Plural instrumental case – a tough nut to crack? Cover Image

Instrumentál plurálu – „pádový kámen úrazu“?
Plural instrumental case – a tough nut to crack?

Author(s): Pavel Sojka
Subject(s): Western Slavic Languages
Published by: AV ČR - Akademie věd České republiky - Ústav pro jazyk český
Keywords: codification; plural instrumental case; spoken journalism; Standard Czech

Summary/Abstract: In 1981, four Czech language scholars published a significant paper entitled “The current state and future prospects of Standard Czech codification” in the journal Slovo a slovesnost. The paper contained, among others, a list of non-standard morphological variants that – according to the authors – could or should be included in the Standard Czech codification. In the meantime, some of these proposals have actually been realized. However, according to the authors’ statement, the non-standard -ma variant in the plural of the instrumental case still retained a certain degree of stylistic markedness, even though it was no longer distinctively non-standard. Today, forty years later, we aim to answer the question of to what extent we can still agree with this statement, particularly in spoken journalism.

  • Issue Year: 103/2020
  • Issue No: 1-2
  • Page Range: 131-143
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Czech