Alexander von Humboldt Foundation - Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung

The paper deals with the development of word order of the conditional auxiliary in Old and Middle Czech which has changed into a permanent enclitic form. The paper is based on data gained from the Old and Middle Czech Bible translations (The Gospel of Matthew). The aim of the paper is to detect all possible word-order positions of these auxiliary forms in Old and Middle Czech. The analysis shows that the conditional auxiliary behaves as a 'stable' enclitic in the explored older Czech Bibles, except when it is an auxiliary in the function of a subjunctor. According to the explored data it seems that the post-initial (2P) word-ordering of the Czech enclitic became established in Old Czech and that verb-adjacent (VA) word-ordering was retreating at that time.

The aim of the paper is to analyze word-order positions of preterite auxiliary forms (AuxP) in the Old Czech prosaic texts from the 14th and 15th centuries, e. g. in Pasionál (‘Passional’), in Život Krista Pána (‘Life of Christ the Lord’), in Životy sv. Otců (‘Life of Holy Fathers’/ ‘Vitae Patrum’) and in Tkadleček (‘The Weaver’/ A Czech version of Ackermann aus Böhmen). The aim of the paper is to detect all possible word-order positions of these auxiliary forms in analyzed texts. The analysis demonstrates that the AuxP maintains some properties of an orthothonic word in several rare cases. However, the overwhelming majority of examples give evidence that the Old Czech AuxP was an enclitic. According to the explored data it seems that the post-initial (2P) word-ordering of the Czech enclitic became established in Old Czech as a prototypical word-order pattern of Czech enclitic forms and that verb-adjacent (VA) word-ordering had a quality relating to style.