Non-finite Verb Forms as Semipredicates in Russian, Czech and German. A Typological View

Title: Non­finite Verb Forms as Semipredicates in Russian, Czech and German. A Typological View. Author: Jana Kocková Supervisor: doc. Dr. phil. Markus Giger Abstract: This research paper presents a comprehensive picture of non­finite verb forms in Russian, Czech and German supported by a corpus analysis based on the parallel corpus InterCorp CNC. Equivalents of each of the non­finite verb forms were analysed manually in each of the monitored languages. The data obtained served for typological classification focused on non­finite verb forms as secondary predicates. Different frequencies of the individual forms and mutual competition of various means in language also indirectly result from the analysis. In Czech we may observe generally a strong tendency to express the semiprediaction by means of a finite verb form in a sentence structure. As regards non­ finite verb forms, the actively used forms are participle and verbal nouns, i.e. forms which relate to the existing part­of­speech paradigms. Due to being inflectional they express explicitly syntactic relations. Czech uses the possibility to express the secondary predication by means that are not contrary to morphological regularities of the inflectional type. Russian uses actively all the non­finite verb forms. A high..