Existenciální věty v historické perspektivě: osudy indoevropského *es-

• Authors: Nikolaj P. Savický

Title variants

EN

Existential sentences in historical perspective: The fate of the Indo-European *es-

RU

Бытийные предложения в исторической перспективе: Судьбы индоевропейского *es-

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

In many languages, existential sentences form a separate type, not only in a semantic sense, but also in their formal aspect (surrounded by a belt of transitional phenomena). In Indo-European, the verb *es- expressed the meaning of existence and was opposed to zero copula. As this verb attained the function of copula (e.g. in West European languages), in many cases the need for new means of earmarking the existential meaning appeared. This led to the formation of constructions of the type there is, il y a, es gibt, hay; this process supported the tendency opposing the prevailing direction of movement towards unification of syntactic structures. Delbrück, for example, expressed doubts as to where the real subject was in the sentence es ist ein Gott. These facts arouse a special interest from the standpoint of a theory which seeks the dialectical unity of analogising and anomalistic tendencies in the development of languages.

Keywords

EN

language

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: 2005
• Volume: 66
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 261-269
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Nikolaj P. Savický

• Slovo a slovesnost, redakce, Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v.v.i., Letenská 4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic