Výzkum syntaxe mluvené češtiny: inventarizace problémů
Investigating the syntax of spoken Czech: taking stock of the problems

Summary/Abstract: Until now, Czech grammars have focused primarily on the syntax of written texts, paying little attention to spoken discourse. In the present article, the authors have sought to a) explore the existing works on syntax to identify references to features peculiar to spoken Czech (normally classified as “deviations from regular sentence patterns”); b) complement them with findings of Czech dialectologists; and c) expand the context to include results of the few authors who consistently explore spoken Czech and its syntax (particularly O. Müllerová and M. Hirschová). The inventory of features so far identified as peculiar to spoken syntax includes, among other things, syntactic units appended after a point of syntactic completion, parentheses, corrections, reported speech, the free dative etc. In addition to syntax, some of the features belong to the lexical-syntactic level (conjunctions, particles, phatic expressions), while others concern hypersyntax (the proportion of parataxis, hypotaxis and juxtaposition). The syntax of spoken Czech is to be understood as a syntax of utterances and turns (not of sentences); it has to be investigated in terms of its dialogic and processual nature, with a clear orientation to the sound form of syntactic structures and to the role of non-verbal means of communication.

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