Bělíková Zuzana The Modal Verb Could and its Equivalents in Translation

5.1
 
Corpus Based Research 
A Corpus is made for linguistic research. Collected texts in an electronic form are either 
written or spoken. Spoken pieces are transcribed. Users need to know how to work with
the corpus because there is a specific searching program. The corpus gives access to search 
for specific words and collocations in a context. It also shows their frequency and it is easy 
to find their original text source. The corpus also gives opportunities to work more with
the data, i.e. alphabetical classification. Users can search according to parts of speech is 
some corpora (Čermák and Kocek 2013).
There are some arguments whether it is necessary to create corpora or the Internet as
a source of various information is enough. Čermák and Kocek (2013) argue that data
on the Internet can change within a day. Web pages and texts can be deleted. The Internet 
is not a reliable source for citations. As oppose to that, corpora are immutable and users 
can find their data whenever they want. Čermák and Kocek (2013) add that sources
on the Internet mostly originate in journalistic or technical texts, tabloids etc.; and fiction is 
not sufficient for a study. Tools for searching and sorting data are not designed for gaining 
linguistic information on the Internet because most of the Internet users do not need them 
and it is not necessary to create them. Context is usually too small for linguists. Last but 
not least, it is sometimes hard to find an author and origin of a text on the Internet. Texts
in corpora, on the other hand, have detailed bibliographies and abstracts. 

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Philosophical Faculty, Palacký University Olomouc 
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5.2
 
The Czech National Corpus 
“The Czech National Corpus (CNC) is an academic project focusing on building a large 
electronic corpus of mainly written Czech. Institute of the Czech National Corpus (ICNC), 
Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague has been in charge of the CNC, its expansion, 
development and other related activities, particularly those associated with teaching and 
advancing the field of the corpus linguistics.” (Čermák and Kocek 2013)
1
Many people are involved in this project. The director of ICNC is doc. Mgr. Václav 
Cvrček, Ph.D. and his deputy director is Mgr. Michal Křen, Ph.D. The staff is divided into 
the linguistic section, the computational section, the spoken corpora section, the diachronic 
corpora section, the linguistic analysis and annotation section and the parallel corpora 
section. Professors and post-graduate students also contribute (Český národní korpus 
2013)
2
. 
ICNC cooperate with universities in the Czech Republic as well as abroad (Český národní 
korpus 2013)
3
.