Les corpus parallèles : l'espace pour l'analyse contrastive

This article presents a new instrument of the linguistic research (parallel corpora, section 1, particularly the large project Intercorp) and an example of their application (the French gerund constructions of the verbs of movement). After a short summary of the gerund semantics, based on the works of O. Halmøy (Type A – (chrono)logical anteriority, 2.1 vs. Type B – circonstance concomitante, 2.2), the article focuses on the sub-type B' of the gerund, expressing the way (la manière) of the realization of the main process (type dit-il en balbutiant) and including all the semes of the main verb (dire – balbutier). Due to the contrastive approach, a special type of B' is identified ([VRVmt SGVmt (VR ⊄ VG)], il est arrivé en courant, section 3), where the main verb and the gerund are both verbs of movement, but some semes of the main verb, expressing the telicity of the movement, are not included in the gerund and are usually translated in Czech by a prefix (e.g. Přiběhl).