Jak se počítají substantiva v češtině: poznámky ke kategorii čísla

• Authors: Jarmila Panevová , Magda Ševčíková

Title variants

EN

HOW TO COUNT NOUNS IN CZECH: REMARKS ON THE CATEGORY OF NUMBER

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The present contribution deals with the grammatical category of number in Czech nouns. On the basis of empirical investigation, we propose the introduction of a new semantic distinction within the forms of nouns, namely the distinction of a simple quantitative meaning versus a pair/group meaning. There are nouns in Czech that typically refer to a pair or to a (commonly encountered) group of entities, not merely to a large amount of these entities (e.g. ruce ‘arms’, vlasy ‘hair’, or sirky ‘matches’). These nouns are combined with set numerals rather than with the basic ones. In the paper, we argue that the above mentioned subcategorization is grammaticalized. A brief outline of the expressions of the pair/group meaning in Czech as compared to some other languages (German, English, Slavonic) is also provided.

Keywords

EN

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF NUMBER; SINGULAR; PLURAL; PAIR/GROUP MEANING; NOUNS; NUMERALS; PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovo a slovesnost: časopis pro otázky teorie a kultury jazyka (Slovo a slovesnost: A journal for the theory of language and language cultivation)
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 72
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 163-176

Contributors

author

Jarmila Panevová

author

Magda Ševčíková

• ÚFAL MFF UK, Malostranské nám. 25, Praha 1, 118 00, Czech Republic