French, Polish and Czech converbs

Abstract The study investigates the translation correspondence of Czech, Polish, and French converbs ( transgressive, imiesłów przysłówkowy , and gérondif ), using extensive data extracted from parallel corpora of fiction. Although the three converbs share significant syntactic and semantic properties (in terms of the range and proportion of different meanings conveyed), they differ in frequency and in stylistic characteristics (archaistic in Czech). The study shows that these differences are reflected in the proportion of the convergent translation counterparts, independently of the source language (more than 65% of convergent counterparts in translations into Polish, about 30% in translations into French, and only about 6% in Czech). The analysis of target languages showing high proportion of divergent counterparts (French and Czech) reveals that the distribution of their types is shaped by the meaning of the source converb: distinction between accompanying circumstance vs. more informative meanings in Czech, and participant- vs. event-oriented content in French. This research advances our understanding of the expression of adverbial subordination across languages and demonstrates the research potential of parallel corpora, used as semantic and functional mirrors revealing distinctions within seemingly uniform categories in source languages.