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Declinable participles in the new Comprehensive academic grammar of Standard Czech

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2018

Abstract

The notion of the participle as used traditionally in Czech bohemistics is different from the notion in other Slavic philological traditions, even such close as Slovak. "Participles" are traditionally called only two forms in Czech, the deverbal derivation with l-suffix used in past and conditional such as řekl in řekl jsem and řekl bych, and the past passive participle in its short form (eg. udělán, podporován). All deverbal derivations with (long) adjectival endings such as dělající, udělavší, přišlý, udělaný are usually called "adjectives", eventually "adjectivized adverbial participles".

The same holds for the first volume of the new "Comprehensive academic grammar of Standard Czech". The question is not only one of terminology, Czech bohemistics traditionally did not engage very intensively in investigating the syntactic functions of the derivations mentioned, because they are not considered to be paradigmatic verbal forms forming a predication nucleus of their own (though not independent).

The problem is not new and has been discussed most often by Czech linguists involved with other languages than Czech and foreign bohemists. It seemed therefore desirable to present in the third volume of the "Comprehensive academic grammar of Standard Czech" devoted to syntax an alternative view which will analyze the forms mentioned above as parts of the verbal paradigm and (potential) predication node.

Such a view will necessarily include a reference to theories of adjectivization of participles in other languages, as the difference between participle and adjective will be more a semantic and functional one than a mere formal one. The analysis will be provided on the basis of the Czech National Corpus.