The study explores when and why speakers in the dialogic communication refer to themselves through a combination of the verbal person with the personal pronoun “I”(i.e., an explicit self-reference), even though a verb endings alone indicate the person in the Slovak language. Traditionally, expressiveness, emotionality, emphasis and functional sentence perspective are considered to be the cause for explicit self-referencing. In this paper, we focus on two questions: (a) What are the verbs’ semantic classes that are used preferentially in the dialogue in the 1st person singular form? (b) Which verbs are used with the explicit self-reference most frequently? The research shows, that cognitive verbs (and those representing the inner world of the speaker) are among the verbs with the highest degree of explicit self-referencing. The paper concludes with the case study of explicit self-reference using cognitive verb “I do not know” as an example compared to implicit self-reference. We used the text-corpus method. The findings of the study are interpreted within the salience theory.
Do Cyrillic Paraliturgical Songs Belong in the Context of Slovak Culture? The paper discusses some issues of linguistic research concerning Cyrillic texts of Eastern Slovak provenance. Phonetic, morphological and lexical examples are adduced that attest to the influence the Slovak language environment exerted on the texts.
Representation and placing of negation together with a construction of clauses and order of the sentential components belong to main indicators of separation and idiomacy of the phraseology regarded in this paper. The author analyses Slovak phraseological fund and describes types of sayings involving negation and defines their typology.
The paper focuses on the analysis of literary critical reception of Slovak Vojvodina literature in Slovakia written in the second half of the 20th century and the early 21th century. It examines the literary critical articles written by Slovak authors that were published in Slovakia´s literary magazines (Slovenské pohľady, Slovenská literatúra, Romboid etc.) and also partly in the Slovak magazine Nový život published in Serbia, as well as in some critics´ compilation books. The great emphasis is placed on the reconstruction of the causes, the methods and the pace of, as well as the people involved in restoring the severed relations between the two forms of the same literature, i.e. that written in Slovak language, while what is mainly analysed is the changes in the status of Slovak Vojvodina literature (from that in the region to that in the enclave) and their impact on the relations between Slovak Vojvodina literature and all-Slovakia literature. Close attention is paid to the authors who did or have done literary critical research into Slovak Vojvodina literature in the most systematic way (Peter Andruška, Viliam Marčok, Dalimír Hajko, Oliver Bakoš, Etela Farkašová) and who did or have done their share in the full integration of Slovak Vojvodina literature into the all-Slovakia literary context.
The article describes a method to analyse contemporary Slovak vocabulary with regard to the origin of the words. By using statistical data from a representative corpus of modern written language and etymological information we arrive at reasonably confident estimation of the ratio of loanwords in common Slovak vocabulary and the provenance of lexical borrowings. We demonstrate some of the findings in tables and charts, providing information that is interesting to non-linguistically oriented members of Slovak population (who are sometimes vocal in expressing their attitudes to the perceived amount of loanwords in the Slovak language), but can be also inspiring for further research in philology or linguistics.
The authoress deals with linguistic transfer in learning Slovenian language in Slovakia and above all with the negative linguistic transfer from Slovak language into Slovenian language on all linguistic levels, especially when both linguistic systems are different.
In his paper, the author examines a possible implementation of the lexeme 'predat' ' endowed with the meaning 'hand over' into the Slovak lexical inventory. Leaning on instances of this lexeme in Slovak historical sources and with regard to its development in other Slavonic languages, the author comes to the conclusion that the said meaning must be considered as new and out-of-system in the Slovak language. Investigation into existence of this phenomenon in other Slavonic languages as well as into the meanings of the lexeme in Old Slavonic shows that the Slovenian, Polish, Upper and Lower Lusitian languages exhibit more or less the same situation, while the South and East Slavonic languages along with Czech make up a separate isogloss characterized in its development by the prefixes 'pro-, pre-, or pere-'.
The paper deals with the analysis of J. Palkovic dictionary work from the beginning of the 18th century. Attention is concentrated on the processing of several common expressions existing in the Slovak language and in the Czech language, as well as on lexemes existing only in the Slovak language. Research and comparison of some processed lexemes reveals the fact, that this dictionary reflects the viewpoint on the language adequate for mentioned period of the time. Nevertheless, the Dictionary is evaluated as a suitable handbook for students and for some other Slovak and Moravian social groups from the period, which precedes the period of Ludovit Stur activity. The Dictionary includes an extensive Slovak vocabulary, which made it very popular. J. Palkovic attracted users attention with the topical question connected with the infiltration of the Slovak language into that period of time existing Czech literary language in Slovakia.
The paper focuses on the scientific research of prof. PhDr. Jozef Ružička, DrSc., who uncovered grammatical aspects of the Slovak to foreign students in his presentations at the Summer School of Slovak Language and Culture Studia Academica Slovaca. In his lectures, he helped participants to see Slovak as confident competitive Central European language which is able to respond to the dynamic changes resulting from the communication needs of the language users. Taking into account the long-term scientific research of Jozef Ružička, the author interprets the contribution of his lectures which were published in anthologies named Studia Academica Slovaca between 1965 and 1979.
The article was inspired by two recent collective monographs (Divičanová et al., 2015, 2017) dedicated to the surnames used by the families of Slovak origin living in Békéscsaba (Békešská Čaba) and Tótkomlós (Slovenský Komlóš) as the centres of the Slovak ethnic community in south-eastern Hungary whose members started to settle in this part of the historical “Lower Land” as early as in the first quarter of the 18th century. In the above-mentioned publications, hundreds of surnames were analysed from various onomastic aspects (structural types, origin, onymic motivation, etc.). In this study, the author focuses on some questions of etymology and presents alternative explanations for about 30 surnames. In his opinion, some of the surnames under discussion may reflect autochthonous substantial formations otherwise not attested as common nouns in the Slovak language (Hamza, Holok, Lászik, Losjak, Rotyis, Szpluvák); for other surnames, the author identifies possible sources in various foreign languages historically used in this part of Central Europe, i. e., Hungarian (Balán, Csilek, etc.), Romanian (Drimba, Opra, Tirják, etc.), German (Baiczer, Gofjár, Majzik, Matajsz, etc.), Latin (Filadelfi), Polish (Kendra) and Slovene (Raspotnik).
The author points out that Samuel Cambel in his work Rukoväť spisovnej reči slovenskej puts the conception of quantity on the Middle Slovak character of quantity and that he based on the fundamental unity of the quantity with a regulation of its appearance in word by the rhythmical law. Another important fact is that Cambel placed the function of the rhythmical law to the sphere of word-formation and inflection and the place of quantity neutralization he saw in a word-formative or grammatical suffix of word. Cambel also pointed out cases where in the same word more long syllables follow one after another – he gave five such examples. The author pays attention to some cases of use and non-use of rhythmical law and takes up a critical stand on opposite interpretations of the Cambel ś perception of the rhythmical law.
The authors of this sociolinguistic oriented study explore the contemporary state of the Slovak language in hospital communication in its graphic and acoustic form. On the basis of acquired written communication (prepared or unprepared) and acoustic recordings of unprepared speeches, they attempt to find out the contemporary diction of the respondents, and especially linguistic-stylistic nature and communication function of the vocabulary used in dialogues between the physicians and patients, as well as in monological texts. Besides, the study focuses on the characteristics of the hospital communication environment (S. Kukura: Hospital in Michalovce) divided into internal (professional, without the participation of the patient) and that with accommodations (with the participation of the patient).
The paper looks on the persona of a writer from the Age of Reason, who had a leading role in the cultural life of Slovakia J. I. Bajza in context with new research. The chosen objects of research belong to the exposition of his literature and biography in Dolné Dubové. The author compares her results with archival articles, which publish present findings in scientific literature.
This article aims to present an empirical investigation of six- to seven-year-old children’s free word associations in Slovak. The empirical data analysed in this article were collected via lexical decision task, a method used within the qualitative research design. The data analysis indicates the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift in children’s word associations to stimulus nouns. In syntagmatic response to stimulus noun, the children produce either free verbal sequences or defining characteristics of a stimulus word (activity characteristics and descriptive attributes). In paradigmatic response to stimulus noun, the children produce semantically diverse associations, mostly in the following semantic categories: location or local proximity, inclusive parts, more distant meaning, word-formation paradigm, and coordinates. Despite the research limitations, the present results are consistent with the previous research findings in the field of children’s word associations in both Slovak and other languages.
Based on the critical analyses of monographic work written by Wroclaw's slavist Jaroslaw Lipowski named 'Convergence and divergence of Czech and Slovak languages in Czechoslovakia' (Wroclaw, 2005) the author writes about the relations of Slovak and Czech language in 20th century. The traditional slavistic question is treated on the background of the generally accepted knowledge that Slovak and Czech are two structurally and genetically different but close Slavonic languages. In exploration of the subject matter author pays special attention to methodological questions. .
Lexicology as the study of the lexical vocabulary of the Slovak language was not at the forefront of the journal’s interest in the first two decades of its existence. The primary focus was put rather on the aspects of orthography and practical morphology, i.e. inflection. The theoretical basis of this subject only became a focus of interest after WWII. The peak of the theoretical definition of lexical semantics, which is the focus of this study, is associated with the name of J. Dolník. He eventually synthesized his partial studies published in journals in the monograph “Lexikológia” (1st edition 2003, 2nd edition 2007). The study also pays attention to the theoretical background, debates, and practical applications related to the approaches to lexical classification.
The paper deals with the past, the present and ongoing work and publications of the Department of contemporary lexicology and lexicography of the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of linguistics, the Slovak Academy of Sciences during the last twenty years. The main project of the department is the volumes of the Dictionary of contemporary Slovak language. Research work in the fields of lexicology and lexicography reflects theoretical postulates of the author’s and chief editors of the dictionary. The public interest is proved by several awards of the dictionary as well as by prizes given to its chief editors.
The main topic of this contribution is germanisms which used to be, or still are, used in the Slovak language. The first part clarifies the notion of language contact, which is the basis of the formation of germanisms (and other transposed words). The next chapters show particular examples of germanisms, divided according to a variety of aspects – the semantic aspect, the Slovak dialects aspect, temporal and geographic aspect and finally the aspect of various language levels. The conclusion describes the possibilities and assets of the usage of germanisms in the teaching process of German language in schools.
We try to answer the question: When does the reflexive marker “sa” accompanying a verb present the clitic form of the pronoun “seba”? Linguists do not share a common view whether the Czech and Slovak constructions “verb + reflexive marker sa”, both in the type “umývať sa”, and in “vidieť sa/hodnotiť sa”, are to be considered as demonstrations of syntactic reflexivity (syntactic constructions with a reflexive pronoun), lexical reflexivity (reflexive verbs with derivative morpheme), or whether they are of the same nature at all. Considering the results of a modified commutation test (possibility/impossibility to substitute the reflexive “sa” marker by a pronominal expression “sám seba”), we came to the conclusion that the expressions within the type “vnímať sa” represent syntactic constructions (predicate + object) where the respective “sa” marker (object) has a pronominal status.
The purpose of this paper is to specify the chronology of the regressive rhythmic law according to which the Proto-Slovak long roots of Stang’s accentual paradigm AP (b) regularly shortened when followed by the suffix -ár. The proposed sound law operated in Proto-Slovak, before the definitive fixation of the stress on the initial syllable in Slovak and before the Slovak Rhythmic Law.
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