ENGLISH PRESENT PARTICIPLES AND GERUNDS FUNCTIONING AS ADVERBIALS AND THEIR TRANSLATIONS INTO CZECH

Abstract

The paper presents a comparative study of non-finite -ing forms with the aim of justifying their classification into gerunds and present participles. The empirical part focuses on -ing forms functioning as adverbials in contemporary English fiction and their corresponding Czech translations. The study is based on a manually excerpted corpus of works of contemporary English fiction and their translations into Czech. The results have shown present participles are more frequent than gerunds when functioning as adverbials, suggesting functional differences even in the area where they theoretically share a common function. As far as the translations into Czech are concerned, significant differences have been noticed between the two -ing forms, present participles being most commonly translated by means of clauses in a coordinate relation while for gerunds a way of translation which would so significantly prevail has not been identified, but nouns or verbal nouns have been the most common counterparts.