Bermel, N. orcid.org/0000-0002-1663-9322 and Knittl, L. (2023) Trajectories of change in paradigmatic cells in Czech. Naše řeč, 106 (5). pp. 247-274. ISSN 0027-8203
Abstract
We examine a well-known phenomenon in the development of the Czech nominal declension system: the gradual supplanting of the original o-stem ending in the locative singular with the u-stem ending. We observe that, contrary to expectations from the literature based primarily on studies of English, this shift has been in progress for a millennium and, in the high-frequency nouns for which we have enough data to observe, the opposing trend is also frequently in evidence: the o-stem ending is introduced to lexemes where it was not found earlier. In the absence of a single, overriding motivation that could have derailed this shift from following the classic ‘S-curve’ pattern, we propose re-examining the retextualization model as a more fitting one for the complex interaction of factors and forms found in languages with complex inflectional morphology.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original article is properly cited. The license terms are available here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. |
Keywords: | corpus linguistics; declension; diachrony; inflection; morphology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of Languages and Cultures (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number LEVERHULME TRUST (THE) RPG-407 ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL AH/T002859/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 22 Nov 2023 16:36 |
Last Modified: | 08 Feb 2024 15:57 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Institute for the Czech Language of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.58756/n51062301 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:205550 |