Trajectories of change in paradigmatic cells in Czech

• Authors: Neil Bermel , Luděk Knittl

Title variants

CS

Trajektorie ve změnách paradigmat českých substantiv

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

We examine a well-known phenomenon in the development of the Czech nominal declension system: the gradual supplanting of the original o-stem ending in the locative singular with the u-stem ending. We observe that, contrary to expectations from the literature based primarily on studies of English, this shift has been in progress for a millennium and, in the high-frequency nouns for which we have enough data to observe, the opposing trend is also frequently in evidence: the o-stem ending is introduced to lexemes where it was not found earlier. In the absence of a single, overriding motivation that could have derailed this shift from following the classic ‘S-curve’ pattern, we propose re-examining the retextualization model as a more fitting one for the complex interaction of factors and forms found in languages with complex inflectional morphology.

Keywords

EN

corpus linguistics; declension; diachrony; inflection; morphology

CS

diachronie; flexe; korpusová lingvistika; skloňování; tvarosloví

• Publisher: Institute of the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Naše řeč (Our Speech)
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 106
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 247-274
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Neil Bermel

• Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v. v. i., Letenská 123/4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic

author

Luděk Knittl

• Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v. v. i., Letenská 123/4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic