Slovotvorná stavba českých jmen živočichů
Word-formation in Czech names of animals

Summary/Abstract: There has been no systematic research into word-formation of Czech names of animals of all main taxonomic categories published so far. The word-formation analysis presented in this paper is based on about 600 names of animals drawn from the index of Czech names in the encyclopedia ZVÍ􀆵Ř􀆽E (ANIMAL). Some support in explaining the derivational motivation has also been found in the characteristics and photographs in internet sources. In names derived with a word-formation suffix I found 69 different suffixes, which is about one third of all suffixes of this sort that can be identified in contemporary Czech words.Different models of compounds are also described. As to prefixation, only the prefixes pa- and vele- have been found in the analyzed material. This paper also shows in details that, in many cases, the Czech name of the animal genus formally looks like a derivative from a possible base word, but in fact, it has no apparent semantic relation to that base word.

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