Variation in Language: Code switching in Czech as a challenge for sociolinguistics

380 Pages·1992·27.622 MB·

by  Petr Sgall, Jirí Hronek, Alexandr Stich, Ján Horecký

VARIATION IN LANGUAGE
LINGUISTIC & LITERARY STUDIES IN EASTERN EUROPE (LLSEE)
The emphasis of this scholarly series is on recent developments in
Linguistic and Literary Research in Eastern Europe; it includes analyses,
translations and syntheses of current research as well as studies in
the history of linguistic and literary scholarship.
Founding Editor: John Odmark †
General Editor:
Philip A. Luelsdorff
Institut für Anglistik
Universität Regensburg
D-8400 Regensburg
Federal Republic of Germany
Volume 39
Petr Sgall, Jiff Hronek, Alexandr Stich and Ján Horecký
Variation in Language
VARIATION IN LANGUAGE
CODE SWITCHING IN CZECH AS
A CHALLENGE FOR SOCIOLINGUISTICS
by
PETR SGALL, JIRÍ HRONEK,
ALEXANDR STICH and JÁN HORECKÝ
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Variation in languge : code switching in Czech as a challenge for sociolinguistics I Petr
Sgall ... [et al.]
p. cm. - (Linguistic & literary studies in Eastern Europe; ISSN 0165-7712; v. 39)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1. Code switching (Linguistics)—Czechoslovakia.
2. Sociolinguistics-Czechoslovakia. I. Sgall, Petr, 1926- . II. Series.
P115.3.V37 1992
306. 4'4'09437-dc20 92-3512
ISBN 90 272 1548 0 (Eur.) 11-55619-264-9 (US) (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1992 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O. Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • 821 Bethlehem Pike • Philadelphia, PA 19118 • USA
PREFACE
Various approaches to sociolinguistics and to the socio­
logy of language have achieved important insights into the
most diverse aspects of the domain of inquiry. However, in­
tralingual code-switching has been given less attention
than most other areas, and linguists' attitudes towards the
more of less consistent use of non-standard varieties still
often suffer from such rarely discussed fallacies of pre-
suriptivism as understanding bookish items to be the only
"correct" ones or denying the strength of non-standard ver­
naculars. Whenever one of the latter has the position of a
central colloquial code (which seems to be the case e.g. in
French), the situation in some respects may share some of
the disadvantages of Ferguson's diglossia. Czech, a clear
example of a language having a Standard and a strong central
vernacular with intensive switching between them, offers
many points of general interest to sociolinguistics, points
which too often have passed unnoticed by mainstream lin­
guistics.
Since inquiries based on Czech brought significant re­
sults long before the term 'sociolinguistics' came into
being and since attention paid to such a vernacular by Lin­
guists from abroad has been and can be extremely fruitful
not only for the understanding of the given situation, but
also for the methods and level of sociolinguistic studies,
we present a discussion of language varieties as such (1),
vi
as well as a summary description of the Czech central ver­
nacular (2), of the historical origin of the difference
between it and the Standard (3), of the switching between
the two codes (4), and short concluding remarks concerning
some requirements on sociolinguistic inquiry, starting
points for a theoretical. description of a national language
with intralingual variation and a preliminary formulation
of perspectives on the stratification of Czech (5).
Additional remark (May 1990):
The book was written in the years 1987 and 1988, when
the political conditions in Czechoslovakia and their effects
concerning linguistic publication activities deprived the
authors of the possibility to offer their manuscript to a
Czech publishing house. Only now, in 1990, the name of Ale-
xandr Stich can be duly included among those of the authors.
The authors prefer to publish the text without any modifica­
tions, i.e. in the wording formulated before the political
change. We cannot but apologize that we did not dare to
quote the names of many Czech writers and other personal­
ities whose attitude towards the code switching did require
it; first of all this holds of Josef Škvorecký, mentioned
at least indirectly in fn.15 to Chapter 4. We would like to
express our gratitude to John Benjamins Publishing House
for their kind help offered in the unfortunate times.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors, being well aware that all the shortcomings
of the book are due only to them, want to stress their
gratitude to Philip Luelsdorff, who, as the general editor
of the LLSEE series, paid friendly attention to the manu-
script, not only thoroughly amending its English wording,
but also raising several meritorious issues, and helped us
to gain access to some important publications. We would also
like to thank Eva Hajicová, who carefully read the manu­
script, for her kind assistance with our formulations, and
Louise Hammer, whose research on Czech everyday speech was
one of the most important stimuli for us to return to this
topic and who kindly agreed to our publishing part of the
discourses she collected,as an appendix to the book.
CONTENTS
Preface v
Acknowledgements vii
Contents ix
1. Styles, Varieties; and Language Formations 1
1.1 Introductory remarks 1
1.2 A basic scale of variation 7
1.3 Kinds and layers of variation 10
1.3.1 Main approaches to variation 10
1.3.2 Diglossia 14
1.3.3 Code-switching without bilingualism 18
1.3.4 Speaker's attitudes 20
1.3.5 Mutual impact of codes 31
1.3.6 Core and periphery of national
language 35
1.3.7 Attitudes and activities of linguists 37
1.4 Style and language formation 43
1.5 Theoretical aspects 52
2. The Two Central Language Formations in Czech 59
2.1 The history of the question 59
2.1.1 First inquiry into Common Czech 60
2.1.2 Discussions on democratization 66
2.1.3 The present state 72
x Contents
2.2 Phonemics 77
2.2.1 The two scales 77
2.2.2 The main items typical of CC sound
patterns 82
2.2.3 Peripheral items of CC phonemics 90
2.2.4 Concluding remarks 96
2.3 Morphemics 98
2.3.1 General Remarks 9 8
2.3.2 Declension 102
(A) Nouns 102
(A.l) Masculine 102
(A.2) Feminine 107
(A.3) Neuter 109
(B.l) Adjectives 110
(B.2) Pronouns 114
(i) Demonstrative 114
(ii) Possessive 116
(iii) Personal 117
(iv) Anaphorical 117
(B.3) Numerals 119
2.3.3 Conjugation 121
(i) Class 1 (paradigms nese, bere,
maže, peče, umře) and
general features 121
(ii) Class 2 (tiskne, mine, začne) 125
(iii) Class 3 (kupuje, kreje) 126
(iv) Class 4 (prosi, trpí, sázi) 127
(v) Class 5 (dělá) 128
2.3.4 Degrees of comparison 12 8
2.4 Syntax 12 9
2.4.1 Means and their functions in spoken
discourse 129
2.4.2 Syntactic means 135
Contents xi
2.4.3 Syntactic functions and morphological
meanings 146
2.4.4 Closing remarks 153
2.5 Lexicon 155
2.5.1 General observations 161
2.5.2 Phonemic shape of CC words 157
2.5.3 Lexically-stylistic variability 158
2.5.4 Relationships between SC and CC words 162
2.5.5 Types of CC word formation 165
3. The Origin of the Opposition of Standard and
Common Czech 167
3.1 Conditions during National Revival 168
3.2 Reasons for the choice of the archaic
Standard 171
3.3 The existence of other possibilities 174
4. Code Switching between Standard and Common Czech 182
4.1 Code switching and speakers" attitudes 184
4.1.1 Results of empirical research 185
4.1.2 Factors of choice of expressions 194
4.2 Common Czech in public use 199
4.3 Linguists" attitudes towards the code
switching 203
5. Conclusions and Perspectives 220
5.1 Some tasks of sociolinguistics 220
5.2 Requirements on linguistic theory 225
5.3 Perspectives of the stratification of Czech 232
5.3.1 Perspectives of the impact of CC 232
5.3.2 Starting points for a prognosis 234
5.3.3 CC lexical units in standard discourse 237
5.3.4 Perspectives of phonemic and grammat­
ical items 238