The Use of Verb Tense in Subordinate Content Clauses in Czech

The subject of this dissertation is an analysis of the use of verbal tenses in Czech subordinate clauses. This analysis is based on the notions of relative and absolute tenses and on the distinction between content and adjunct clauses. We test the hypothesis about the connection of relative and absolute tense with the type of a subordinated clause (content and adjunct) and propose a revised version of the views presented in Czech grammars, monographs and articles based on a detailed analysis of the data from the Czech National Corpus. The syntactic and semantic criteria for the classification of dependent clauses into content and adjunct classes are studied together with the conditions for the application of relative or absolute tense. The great amount of data exploited from the Czech National Corpus support the idea that beside the expected forms of tense (relative in content clauses, absolute in adjunct clauses) there exists some shifting of the presupposed forms of verbal tenses. The explanation of these shifts is presented in this dissertation as a new contribution to the study of the interplay between Czech morphology and syntax. Key Words: subordinate content clause, relative tense, absolute tense, factual predicate, indirect speec