Based on the data from a parallel English-Czech corpus, the present study offers an analysis of 600 English V-ing participial clauses through their Czech translation correspondences, divisible into less and more explicit types. The less explicit Czech counterparts highlight the analytic character of English either in cases where the translation counterpart is synthetic (i.e. merging the meaning of the finite verb and the participle into one verb) or where the participle resembles, in its function, a preposition. The more explicit (i.e. finite-clause) Czech counterparts attest to the backgrounded information status and semantic indeterminacy of the English participial clause. Instead of an expected tendency to render their meaning in Czech by a similar, syntactically subordinated, structure, namely dependent clauses, it is the simple coordination that appears to represent best the semantic indeterminacy of the relation of the English participial clause to its superordinate element. 1 In 1928, in his article in the Theses of the Prague Linguistic Circle Mathesius, drawing a distinction between linguistic characterology (i.e. synchronic comparison of languages) and descriptive grammar, claimed that "[F]or further advancement of linguistic research work it is of vital importance that detailed linguistic characterology of single languages at different stages of their development should be worked up on a purely synchronic basis. [...] Comparison of languages of different types without any regard to their genetic relations is of the greatest value for any work in concrete linguistics characterology" (Mathesius 1928, in Vachek 1964: 60). Mathesius further points out that "the only way of approach to different languages as strictly comparable systems is the functional point of view, since general needs of expression and communication, common to all mankind, are the only common denominators to which means of expression and communication, varying from language to language, can reasonably be brought" (Mathesius 1936: 95).

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Middle English was a period of transition between the free word order of Old English, with functional variation of adjective form and position with respect to the head noun, and the fixed prenominal placement of single attributive adjectives in Modern English. Aided by the PPCME2 of the Penn-Helsinki corpora, this corpus-driven study explores the range of adjectives attested frequently after the head noun, as well as their relative attraction to the position and, sampling the ME period with emphasis on variables in the corpus metadata, compares the frequencies of postnominally placed adjectives in various genres, capturing their declining overall frequency over time. These general tendencies are commented against the background of postpositives in PDE.