Variantnosť tvarov ako odraz prirodzeného vývinu jazyka
Variation of forms as a reflection of the natural development of language

Summary/Abstract: In the present paper, based on the analysis of living speech, represented by texts in the Slovak National Corpus, we describe and explain the variation of forms in the masculine paradigm. We focus on variant forms of nouns with a typical gender morpheme in the instrumental plural. Our focus is on two-member consonant clusters with a sonorous consonant at the end of the formative stem. These are clusters in the following order: a sonorous and a noise consonant (CsC) and clusters of two sonorous consonants (CsCs), mainly in the restrictural phase of the final syllable in the formative stem of a word. We search the corpus database for all masculines with the specified ending of the formative stem and based on quantitative data (absolute frequency, relative frequency, ratio of primary and secondary suffixes). Our findings show that the variation of forms is influenced by several identified factors: the syllable length of the word, the origin and degree of adaptation of the lexical unit not only at the semantic but also at the sound level (specific phonic realisation of phonemic groupings), the frequency of the used lexeme and its place in the lexical stock, categorical specificity (e.g. bound plural). The choice of variant is often or primarily decided by the intuitive or spontaneous linguistic awareness of the users.

• Details
• Contents