The word form to (that.SG.N) traditionally tops frequency tables in corpora of spoken Czech: as a universal (gender- and number-neutral) exophoric (deictic) and endophoric (co-referential) device, it is crucial for spontaneous, unplanned discourse which requires reinforcing references to the context and co-text. Our estimate based on the ORAL series corpora is that about 70% of the instances of to in informal spoken language preserve strong referential semantics (i.e. the endo/exophoric function is preserved). In the remaining cases these functions are attenuated to different degrees: about 20% are part of what a phraseologically-oriented account would consider as indivisible chunks (often multi-word units expanding on the stub to + je.be.3SG), whereas the remaining 10% are purely pragmatic (chiefly serving as a turn-taking/keeping device). As the data show, to can even be prefixed, acting as a surrogate verb, and it is often reduplicated; both strategies indicate an attempt not to yield one’s turn while searching for words. A comparison of their relative frequencies in spoken and written corpora reveals these constructions as characteristic of spoken language.
The article focuses on the use of two common collocations in contemporary informal Czech conversations: to je pravda (it is true) and to je fakt (it is a fact). It examines these collocations from a frequency perspective, testing their fixedness and variation in usage among different groups of speakers. It also looks at the different functions of the noun lemmas underlying these collocations. The analysis shows that these collocations are mostly used by younger speakers (up to 35 years) and that they are established collocations, with a specific function in dialogue. These collocations also serve to maintain the positive face of both speakers in reconciling their attitudes towards each other. At the same time, there has been a significant increase in the use of the word fakt as a discourse marker and this may lead to a decline in the use of the collocation to je fakt in dialogue, even though it is more informal, as is reflected in its frequently reduced pronunciation.
This study aims to provide and analyze a representative list of Czech initial syllable onsets and final codas along with their frequencies of occurrence in running text (token frequencies) and in the vocabulary of unique word forms extracted from it (type frequencies). The frequency data are important because many experiments have demonstrated that phonotactics is not categorical, but rather gradient in nature. Importantly, the study analyzes and compares both spoken and written texts, using the Czech National Corpus, and the two modalities are hypothesized to yield different outcomes. All words in the sample were transcribed phonemically and analyzed. A general preference was found for phonotactic structures that are simple in the context of the attested inventory, and the two corpora differed most in the repertoire of complex onsets/codas (some sequences being unique to one modality) as well as in their respective frequencies. The results are discussed in relation to previous studies of Czech phonotactics, and evaluated with respect to implications for phonological theory, focusing on spoken/written and type/token comparisons.
The article deals with particles, usually considered to be a residual part of speech, and strives to come to some general conclusions on occurrence and frequency of particles as well as their function in common spoken language. The basic source is the reference Prague Spoken Corpus (PSC) which is a part of the Czech National Corpus. The fact that particles are after verbs and pronouns the third most frequent word in spoken Czech appears for the first time in the Frequency Dictionary of Spoken Czech based on the PSC. This finding demands new tasks on linguists, especially more detailed description of this so frequently used part of speech, which hasn’t been so far thoroughly analyzed on the basis of true authentic data. PSC provides the unique possibility to describe functions and the meaning of particles in the direct authentic context and usage, where they naturally appear. Large contextual scope is the decisive criterion for their identification. Description of particles requires a practical approach and by analyzing their real occurrence and co-occurrence one can prove, deny or change all theoretical premises. What we haven’t found in the corpus is also a positive knowledge — the prove that in the corpus with a size of almost three quarter million tokens a particular word didn’t appear. The article presents all types of particles which appear in the corpus and provides both its quantitative analyses dealing with original particles as well as with those homonymous with other parts of speech. It also deals with the existing processing of particles in various linguistic manuals.
The paper compares and contrasts the use of hyperbole or exaggeration in general spoken Czech and English. The research is based on the analysis of two samples consisting of 100 hyperbolic instances in Czech and 100 instances of hyperbole in English. The Czech sample was randomly taken from the oral part of the Czech National Corpus ORAL2008; the English sample was randomly selected from the “spoken context‑ govern” and “spoken demographic” sections of The British National Corpus. The analysis focuses first on the formal realization of hyperbole in the two samples. Secondly, the occurrences of hyperbole are classified semantically (quantitative versus qualitative hyperbole) and, thirdly, they are examined from the lexico‑ semantic point of view (hyperbolic source domains). By comparing the situation in Czech and English, the study aims to test the hypothesis of universal source domains of hyperbole. Finally, the occurrence of conventionalized instances of hyperbole as opposed to creative instances of hyperbolic nonce‑ usages is investigated. Last but not least, the study provides the overall frequency figures of hyperbole in the spoken form of both languages identified in the samples.
This article is concerned with texts by František Čermák devoted to issues of Czech language cultivation. Four major topics are analyzed: standard vs. common Czech, written vs. spoken Czech, prescriptivism and the native language of Czechs. Various problems in the analyzed texts result from an unclear methodological background. Many concepts are used without argumentation: Čermák fails to substantiate their suitability for his language description. We can find uncorroborated generalizations which can be interpreted as Čermák’s communicative strategy. Many statements are rather impressionistic and are not based on relevant language observations. With regard to these findings, the author of this paper argues that a deep-reaching dialogue should be held, which may help to clarify the indeterminate situation in Czech linguistics concerning issues of language cultivation.
ORAL2006, a corpus of spoken Czech, provides new opportunities to research the speech of various sociolinguistic types of speakers. In this article, we focus on regional variation in speech. The speakers in ORAL2006 come from all regions of Bohemia, so we can observe differences in their idiolects related to the region of their origin. Phenomena of traditional dialects bound to a particular region are also typical for the given region in ORAL2006. Some of these phenomena spread from their original region to neighboring regions and often also to the borderland. These phenomena tend to be characteristic for interdialectal Czech. They frequently consist of some type of simplification in the morphological system. As concerns speech in the Czech borderland, we can state that some regional phenomena are only characteristic for a certain part of the borderland, i.e. the part neighboring upon the original region of the phenomena.
The paper deals with changes in the Czech aspectual system during the last twenty-five years. The author analyses data acquired from the Czech National Corpus or, more precisely, from subcorpora containing only journalistic texts (the national daily newspapers Hospodářské noviny, Lidové noviny, Mladá fronta DNES and Právo). The corpus-based analysis showed that the frequency of the verb (and its finite forms) has been increasing in journalistic texts and that the statistic relation between imperfective and perfective verbs, as well as the relation between grammatical tenses in Czech, has become more asymmetrical (especially, the frequency of imperfective verbs has been rising). The increase in aspectual asymmetry accentuates the “western” features of the Czech aspectual system in the sense of S. M. Dickey’s (2000) conception. Together with the increasing aspectual asymmetry in Czech, the frequency of bi-aspectual verbs has slightly decreased. The analysis also showed that the frequency of verbs with prefixes (both perfective and imperfective) has decreased in Czech. The author interprets these facts as results of the transmission of certain dynamic (and system-based) features from spoken language to the written language, and he also discusses the typological context of the changes (inferring aspectual meanings from grammatical context as a manifestation of strengthening analyticity in Czech).
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