| Popis: |
The thesis explores the syntactic means used in English to express a wish. While in Czech the optative sentences constitute a special sentence type, in English various constructions can be used to perform the same function. A contrastive approach is therefore used to identify the types of English optative sentences. The particle kéž introducing Czech optative sentences is used as a marker of the optative function. English optative sentences are identified in English original texts as counterparts of Czech translations comprising the particle kéž. The material is drawn from the English-Czech fiction sub-corpus of the parallel translation corpus InterCorp. One hundred English optative sentences are analysed with respect to the syntactic structure of the sentence (simple vs. complex) and the form of the verb (mood). The formal features are correlated with the choice of the addressee, time reference and realizability of the wish. The English optative sentences comprise, apart from the most frequent type introduced by I wish, a range of constructions, including 'minor' irregular sentences, which are described in more detail in the analytical part of the thesis. KEYWORDS optative sentences, particle kéž, translation counterparts, parallel corpus, English, Czech |
