Superlatives in Contemporary Czech Written Discourse: Corpora Studies

Abstract

The article presents the experience of corpus analysis of superlative forms in modern Czech written discourse. As a source of factual material, the Synek corpus was used, which is a tenfold proportionally reduced SYN2000 corpus (120 908 724 tokens), intended by its compilers as adequately reflecting modern Czech written discourse. Based on the material of the Synek corpus, it is shown that in modern Czech discourse, in contrast to Russian discourse, in the vast majority of cases a simple superlative form of the type nejpopulárnější ‘most popular’ is used (approximately 200 times more contexts for the use of such forms were found than contexts for the use of analytical forms type nejvíce populární ‘most popular’). Algorithms for constructing a table of the use of simple superlative forms in modern Czech written discourse are described according to the Synek corpus. The first quarter of this table is presented (the first 250 lines from the form největší ‘largest/greatest’, used in 3764 contexts, to the form nejpestřejší ‘the most motley’, used in 5 contexts).

Received: 07.09.2024.
Revised: 23.03.2025.
Accepted: 16.09.2025.

Citation
Izotov A. I., Morozov D. A. Superlatives in Contemporary Czech Written Discourse: Corpora Studies // Slavic Almanac. 2025. No 3–4. P. 130–148 (In Russian). DOI: 10.31168/2073-5731.2025.3-4.06