Expressing Measure in Czech (A Corpus-Based Study)

Abstract In the contribution, we provide a theory-based and corpus-verified description of expressions for measure in Czech. We demonstrate that the measure expressions may modify quantity of entities (approximately ten boys), internal characteristics of events (he works a lot), properties (very big) and relations (completely without sound). We distinguish between the measure expressions that are an answer to the question To what extent? (Extent-modifiers) and expressions that modify an answer to the question How many? (Quantity-modifiers). The Extent-modifiers are formally, structurally and semantically more diverse than the Quantity-modifiers. For the Quantity-modifiers a list of forms and functions is provided. Theoretical knowledge stemming from the analysis will subsequently be used to improve the annotation in the Prague Dependency Treebanks. It can be also useful for other semantically-oriented descriptions of language.