Discourse functions of imperative "look" and "listen" in comparison with their Czech counterparts

The present paper studies the English imperatives look and listen used as discourse markers. The study focuses on two aspects: firstly, to identify the factors indicating the primary function as opposed to the discourse function of look and listen in English, and secondly, to analyse the Czech counterparts of these verbs used as discourse markers. The paper is comprised of two main parts. The first, theoretical background, describes the grammatical form of the English imperative with focus on look and listen, the concept of discourse markers, the cross-linguistic studies focusing specifically on look and listen, the correspondence between English and Czech imperative, and the potential Czech counterparts. The second, empirical part analyses two hundred and three examples of the imperatives look and listen and their Czech counterparts from the parallel translation corpus InterCorp. Key words: imperative, look, listen, discourse markers, primary function, Czech counterpar