Contrastive analysis of the synthetic nature of comparative and superlative forms in the Czech and Russian languages

This article presents an experience of corpus analysis of comparative and superlative forms of ten most frequent qualitative adjectives in the Czech and Russian languages across the period from 1990 to 2019. The investigation is focused at determining the characteristic features of the gradation of Czech adjectives against the common Slavic background. The goal of the study is to establish the degree of syntheticity of the Czech language by comparing frequencies of simple and complex forms of degrees of comparison in Czech and Russian written discourses. The subject of the study is the frequency of use of such forms, represented by the grammatical category of comparative degrees. The research methodology includes the functional and systemic methods developed by the Soviet school of Bohemian studies, as well as the contrastive method described in the works of A. G. Shirokova and Vl. Barnet. In addition, corpus tools of linguistic research were used to analyze the language material. The investigation is based on the material of the balanced corpora of Czech written texts SYN and the National Corpus of the Russian Language. Due to the application of large language models in linguistic analysis, and the current lack of accurate information on the relationship between synthetic and analytical comparatives and superlatives in the Slavic languages, the study is considered to be relevant. The corpus analysis revealed a significant difference in the frequency of use of analytical forms like více důležitý/более важный “more important”, nejvíce mladý/самый молодой “the youngest” in the Czech and Russian languages: 0.023% versus 10.396%. This confirms the hypothesis about the synthetic nature of the gradation of the qualitative degree of Czech adjectives.

corpora studies, Slavistics, Czech, Russian, adjectival degrees of comparison, synthecity, competition of comparative forms, competition of superlative forms, contrastive analysis, gradation of the qualitative degree