This study summarizes a corpus-based analysis of tendencies in register variation of Czech-written fiction texts in the period from 1992 to 2018. The analysis is based on projection of the results from a large sample of Czech prose texts (1070 texts, 12.7 mil. words) on a general register model (established by previous research using multidimensional analysis). The major tendencies found in the material are a decrease of cohesion level, addressee coding and retrospective narration, and increased polythematicity/lexical richness. These findings are supplemented by additional analyses of the role of translation, the position of a text excerpt in the original text (beginning, middle and end) and type of text in the results
The article summarizes the theoretical foundations and results of a corpus-driven study of register variability in contemporary Czech. The descriptive framework is based on the methodology of multidimensional analysis, as previously applied to various other languages (see Biber 1995). The starting point is a quantitative analysis of a custom-built genre-diversified corpus in which linguistic features have been identified that are likely to be related to functional and systematic variability on different linguistic levels. Statistical processing using factor analysis then yields a model which identifies (in the case of Czech) 8 dimensions of variation of the texts. The greatest proportion of variance is explained by the first two dimensions, which can be described as dichotomies distinguishing between dynamic vs. static and spontaneous vs. prepared.
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