did not focus on the meaning of the particle back.

Generally, when speaking of motion, the translators tend to follow two strategies when they have to modulate the exact translation:

they concentrate on the motion itself as in jt k or dojt si pro or vyrazit do in cases where they do not consider important the fact that the person is going back somewhere but are interested in the activity itself

or they concentrate on the meaning of the particle back and choose a Czech verb according to it together with the Czech verb zpt as in jt zpt or odvzt zpt. The fact that the Czech language allows the speaker to combine many verbs with the adverb zpt thus provides many modulations of the verbs vrtit se or jet zpt.

Translations / Corpora and the number of PV occurrencesIC (510)K1 (93)K2 (108)Total (711)

K1+K2+IC

vrtit/vracet se2435243338

znovu (zase) nco dlat180018

sahat (do minulosti)140014

jt zpt09312

jt za40711

odjet7029

jet zpt5038

pokraovat v4004

zat nco dlat4004

nco dl dlat3003

vydat se zptky3003

vzniknout3003

bt zpt2013

lett0033

mt koeny2002

odltnout zpt2002

jt zptky2002

jt do koly2002

jt k2002

odejt zptky2002

vystoupit2002

dostat se zpt2002

zajt do1012

vytratit se zpt2002

jet s0202

spadat do1001

udlat krok zpt1001

vzat se k1001

uchlit se k1001

bt open o zkuenosti1001

zajt do1001

pejt zptky na1001

zavst dl1001

tkat1001

rozjet se do1001

trvat1001

zajet zpt1001

pehrvat si1001

dostavit se1001

bt na cest zptky1001

dojt si pro1001

couvnout1001

vyrazit do1001

ozvat se1001

zmizet v pokoji1001

znt se od1001

odvzt zpt1001

pustit se do1001

odthnout1001

bt star1001

doprovodit1001

pejt 1001

objevit se1001

dovzt1001

navrtit se1001

zamit zpt1001

spchat zpt1001

jt nco dlat0101

pustit nkoho dom0101

vzt zptky0101

pijt pro0101

vypravit se zptky0011

thnout zpt0011

jt jet jednou0011

3616766494

Table 7 A list of translations of the verb go back by a Czech verb. The highlighted verbs are not lexicographic equivalents.

Note: IC = InterCorp, K1 = Kacenka, K2 = Kacenka2Table 8 lists semantic categories and corresponding translations from the Czech dictionaries. No exact corresponding translations were found in the dictionaries for the following two semantic categories: have known each other for a long time and when classes begin again at school. However, this might be caused by the fact that in the Czech language some more general verbs can be used: e.g. vrtit se do koly to express the meaning when classes begin again at school). In contrast five new groups of translations could not be linked directly with the existing categories.

Semantic categoriesCzech translations from dictionaries

returnvrtit se, jt zptky, vracet se (k bodu jednn, ke patnm stravovacm nvykm apod.), couvnout, znovu zat nco dlat

have existed for a long timesahat (do minulosti), mt pvod kdy/kde, pochzet (z minulosti), sahat svmi koeny, datovat se od

have known each other for a long time

when classes begin again at school

when clocks show an earlier timevrtit se (i do minulosti), bt nazen dozadu obv. na podzim o jednu hodinu

ukonit stvku, vrtit se do prce

ustoupit, ustupovat

zabrat prostor, sahat (nap. a k moi)

bt na tom stejn jako pedtm, octnout se znovu na samm zatku, muset zat znovu od pky

poruit slovo, nesplnit or nedodret slib; zradit koho; selhat (pam)

Table 8 semantic categories identified in monolingual categories compared to Czech translations from dictionaries divided into semantic categoriesTable 9 compares the translations from the dictionaries with the translations from the corpora. Many synonyms were found especially for the first category. These include the synonyms for the verb return which includes two more meanings: either to go back or to start doing something again. Four new synonyms were found for the meaning have existed for a long time.

Surprisingly, a translation znt se od for the meaning have known each other for a long time occurred in the corpora and seems to be specific enough for this semantic category. Two occurrences were found for the semantic category when classes begin again at school. Here the translation jt do koly would be possible (in the dictionaries this semantic category is probably included under vrtit se). Regarding the new categories only one occurrence was found for the meaning break word which was vzt zptky. This semantic category seems to need further research based on more data.

Translations from dictionaries Translations from corpora

vrtit se, jt zptky, vracet se (k bodu jednn, ke patnm stravovacm nvykm apod.), couvnout, znovu zat nco dlat vrtit/vracet se (338); znovu/zase nco dlat (18); jt zpt (12); odjet (9); jet zpt (8); pokraovat (4); zat nco dlat (4); nco dl dlat (3); vydat se zptky (3); bt zpt (3); odltnout zpt (2); jt zptky (2); odejt zptky (2); vytratit se zpt (2); udlat krok zpt (1); zajt do (1); pejt zptky na (1); rozjet se do (1); zajet zpt (1); pehrvat si (1); bt na cest zptky (1); couvnout (1); odvzt zpt (1); pustit se do (1); navrtit se (1); zamit zpt (1); jt nco dlat (1); vypravit se zptky (1); thnout zpt (1); jt jet jednou (1)

sahat (do minulosti), mt pvod kdy/kde, pochzet (z minulosti), sahat svmi koeny, datovat se od sahat (do minulosti) (14);

mt koeny (2); spadat do (1); trvat (1); bt star (1)

-/ have known each other for a long timeznt se od (1)

-/ when classes begin again at schooljt do koly (2)

vrtit se (i do minulosti), bt nazen dozadu obv. Na podzim o jednu hodinu

vrtit se (i do minulosti), bt nazen dozadu obv. Na podzim o jednu hodinu

ukonit stvku, vrtit se do prce

ustoupit, ustupovat

zabrat prostor, sahat (nap. a kmoi)

bt na tom stejn jako pedtm, octnout se znovu na samm zatku, muset zat znovu od pky

poruit slovo, nesplnit or nedodret slib; zradit koho; selhala mi pamvzt zptky (1)

Table 9 comparing translations of the verb go back in the dictionaries and in the corpora. The translations which occured only in the corpora are in bold and their frequency is in brackets. 5.6 GO ON

The phrasal verb go on had the highest number of occurrences among the selected phrasal verbs (1,323 in total), which corresponds with the research by Gardner and Davies et al. (for the details see p. 20). From the total of 1,323 occurrences only 555were translations by a Czech verb. The most frequent translation pokraovat accounts for 32 per cent of the translations by a Czech verb and the second most frequent translation dt se for 19 per cent. This corresponds with the dictionary entry in Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus. This dictionary lists the meanings according to the frequency of the semantic category and the first is continue happening (corresponding with the Czech pokraovat) and the second happen corresponding with the Czech dt se). Examples of some translations where the choice of the Czech verb depended on the context and thus did not fall into any of the categories in Table 2:

zabvat se e.g. But, for too many pages of the biography, Mr Sherry went on and on about the 'real' people. Translation into Czech: Ale pan Sherry se na pli mnoha stranch ivotopisu stle a stle zabval skutenmi lidmi. (InterCorp). The phrase go on and on was found in the corpus and the corresponding translation is a translation of the whole phrase.

provat e.g. I am talking about what is going on with you in your own life. Translation into Czech: Mm na mysli to, co prv provte. (InterCorp) In this sentence the translator decided to change the subject of the sentence from 3rd person to 2nd person singular and the sentence is more natural than a literal translation (e.g. Mluvm o tom, co se s vmi dje ve vaem ivot.) would be.

psobit e.g There seems to be something going on here that we still don't fully understand. Translation into Czech: Zd se, e tu psob jet nco, co stle pln nechpeme (InterCorp). In this sentence is the general translation dt se substituted by psobit as in the context a cause of a process is searched. Translations / Corpora and the number of PV occurrencesIC (876)K1(213)K 2 (234)Total

IC+K1+K2 (1323)

pokraovat1242828180

dt se10900109

dochzet k2213440

probhat1291743

jt na190221

doplnit150015

dovolit si100212

pustit se do82010

trvat5117

zat5005

povdat0415

jt dl4004

fungovat4004

minout4004

postupovat1125

zabvat se1214

kret dl3003

vydat se na3003

rozprvt o2013

provat1203

putovat do2002

odehrvat se2002

stt se2004

bet dl2002

psobit2002

mluvit o2002

bt2002

jt nco dlat2002

potrvat1102

opakovat se0202

zdokonalit se0202

jet dl0202

rozsvtit se0022

jt za klientem1001

navtvovat klienty1001

omlat1001

dodat1001

dopravit se nkam1001

bavit se1001

bt na nohou1001

jt1001

uplynout1001

chytit se neho1001

vykldat1001

jet1001

bet1001

znamenat1001

nekonit1001

vystoupit v TV1001

pedvat1001

pikroit k1001

prohlsit1001

dlat dl1002

nepestvat nco dlat1001

hovoit1001

vydret1001

pesvdovat1001

svtit1001

nebrat konce1001

konat se1001

dorazit nkam1001

inout se1001

zahjit1001

tvrdit1001

vychloubat se1001

pejt k1001

mlt1001

prostrat se1001

opakovat0101

vypravovat0101

vyvjet se0101

dojt k0101

vst si0101

nechat na jindy0011

chopit se neho0011

provst0011

rozbhnout se0011

pijt dl0011

pistoupit k0011

Total translations4047467555

Table 10 A list of translations of the verb go on by a Czech verb. The highlighted verbs are not lexicographic equivalents.

Note: IC = InterCorp, K1 = Kacenka, K2 = Kacenka2

In Table 11 some interesting facts can be observed:

1. There are two semantic categories in the Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus for which there are no translations in the English-Czech dictionaries (go to another place, receive payment from the government). In the Oxford Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs five more semantic categories were identified. 2. There are many translations from dictionaries which could not be linked with any of the semantic categories proposed by monolingual dictionaries. These translations usually have a narrower sense (e.g. thnout na urit vk) or they appear to be mere modulations or translations with a shift in meaning (e.g. mt sv msto).

Semantic categoryCzech translations from dictionaries

continue happeningpokraovat (s m, v em), trvat dl, vytrvat, vydret

happendt se, konat se, odehrvat se, probhat

begin an activity/statenastoupit do sluby ap., zat innost

start taking a drugzat brt; zat uvat, nasadit si, upat

used for encouraging sbspchat, pospit si; Do toho!, No tak! Zkuste to!,

vytrvat

electricity etc:start workingzapnout se, naskoit, nabhnout, spustit se, zat fungovat; bt zapnut; rozsvtit se, zat tci; zase jt

do sth afterpot/nsledn udlat

time: passmjet, ubhnout, utkat, trvat, ubhat, minout, pokraovat, pipozdvat se, thnout, jt na, blit se, plynout

base an opinion on sthoprat se o co, vychzet z eho, mt se o co opt

go to a place before sbjet, jt vpedu (naped)

continue travellingpokraovat, jt/jet/lett, plout dl

begin talking againpokraovat v ei, mluvit dl, rozpovdat se

talk a lotomlat co, pod vanit o em, vytrvale a nudn mluvit, pod se opakovat, vykldat, stle moc o em mluvit

go to another place

receive payment from the government

be spent on sthjt na co (penze apod.)

begin performingvystoupit, vystupovat, jt na scnu, vyslat

replace another player in sportnastoupit na hit, na zvodn drhu atd.

depart for a certain purpose (holiday)

mount and travel on (sth), esp as a treat (donkey)vozit se na

continue without change or relief (noise, interruptions, affair )

continue by adding some new point to what has already been said or written

be helped or guided by sth (eg hearsay, rumour)

thnout komu (na urit vk)

nijak nestt o co, nemt moc v lsce co/koho, nebt nijak naden z eho

stt si, vst si, postupovat, dait se, jt to, pokroit, hnout se, pohnout se

uspt, doshnout spchu

vyjt, obejt se, poradit si

(lid) strnout

blit se nap. sum

padnout, jt nasadit (bota, vko atd.), dt se navlci, nathnout

vychzet nap. s tchn

mt sv msto

jt na co, bt vydn za co

bt do koho beznadjn zamilovan (zblznn)

mt spolu dobr vztahy, dobe spolu vychzet

mt spch, doshnout vsledku, vst si, ponat si;

dt se k

Table 11 semantic categories identified in monolingual categories compared to Czech translations from the dictionaries divided into semantic categoriesTable 12 compares translations from dictionaries with translation retrieved from corpora. Many synonyms were found and these are in bold in the right column. It is worth noting that some of these synonyms were quite frequent (e.g. trvat, pustit se do) and could be interesting for translators.

Another outcome of this part of research is that for four semantic categories for which no corresponding translations were found in the dictionaries translations occurred in the corpora studied see Table 12.

Semantic categories without translations in the dictionariesCzech translations retrieved from corpora

depart for a certain purpose (holiday)vydat se na (3)

continue without change or relief (noise, interruptions, affair )nekonit (1)

continue by adding some new point to what has already been said or writtendoplnit (15), dodat (1), pejt k (1),

pistoupit k (1)

be helped or guided by sth (eg hearsay, rumour)chytit se neho (1)

Table 12 Czech translations retrieved from corpora linked to semantic categories without translations in the dictionariesOn the other hand, many of the translations proposed by the Czech dictionaries have not been found in the corpora, which could either be caused by a limited size of the corpora used or by the fact that some of the translations in dictionaries are too context-specific.

Translations from dictionariesTranslations from corpora

pokraovat (s m, v em), trvat dl, vytrvat, vydretpokraovat (180), trvat (7), potrvat (2), dlat dl (2), nepestvat nco dlat (1), vydret (1), nebrat konce (1)

dt se, konat se, odehrvat se, probhatdt se (109), dochzet k (40), probhat (43), odehrvat se (2), stt se (4), konat se (1)

nastoupit do sluby ap., zat innostpustit se do (10), zat (5), jt nco dlat (2), pikroit k (1), zahjit (1), chopit se (1), rozbhnout se (1)

zat brt; zat uvat, nasadit si, upat

spchat, pospit si; Do toho!, No tak! Zkuste to!,

vytrvat

zapnout se, naskoit, nabhnout, spustit se, zat fungovat; bt zapnut; rozsvtit se, zat tci; zase jtfungovat (4), rozsvtit se (2), svtit (1)

pot/nsledn udlat

mjet, ubhnout, utkat, trvat, ubhat, minout, pokraovat, pipozdvat se, thnout, jt na, blit se, plynoutjt na (21), minout (4), uplynout (1), bet (1), inout se (1), dojt k (1)

oprat se o co, vychzet z eho, mt se o co opt

jet, jt vpedu (naped)

pokraovat, jt/jet/lett, plout dljt dl (4), kret dl (3), bet dl (2), jet dl (2), jt (1), jet (1)

pokraovat v ei, mluvit dl, rozpovdat sepovdat (5), bavit se (1)

omlat co, pod vanit o em, vytrvale a nudn mluvit, pod se opakovat, vykldat, stle moc o em mluvitrozprvt o (3), mluvit o (2), opakovat se (2), omlat (1), vykldat (1), prohlsit (1), hovoit (1), pesvdovat (1), mlt (1), opakovat (1), vypravovat (1)

go to another placeputovat do (2), dorazit nkam (1)

receive payment from the government

jt na co (penze apod.)dovolit si (12)

vystoupit, vystupovat, jt na scnu, vyslatvystoupit v TV (1)

nastoupit na hit, na zvodn drhu atd.,

depart for a certain purpose (holiday)vydat se na (3)

vozit se na

continue without change or relief (noise, interruptions, affair )nekonit (1)

continue by adding some new point to what has already been said or writtendoplnit (15), dodat (1), pejt k (1),

pistoupit k (1)

be helped or guided by sth (eg hearsay, rumour)chytit se neho (1)

thnout komu (na urit vk)

nijak nestt o co, nemt moc v lsce co/koho, nebt nijak naden z eho

stt si, vst si, postupovat, dait se, jt to, pokroit, hnout se, pohnout sepostupovat (5), vst si (1)

uspt, doshnout spchu

vyjt, obejt se, poradit si

(lid) strnout

blit se nap. sum

padnout, jt nasadit (bota, vko atd.), dt se navlci, nathnout

vychzet nap. s tchn

mt sv msto

jt na co, bt vydn za co

bt do koho beznadjn zamilovan (zblznn)

mt spolu dobr vztahy, dobe spolu vychzet

mt spch, doshnout vsledku, vst si, ponat si;

dt se k

Table 13 comparing translations of the verb go back in the dictionaries and in the corpora. The translations which occurred only in the corpora are in bold and their frequency is in brackets. 5.7PICK UP

In Table 14 the translations for the phrasal verb pick up by a Czech verb are listed. Atotal of 742 occurrences of the phrasal verb pick up were found in the corpora studied which were translated by a Czech verb 615 times. 137 different verbs were used for these translations, which is the highest number when compared with other phrasal verbs studied. The most common translation was zvedat, which occurred 111 times (accounting for ca. 18 per cent of the translations by a Czech verb). When finding the right Czech expressions for the verb to pick up, translators often choose the following strategies:

they follow the meaning of grasping an object similar to the commonly used translation sebrat, uchopit. These include for example brt (According to one legend, every morning she would pick up a mirror and sit down to draw. Translated in the InterCorp as: Podle jedn legendy kad rno brala zrcadlo a usedala k malovn.) or ovinout chobotem (One day, my great-grandpa led his elephants down to the river for a bath, and one of them picked him up with its trunk and threw him in the air. Translated into Czech in the InterCorp as: Praddeek byl drezr slon, a kdy vzal jednou svoje svence k ece, aby se mohli vykoupat, ten nejvt, jmenoval se Caesar, ho ovinul chobotem a vyhodil do vzduchu. In this case the shift in meaning is obvious but the underlying principle of grasping something is present. It also corresponds with the meaning of the particle up (for more about the meanings of the particle up see p. 8). or they follow the meaning of perception e.g. zachytit (The wild sow heard his moan and moved away in a new direction, where I could see her walking back and fourth in the distance, probably trying to pick up my scent. Translated into Czech in the InterCorp as: Samice ho uslyela a poodela o kus dl. Vidl jsem, e se prochz sem a tam, zejm se snaila zachytit mj pach.) or a more specific vyenichat (They seemed to pick up some scent, and they searched the ground for a while near the place where you halted. Translated into Czech in Kacenka 2 as: Zdlo se, e nco vyenichali, a chvl prohledvali pdu u msta, kde jste se zastavili.) or they opt for the meaning of the verb choose e.g. vybrat si (If the widow had any taste, she might surely pick up some better fellow than that. Translated into Czech in Kacenka as: Kdyby ta vdova mla jen trochu vkusu, jist by si dovedla vybrat nkoho lepho, ne je tenhle chlap!)More examples of variants are listed in Table 14 which compares translations from dictionaries with the occurrences found in corpora. The description above only illustrated the strategies that the translators might use when translating the phrasal verb pick up.

Translations / Corpora and the number of PV occurrencesIC (582)K1 (44)K2 (116)Total IC+K1+K2(742)

zvedat11100111

vyzvednout531660

sebrat4201658

vzt494457

uchopit223328

zachytit233026

zvednout271019

nabrat120012

brt71210

pochytit91010

shnout po100010

posbrat9009

popadnout5038

sbalit7018

zdvihnout0077

sbrat3036

naloit (do auta)3025

odvzt3104

vyrazit z0044

zastavit se pro3104

zvyovat/zvit4004

drapnout1023

hradit3003

chopit se3003

chytit nco2013

koupit1113

pokraovat3003

pijt k2103

shbnout se pro2103

stavit se pro1023

vybrat si3003

vythnout3003

zapnout se3003

zskat3003

zrychlit3003

dojet pro1012

chytit se neho2002

jet pro0112

lznout0022

nakoupit0022

nauit se2002

odnst2002

pozvednout2002

pevzt2002

pijt si na0022

pinst1012

pivzt z2002

tahat za0202

ulovit0202

vybrat1012

vzt s sebou2002

vzt si0022

zaznamenat2002

zjistit2002

zvedat2002

zvednout se2002

bali