Definite associative anaphora in informal spoken Czech: a corpus-based study

• Authors: Jan Dvořák

Title variants

CS

Určitá asociační anafora v neformální mluvené češtině: korpusová studie

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The present study, couched within the framework of Löbner’s Concept Types and Determination theory (CTD) and relying both on corpus data and the questionnaire method, attempts to provide some evidence for the claim that there is a growing tendency in contemporary informal spoken Czech to use the emerging definite article ten with definite associative anaphora (DAA). Just like its Western Slavic cognates, the distance-neutral demonstrative ten appears to manifest characteristics typical of definite articles across languages (cf. Ortmann, 2014; Czardybon, 2017; Dvořák, 2020). One of these characteristics is the spreading of ten to contexts situated between pragmatic and semantic definiteness on Löbner’s definiteness scale (Löbner, 1985; 2011). DAA is part of these contexts. However, as the present study shows, marked differences exist between the three sub-types of DAA as defined by Löbner with regards to their willingness to accept ten. These are, respectively, the “part-whole,” the “relational” and the “situational” sub-type. Other factors must also be taken into account, such as the speaker’s emotional involvement and competing interpretations of the occurrence of ten.

Keywords

EN

corpus linguistics; definite associative anaphora; emerging definite article; grammaticalization; informal spoken Czech; ten

CS

gramatikalizace; korpusová lingvistika; neformální mluvená čeština; ten; určitá asociační anafora; vznikající určitý člen

• Publisher: Institute of the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Naše řeč (Our Speech)
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 106
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 87-109
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Jan Dvořák

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