Morphological variation in present-day Standard Czech at the example of the personal endings -me and -m in first person plural indicative verb forms
Abstract
In Czech, the coexistence of the first person plural endings -me and -m in indicative verb forms dates back to a remote past. While in the Old Czech both the plural ending -m and -me could be applied to all thematic verbs, this pattern changed when the singular ending -m spread from a small group of athematic verbs to a large group of thematic verbs.
Thus, in modern Czech, the ending -me can be used with all verbs, whereas the plural ending -m can only be used with some conjugation types and its occurrence in written texts is rare. Nonetheless, in 1941, the plural ending -m was codified alongside with the ending -me.
In this paper, we aim to answer the question how the endings -me and -m are applied in present-day TV journalism, namely in the Interview ČT24 show. The examined specimen contains 200 live recordings (2020-2021).