Publication details
Pádový synkretismus dativu a lokálu singuláru – nedostatky současného systému deklinace substantiv v češtině
| Title in English | Case Syncretism of the Dative and Locative Singular: Deficiencies of the Current Czech Noun Declension System |
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | This presentation aims to present the methodology and summarise the findings of the bachelor's thesis Case syncretism in Czech nouns: Dative and locative singular (with respect to diachrony) (Makán 2025), which focuses on describing syncretic patterns in the relationship between the dative singular and locative singular in contemporary Czech, taking into account the syntactic functions of adverbials and verbal objects. Syncretism is regarded as a linguistic phenomenon that depends not only on morphological properties (case) but also on syntactic properties (clause function) of a given noun. The research, conducted on the basis of extracted linguistic data from the representative SYN2020 corpus, revealed numerous deficiencies in the current (gender-based) classification of Czech nouns into paradigm groups (pán, stroj, žena, stavení, etc.). A total of 350 Czech nouns were analysed and subsequently assigned to 102 declension types based on their behaviour in the dative functioning as an adverbial, dative functioning as an object, locative functioning as an adverbial, and locative functioning as an object. A brief theoretical insight into the diachronic development of the endings of the examined cases further provided explanations for the emergence of various syncretic forms as well as the presence of doublet case endings. The primary aim of this presentation is to demonstrate that the current gender-based declension system, due to its simplicity, is unable to fully capture the diversity of Czech noun inflexion in the dative and locative singular. A secondary aim is to highlight and draw attention to the importance of syncretism in the domain of noun declension. |
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