Variability in Phonetic Realization of the Demonstrative Ten in Terms of Its Informational Relevance in the Sentence
Abstrakt
The present study is meant as a contribution to the debate about the grammatical nature of the Czech word ten which is conventionally described as a demonstrative pronoun, however, it is alternatively viewed by some linguists as an incipient definite article. The study focuses on the phonetic realization of this word in spontaneous speech, particularly its segmental features, and relates the amount of segmental reduction to phonetic, linguistic and informational structure of the utterance, primarily the theme vs. rheme distinction.
The assumption was that the demonstrative forms in the theme would be more reduced than those in the rheme, due to their lesser informational load. Whereas the role of phonetic parameters (position in the tone group and type of the following segment) is clearly distinct, the position of the demonstrative in the theme or the rheme did not prove to be directly related to the degree of its reduction.