The use of prothetic /v/ by older speakers in Prague

• Authors: Jan Chromý
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this paper is to analyze linguistic factors which influence the usage of prothetic /v/ in speech of older speakers in Prague. The analysis is based on informal 1 hour long interviews with 17 speakers (9 women, 8 men) from Prague aged between 60 and 71 years. All of the speakers were born in Prague and they lived there for most of their lives. Altogether, there are 2769 occurrences of the variable (v): 538 /Ø/ and 2231 /v/. It can be seen that the speakers in the sample prefer using the prothetic /v/. Based on a generalized linear mixed model, we show that the use of (v) is influenced by word frequency, presence of a prefix and borrowedness of the word. Other variables do not fit in the model. If compared with older data by Jančák (1974) and the recent data on younger speakers from Prague by Chromý (2015), it can be seen that there is a change in progress in the use of (v) in Prague and that the prothetic /v/ seems to be on slow decline.

Keywords

EN

spoken Czech; language variation; prothetic /v/; usage-based approach

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 51
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 203-225

Dates

received

2014-12-12

revised

2015-01-30

accepted

2015-03-09

online

2015-06-30

Contributors

author

Jan Chromý

• Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/psicl-2015-0009