Publication details
The One with Czech clitics & geminates
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Requested lectures |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The paper builds on previous claims (e.g., Sedláček 1994) that the Standard Czech clitic sequence se=s — used for reflexive and 2nd person singular auxiliary clitics, respectively (e.g., Zbláznil se=s “You’ve gone mad”) — may be connected to the resolution of geminated consonant s. A geminate would arise if the clitics were ordered as expected, following the pattern of non-2sg auxiliary clitics combined with reflexives, such as 1sg + reflexive sem=se, etc. The expected sequence s=se was attested in Old Czech, but the historical development of this phenomenon has not been thoroughly described (cf. Gebauer 1929: §134). This paper analyzes data from the Czech diachronic corpus Diakorp v6 and demonstrates that the change in the clitic sequence occurred around the same time as the change in prefixes and prepositions containing geminated s (e.g., s-stúpil › se-stoupil “he descended,” s=synem › se=synem “with (their) son”), providing evidence that the reorganization of the clitic sequence in Czech was indeed influenced by the resolution of geminates. Finally, the paper outlines possible analyses of the observed phenomena using an OT-like approach. |
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