Based on the data from a parallel English-Czech corpus, the present study offers an analysis of 600 English V-ing participial clauses through their Czech translation correspondences, divisible into less and more explicit types. The less explicit Czech counterparts highlight the analytic character of English either in cases where the translation counterpart is synthetic (i.e. merging the meaning of the finite verb and the participle into one verb) or where the participle resembles, in its function, a preposition. The more explicit (i.e. finite-clause) Czech counterparts attest to the backgrounded information status and semantic indeterminacy of the English participial clause. Instead of an expected tendency to render their meaning in Czech by a similar, syntactically subordinated, structure, namely dependent clauses, it is the simple coordination that appears to represent best the semantic indeterminacy of the relation of the English participial clause to its superordinate element. 1 In 1928, in his article in the Theses of the Prague Linguistic Circle Mathesius, drawing a distinction between linguistic characterology (i.e. synchronic comparison of languages) and descriptive grammar, claimed that "[F]or further advancement of linguistic research work it is of vital importance that detailed linguistic characterology of single languages at different stages of their development should be worked up on a purely synchronic basis. [...] Comparison of languages of different types without any regard to their genetic relations is of the greatest value for any work in concrete linguistics characterology" (Mathesius 1928, in Vachek 1964: 60). Mathesius further points out that "the only way of approach to different languages as strictly comparable systems is the functional point of view, since general needs of expression and communication, common to all mankind, are the only common denominators to which means of expression and communication, varying from language to language, can reasonably be brought" (Mathesius 1936: 95).

This study explores cross-linguistically, in English, Czech and Finnish, eye-behaviour that occurs in children’s fiction in the vicinity of character speech. We explore how authentic eye behaviour, as an important part of non-verbal communication, is rendered in fictional worlds. While there are more similarities than differences across the languages in the characteristics and narrative functions of fictional eye-behaviour, the linguistic encoding differs substantially due to typological differences between the languages. The same semantic roles are often expressed by divergent syntactic means. The divergence is reflected primarily in the relative weight of different word-order principles, the different means of indicating simultaneity, as well as the role of inflection in Finnish and Czech.

The paper combines learner corpus research with contrastive analysis to test the applicability of corpus-driven methods to the study of phraseology in learner academic English. It explores phraseological patterns in English L2 academic texts written by Czech university students in comparison with English L1 novice and expert writing. Three corpus-driven approaches are employed: frequency lists, keywords and lexical bundles. The results indicate that a combination of corpus-driven methods can indeed serve as an effective starting point for the contrastive study of phraseology, highlighting potentialareas of under- and overuse of multi-word patterns in English L2 novice academic texts. However, in order to give a more comprehensive picture of learner academic English, quantitative methods have to be combined with qualitative contrastive analysis.

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