Abstract
Hungarian language is a typical example of a language with strict vowel phonotactic patterns - the well-known vowel harmony. Contrary, the Czech phonotactic system comprises set of vowel patterns which are not very strict and the patterns tend to some sort of vowel disharmony: long front vowels tend to be followed by back vowels, long back vowels tend to be followed by short vowels, short front vowels tend to be followed by long front vowels, and short back vowels tend to be followed by short front vowels.
This discrepancy raises a question, whether Slovak, which is a close relative of Czech, tends to the same vowel phonotactic patterns or whether the patterns are weakened or even altered by the Hungarian influence. In Slovak, similarly to the Czech language, we observed the tendency towards vowel disharmony, contrary to the Hungarian language; syllables with a front vowel in the nuclear position tend to be followed by back vowel nucleus syllables and vice versa.
As for vowel quantity, the so-called rhythmical law, a codified phonological law in Slovak, is the most prominent pattern we found in our data. As our data shows, a very similar tendency can be observed in Hungarian, where a long vowel repels another long vowel in the following syllable, regardless of the vowel quality.
This could possibly be a result of areal contact of Slovak and Hungarian. We analysed both whole words and extracted word stems.
In Czech, the results for words and word stems differ from each other. On the other hand, in Slovak, the results were quite similar for words and word stems - this can be due to the law of rhythmical shortening.