Quantity in Czech: A dialectical and historical analysis
Contributors: University of Chicago
Published: 2002
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource]
ISBN-13: 9780493667997
Other titles: Dissertations & theses @ CIC institutions.
Description: The purpose of this doctoral thesis is to analyze vowel quantity in Czech synchronically and to trace its development from a comparative historical and dialectal perspective. Making use of what is known from existing studies, together with supporting evidence from selected manuscripts dating from the 13th century, and further aided by the advances that historical linguistic methods have achieved in the reconstruction of Proto-Slavic, the present work analyzes the development of quantitative vocalic relationships in the Czech dialects, including the dialect upon which the literary language is based, beginning with the period just before the differentiation of Czech from Proto-Slavic and leading up to the present day. A major goal of this work is to make Czech data about quantity useful to other linguists working on Proto-Slavic accentology.^

The thesis concentrates on selected lexical items, mostly nouns, that have good Proto-Slavic pedigrees and that are relevant for answering the questions posed by Slavic linguists. The questions addressed relate to the expected reflexes of the canonical Proto-Slavic accentological paradigms: acute intonation with ictus on the stem, acute intonation with columnar ictus on the desinence, and circumflex intonation which is defined as the intonation on the first syllable of a mobile paradigm word when the ictus was on the first syllable.^

By examining the geographical distribution of a single phonological binary feature, vowel quantity with the opposition [+long:+/-long], as a synchronic cross-section in selected ancient lexical items across the contemporary dialectal Czech landscape, and analyzing the variance of this feature against the diachronic phonological, morpho-phonemic, and morphological paradigmatic progression of its development, this work makes use of a method that has provided evidence for sound changes, analogical morphological and morphophonemic developments that correlate to ancient intonational patterns which were characteristic of the Proto-Slavic common language.^

Another major goal of this work is to show the importance of including dialectal data in future inquiries whose aim is to detect the traces of the Proto-Slavic language on the development of the individual Slavic languages and that the Czech literary language should not be cited as the sole relevant attestation of a given lexical item in many instances in discussions about accentological paradigms. The dialects often exhibit patterns different from the literary language and should be taken into consideration when applying Czech data to arguments regarding e.g. the distribution of the neo-acute and the lengthening of short vowels under retracted ictus from the neo-acute, the validity of the neo-circumflex, the lexical items identified as acute barytonic (stem-stressed), oxytonic (columnar end-stressed), and circumflex.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 63-05, Section: A, page: 1814.

Adviser: Bill J. Darden.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Chicago, 2002.