Obsáhlá publikace o psaní velkých písmen
This article is a review of Ivana Svobodová a kolektiv: Psaní velkých písmen v češtině. Praha: Academia, 2015. 350 s.
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This article is a review of Ivana Svobodová a kolektiv: Psaní velkých písmen v češtině. Praha: Academia, 2015. 350 s.
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The article focuses on the presentation of some specific aspects of Czech spoken syntax. It draws attention to several methodological problems accompanying research of this kind. It is based on articles published in the journal Naše řeč.
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The article deals with the expressive noun přiserač, which was used to label instigators against Jeroným of Prague during the process in Konstanz in 1416 in the old Czech translation of the Hussite Chronicle by Vavřinec of Březová. The first part of the article disclaims the necessity of text emendation. Records of the given word in 16th century texts are adduced and its word-formation structure is analyzed. The second part raises the question of whether the given denomination originates as early as in the vocabulary of Old Czech (i.e. from the period beginning in ca. 1500), or as late as in Middle Czech. In this connection, the general relationship and the possible incompatibility of a historical dictionary and a text bank is investigated.
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The article deals with Czech toponyms with the neuter ending -o, occurring almost exclusively in Southwest Bohemia. These neuter forms are regarded as (mostly unofficial) variants of masculine names. These forms are attested both in non-settlement names (mostly field names) and settlement names. Especially the settlement names data are rather rich; they include unofficial variants of toponyms and their historical records (some of the historical records are very old, beginning as early as in the 12th century). The area of occurrence of toponyms of this type has been compared to the dialectal area of the indeclinable form of possessive adjectives ending in -ovo found in Southwest Bohemia; the correspondence of these two areas is striking and can hardly be coincidental. According to the author’s hypothesis, the change of the toponyms ending in -ov and -ín to -ovo and -ino started in the historical period in which the original possessive function of the names and their connection with possessive adjectives was still transparent. Based on the toponymic evidence, it seems that the Southwest Bohemian dialectal phenomenon of possessive adjectives ending in -ovo must be extremely old, reaching as far back as the 12th century.
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In his 1929 study published in Naše řeč, Jiří Haller introduced the term free indirect speech. He also explored how direct, indirect and free indirect speech works in spoken discourse, showing how difficult it is to distinguish among the three forms and how the frequent use of the particle prý/prej contributes to the blurriness of the boundaries between them. In an effort to respond to Haller’s notions, we present some results from current research on the syntax of spoken Czech drawing on corpus data. We focus on the role and use of the particle prý/prej: a) as concerns its changing functions and semantics; b) whether it signals the reproduction of the speaker’s own speech or the speech of others; c) its position (inside the introductory segment or inside the reproduced segment).
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This paper attempts to answer the following research question: Is the un/stressed pronunciation of the Czech words no and jo related to the word’s functions and meanings? To answer this question, I analyze a guest interview from the Czech late-night talk show Uvolněte se, prosím, which is part of the DIALOG corpus (duration of the dialogue: 18 minutes). The analysis reveals that the stressed pronunciation prevails in both cases. The analysis points to individual speech styles, e.g. the host of the interview pronounces no as an unstressed word when no functions as a preparatory particle.
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Based on borrowings from English, this contribution provides a survey of recommendations published in the section Drobnosti [Short texts] in the journal Naše řeč [Our Speech] during the years between the two codifications of Czech orthography (1957–1993). The aim is to map the success of the predictions in relation to later codification and development in usage.
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The considerable development of medical science during the last century, as well as growing public interest in health issues, are reflected in lexicography. In Czech monolingual dictionaries, the amount of headwords from medicine and related fields is steadily increasing. The Academic Dictionary of Contemporary Czech (ASSČ) brings a new approach to terminology (e.g. corpus-based selection of headwords, autonomization of headwords, unification of the explanation of meanings, exemplification of all one-word units). The ways of explaining the meanings of the names of diseases, types of medical treatment and the names of people suffering from a disease in the ASSČ are also presented.
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This paper aims to describe and differentiate the diverse meanings of the adverbs rovně and zrovna during the different historical periods. It focuses on the usage of these expressions primarily in Middle Czech. Although a complete dictionary of Middle Czech is not yet available, we attempt to find the most significant functions of rovně and zrovna. Rovně is characterized by multiple meanings in Middle Czech, e.g. ‘stejně’, ‘právě (v tu chvíli)’ or ‘rovnoměrně’. Zrovna does not occur until the Baroque period. However, it is much more frequent than rovně in contemporary Czech.
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Although we identify a wide range of similarities in the language situation and the standardisation process of Czech, Upper and Lower Sorbian during the end of the 19th century and the first four decades of the 20th century, there are also a number of specifics: in development, Czech was ahead of Upper Sorbian, and in turn, Lower Sorbian reached its “revival” later than Upper Sorbian. Czech reached the stage of a fully functional standard language, while both varieties of Sorbian, in contrast, only achieved a lower stage of development. These specifics result in a differing range of puristic interventions and puristic successes.
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The aim of this contribution is to provide a picture of the present-day situation of the language of nativity scene model builders in the Czech lands. The analyzed vocabulary is based on research carried out in selected locations between 2013 and 2016. The contribution is focused on the comparison of the situation in the regions where the research was carried out and also on developmental tendencies. Multiple factors influencing the character of the recorded vocabulary are examined: its specific features, significant aspects relating to etymology as well as the proportions of the individual semantic fields and differences between respondents from various locations.
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The paper describes the process of modalization of originally verbal expressions such as přijde (in the dialect přende, přydže...), (se) patří...; it explains the causes of this process and its manifestation (consequences) on the morphological and syntactic levels: ta stodola / to stodolo přende / (se) patři jož zbórat... The topic was initiated during work on the Dictionary of Czech Dialects (A–C; available from sncj.ujc.cas.cz) but also by numerous articles on modal expressions (modal verbs and modal predicatives) by Josef Zubatý, co-founder and previous editor of the journal Naše řeč (Our Speech). The process of modalization of these verbal expressions rests on the fact that: (a) they are followed by an infinitive; (b) they keep the form of the 3rd person sg.; (c) they tend toward reflexivization, i.e. the reflexive verbal form (patří / patří se, sluší / sluší se…); (d) these expressions are part of both subject sentences (with the patient in the nominative case) and subjectless sentences (with the patient in the accusative case).
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This article deals with the meaning and word formation of a few dialectal expressions denoting a miserly person.
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This article focuses on selected nonstandard variants of the Czech demonym Lotyš (Latvian) and their usage.
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The article focuses on the occurrence of the imperative in spoken and written discourse. It identifies the most frequent imperatives in the following corpora: DIALOG (spoken Czech in the media), ORAL (intimate discourse), and SYN2015 (written Czech). Imperative forms of the verb počkat ‘to wait’ have the highest frequency in spoken corpora. An analysis of the imperative forms of počkat in spoken language reveals that its most common function is to interrupt another speaker’s turn. Depending on the type of dialogue, the interruption can be done in order to either add or refine information (in a friendly conversation) or to try to get the speaker to answer a question he or she has failed to answer (in political debates). Using an imperative can also initiate a repair sequence, even one targeted at oneself. Imperatives also serve to prevent turn yielding. For these reasons, they often appear in overlaps.
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The paper deals with the regulation of personal names in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Based on data consisting of legal documents and on-line discussions, it focuses on two areas: (1) the historical development of the regulation and (2) its implementation. Employing the social force field model, the paper argues that despite partially independent development, the legal norms of both countries establish analogous social force fields. However, these fields may function in differing ways, as the norm authorities employ different types of codices.
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The article presents the results of a questionnaire-based survey conducted by the author. The respondents were elite detectives from the Czech Republic’s anti-corruption squad. The primary aim of the survey was to determine the function of the profession-specific language used by officers from this squad. The secondary aim was to either confirm or reject the hypothesis that the cryptic function of language plays an important role in these officers’ communication. The research found that the officers did not in fact use specific lexical items primarily in an attempt to conceal the meaning of their communication, rather, far more important factors were the principle of linguistic economy and the respondents’ desire to express their professional identity as members of the police force.
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The study focuses on e-mail communication of patients addressed to paediatric doctors. Thetexts are often emotional, emphatic, and include a lot of diminutives and informal vocabularyused in spoken language, but also terminology, abbreviations, archaic words and forms, condensationsand nominalizations typical for professional language. We also concentrate onpoliteness, mainly in addressing the doctors, as well as politeness formulas at the beginningand at the end of the e-mails.
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