- The author wishes to express his appreciation to Professor Roman Jakobson of Harvard University; it was from discussions with him that the central idea of this study emerged. The author's thanks are also due to Mr. Emil Kovtun of Columbia University, who kindly volunteered his services in helping with the interviews of several native informants.
- It is an interesting fact that the literary norm or a transitional code with only small deviations from the literary norm is used in conversations with children by some speakers who otherwise employ many more non-literary elements. The usual reason given for such usage on the part of these speakers is that they want to teach the children the “correct” way of speaking. However, in view of the fact that the transitional code (Colloquial Czech) or even the CCL are generally accepted in conversational functions, this practice may have a different psychological motivation.
- Only the former term is used in this study, partly because it is shorter, partly because the term “colloquial form of the literary language” may suggest that this is the only spoken form of the literary language, which, of course, is not the case. Still more important is the fact that Colloquial Czech is not simply a variety of the literary norm employing optional forms of the literary language but a subcode frequently containing elements which the literary norm rejects without qualification.
- Františ;ek Trávníček, Uvod do českého jazyka, Prague, 1952, p. 61.
- The inconsistency of this change is due to historical phonetic development. At one time, two phonemes, /i:/ and /y:/, existed in place of the present single phoneme /i:/. Only /y:/ (with some exceptions) underwent the change to /ej/. The difference is still indicated in Czech orthography, where í and ý, as well as i and y are used.
- The morphological characteristics of the CCL are not described here in detail since their occurrence is not being analyzed in this study. It is planned to deal with the morphological system of the CCL in a subsequent study. As far as the conjugation of the CCL is concerned, it was described in detail by this author in Slavic Word, Vol. 8, No. 4, December, 1952, pp. 383–386, under the heading “Spoken Czech”. Both the declension and the conjugation of the CCL are dealt with in M. Vey, Morphologie du tchèque parlé, Paris, 1946.
- In classifying the interview data, two main categories were established: 1) Spontaneous answers, 2) Reactions to suggested combinations (for interview procedure, cf. above).
- Frequency of occurrence of each type (I, II, III—type IV, the literary norm, was used as the starting point in the interviews) is the percentage of first spontaneous answers of the given type out of the total of first spontaneous answers. Theoretically, the frequency percentages of the first three types (I, II, III), added together, should be 100%. However, this is not always so, because the first spontaneous answers in some cases may have been type IV; the speaker simply repeated the utterance in the literary norm, as it was presented to him. When this happened, no further effort was made to elicit another spontaneous answer of a different type.
- Hierarchy was computed in the following manner: Reactions to suggested combinations of non-literary and literary alternants were originally classified in four groups: a) acceptable without hesitation or significant qualification; b) acceptable with hesitation as an active speech habit; c) not acceptable as an active speech habit; d) rejected without qualification. In order to obtain a reasonably indicative polarization of these answers and reactions (i.e. a positive and a negative group), the spontaneous answers and reactions to suggested combinations were grouped in the following way:
- Positive: All spontaneous answers plus reactions a) and b).
- Negative: Reactions c) and d), as well as special reactions which actually constituted rejections but were qualified (e.g. specifying the combination as possible in the function of an “artificial imitation” of the popular language in second-rate literature; or as an artificial combination designed to evoke a particular impression, or combinations declared by the informant to be “dialectisms” which he was unable to localize, i.e. forms which he considered alien to his code, but hesitated to reject flatly, since they obviously contained combinations which were familiar to him in a different grouping).
- It must be emphasized that only utterances containing words of multicode character were utilized in the interviews and all results are based on such utterances. Utterances containing words belonging distinctly to only one code (either literary or CCL) were avoided, in order to obtain results which would express as accurately as possible the formal interrelation of the alternants, devoid of exogenous elements.
- Although in Czech literature spelling usually follows the literary norm, there are some works that employ various non-literary elements, usually for stylistic effect. Phonemic non-literary alternants also occasionally occur in such works. Two novels, both of which contain numerous dialogues and monologues with non-literary alternants, were analyzed: Dobrý voják Švejk, by Jaroslav Hašek, 10th edition (Prague, 1936), Volume I (239 pages), and Petr zbláznil město, by Jarmila Svatá, 1st edition (Prague, 1945, 249 pages). Only occurrences of literary and non-literary phonemic alternants in the same word or in juxtaposed words were taken into consideration on the grounds that only such situations were a reliable basis for comparisons with the interview material. For this reason, the number of cases of simultaneous occurrence of literary and non-literary phonemic alternants is relatively small, only 37 cases in the two volumes. Out of these, five were combinations of corresponding literary and non-literary alternants, the rest combinations of non-corresponding literary and non-literary alternants. In spite of this small number and in spite of the fact that the occurrence of non-literary elements in belles lettres is not always consistent and may be subject to various “corrections” by the editors, the results obtained support the conclusions defined in this study.
WORD
Volume 11, 1955 - Issue 4: Slavic Word No. 4