Fw: Queries on Czech language usage

[James Partridge]

I'm forwarding James Naughton's answer to Geoffrey Chew's original
question on Czech usage to this list .
James

****************
James Partridge
St Edmund Hall
Oxford University
****************


----- Original Message -----
From: "James Naughton" <james.naughton at st-edmund-hall.oxford.ac.uk>
To: <CZECH at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2001 6:38 PM
Subject: Re: Queries on Czech language usage


Others are no doubt better qualified to pronounce on these two matters,
but
here goes anyway...

1)

On your first question, nouns ending in -ost' instead of -ost, it's a
fairly
well-covered phenomenon, I think. Brief remarks are given, for example,
in
the not particularly expansive or detailed (or even always completely
accurate...) handbook Fr. Curin, Vyvoj spisovne cestiny, 1985,
pp.107-108.

According to this source, and it sounds about right, it was Gebauer in
his
various handbooks, e.g. Pravidla hledici k ceskemu pravopisu a
tvaroslovi,
1902,  who rejected the [certainly by no means universal - and I think
mainly only mid- to late- 19th c. and variable] 19th-century practice of
writing kost' with a soft t', also shortened verb infinitives in -t'.
Curin
adds that this type of spelling with soft t':

"byl na konci obrozeni teoreticky oduvodnovan Celakovskym".

I guess he may be referring to Fr. Celakovsky, Ceska dobropisemnost,
1839,
which I don't have to hand...

Jungmann's Slownjk Cesko-Nemecky, Djl II, K-O, 1836, gives the spelling
kost
for its entry on kost, with the alternative kost' in brackets - his
examples
use the form kost. Numerous other abstracts of the type have only -ost
forms
given in his dictionary headings. The next volume, P-R, 1837, gives only
the
form radost under that entry, etc.

Forms such as kost' also occur(red) regularly in the dialects. According
to
standard historical grammars, the historical depalatalisation of final
d, t,
n in this type of feminine noun in the nominative and accusative
singular
was followed by a subsequent analogous restoration of softness, because
of
the frequency of the case ending -i preceded regularly by soft d, t, n
in
this type of noun. In standard Czech final -st remained unsoftened,
however,
as it did also some other words, such as nit.

Examination of my copy of Jan Gebauer, Mluvnice ceska pro skoly stredni
a
ustavy ucitelske, 3rd edition, 1902, indicates (p.73) that by this time
he
is indeed prescribing only the spelling kost for nouns of that feminine
type
ending in -st. On the infinitive ending (eg p.113) he also gives prosit
as
the reduced variant of prositi, adding that prosit' etc. occurs in
dialects.

Going back to Dobrovsky's grammar, Lehrgebaude der bohmischen Sprache,
1819,
the spelling here is kost (though he also lists plst' and prst' as also
occur in standard usage today - Gebauer, above, gives plst but prst').

Josef Jungmann's Slowesnost, 1845, has -ost. Late 19th-century usage
varies,
e.g. V. Brandl, Zivot Josefa Dobrovskeho, 1883, has -ost. My copy of
Neruda,
Arabesky, 1893, has mainly -ost'. And so on.

Fr. Travnicek, Mluvnice spisovne cestiny, cast 1, 1948, p. 489, says of
feminine nouns ending in -ost:

Nespisovne se vyslovuji tato jmena s koncovkou -st', bolest'...; ujalo
se
jen prst', trest' (na rozliseni od muz. prst, trest) a plst || nekdy
plst'.

(2)

On the question of feminine surnames ending in -ova (short a, possessive
adjective as in modern street names) and -ová (long a, normal adjectival
form), I shall, perhaps thankfully, be brief:

The standard form for female surnames derived from noun-type male
surnames
is of course the adjectival -ová ending with the long a. Of the forms
which
occur with a short a at the end, Travnicek, Mluvnice, 1, 1948, p. 244,
writes:

"Hovorove se vyskytuje u jmen dcer -ova: slecna Anna Novákova."

So presumably the short a form of -ova was used for daughters, rather
than
wives. I expect one could find more about this, in black and white, but
the
library is closed, and my shelves and fingers seem to be exhausted
now...

James Naughton

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------