Development of the Czech pronominal (en)clitics (Czech Science Foundation, GA17-02545S, 2017 - 2019)

This study is devoted to the word order of the short pronominal forms mi, sě, tě ‘me.dat, refl. acc, you.acc’ dependent on a finite verb in the 1st edition of the Old Czech Bible. The forms studied - permanent enclitics in modern Czech - are numerous enough so that their analysis is possible (unlike other pronominal enclitic forms, i.e., si, ti, ho, mu ‘refl.dat, you.dat, he.acc, he.dat’). In the introduction and Section 2, we summarize the results of the previous research dedicated: 1. to the degree to which the forms sě and tě were enclitics, 2. to the factors that influence the competition between the post-initial word order and a ‘contact’ word order of pronominal (and verbal) enclitics (the competition is documented well into the beginning of the 20th century in Czech). In the analytical part (Sections 3 and 4), we investigate the possible influence of the Latin word order of the Vulgate (Parisian Bible) on the word order of the forms examined.

The presented study deals with the historical development of Czech (en)clitics (AuxP). Based on the data from the previous research (Kosek 2015a,b, 2017), it focuses on the development of one group the Czech (en)clitics – on the preterite auxiliary forms. In the article, three hypotheses are formulated and then tested on the data gained from selected parts of historical Czech Bible translations. The suggest that there were two significant word order position of historical Czech (en)clitics: 1. the post-initial position, i.e. after first word / phrase, 2. the contact position, i.e. an (en)clitic is located immediately before (pre-verbal position) or after (post-verbal position) its syntactically or morphologically superordinate item (the post-verbal position is the more frequent variant of the both variants of the contact positions). Since the time when the oldest analyzed text was translated, the post-initial position has had the status of the basic word order position of the Czech (en)clitic, while the contact position has had the status of a stylistically, pragmatically or textually motivated position. It seems that the contact position begins to retreat only in 19th century and hence the definitive historical change of Czech auxiliary (en)clitics in the sole second position clitics was realized not before 19th or 20th century.

The article deals with the word order of the Czech reflexive pronoun/ morpheme se dependent on a finite verb in eight selected books of the first edition of the Kralice Bible (1579–1594). The study is a follow-up to the previous research on the word order of the pronominal enclitics mi, ho, mu in the Kralice Bible and of the reflexive pronoun/morpheme se in the first redaction of the Old Czech Bible. The analysis reveals that the reflexive pronoun/morpheme se manifests characteristics typical to word ordering of enclitics in the given Bible text. Specifically, there is competition between the post-initial and contact positions of the enclitic in the Kralice Bible. The contact position occurs, however, within the post-initial position in a majority of cases, which means that these two positions do not compete but rather cooperate. This cooperation was also found in other Czech Bibles. Additionally, the realization of the enclitic in the contact non-post-initial position is influenced by the position of its governing verb further in the clause, the length of the initial phrase (the longer the first phrase, the higher the probability of the non-post-initial position), and the style (it is more likely to appear in the non-post-initial position if the text has a poetic style). Finally, the comparison of the Kralice Bible and the first redaction of the Old Czech Bible has revealed – despite the two-hundred-year gap between the two translations – the same word order patterns of word ordering of sě/se.

The article presents a quantitative analysis of chosen books of the Bible svatováclavská (St. Wenceslas Bibel, 1677–1715) and their commentaries collected by Bible translators. A cluster analysis based on the one hundred the most frequent words is used for a comparison of the texts - by using this method, it is possible to differentiate genres. Moreover, the authorship in the case of non-translated texts can also uncovered. However, the method fails to help to determine differences among particular Bible translators with regard to the chosen books. This is most probably due to the very specific character of the tradition of Older Czech translating of Bible texts.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the word order of short dative pronominal forms mi “to me”, ti “to you”, si “REFLdat” that are dependent on a finite verbal form in the selected parts of the oldest Czech Bible translation, e. g. in the Olomouc Bible (Olomoucká bible). It focuses on those pronominal forms that had status of “permanent enclitics (“stálé příklonky / enklitika tantum”) since the Protoslavic period. In the analyzed text, only the dative form of the pronoun of the first person singular “me” and (rarely) the nonsyllabic form of the dative of the pronoun second person singular “ť” (<”ti”) are documented, while the short dative form of the reflexive pronoun “si” is not documented. Only the examples of the form “mi” are represented in sufficient numbers that allow an adequate linguistic analysis. The forms of “me” occurs in all competing word-order position of the Old Czech enclitics: a) postinitial position, b) contact position (in the middle or at the end of a clause in the immediate contact with the superordinate verbal form), c) medial isolated (in the middle of a clause without immediate contact with the superordinate verbal form). It is clear from the collected material that the postinitial position had the status of a basic word-position of the Czech pronominal clitics and that the contact position was less frequent word-order position motivated by prosodic factors (an enclitic avoids the position after a pause), stylistic factors and the textual factors. The role of the Latin model also plays a role - most of the “nonpostinitial” positions of "mi" (e. g. b/, c)) correspond to the position of the Latin pronoun "mihi" or "me".

The paper is focused on the short pronominal forms that have status of so called stálá enklitika (‘permanent enclitics’ or enclitica tantum) in Modern Czech: mi ‘me’, ti ‘to you’, si ‘to myself / to yourself etc.’, sě (> se) ‘myself / yourself etc.’, tě ‘you’, ho ‘him’, mu ‘to him’. The analysis is based on the material gained from the selected books of the oldest complete Czech Bible translation from the half of the 14th century. The first part of the study deals with the frequency of the analyzed forms, especially with the lack of the forms si, ti and the low frequency of the short forms ho, mu (developed from the disyllabic forms jeho > jho > ho, jemu > jmu > mu). The next part is focused on the word order properties of the analyzed pronominal forms that are dependent on a finite verb. The article interprets them in the light of the main competing positions of Czech enclitics during the development of the language: 1. the postinitial position, i.e. when an enclitic is located after first word / phrase; 2. the contact (verb-adjacent) position, i.e. when an enclitic is located immediately before (preverbal position) or after (postverbal position) its syntactically or morphologically superordinate item. In the last part of the article, the question of the change of the previously orthotonic forms sě, tě into the permanent enclitic forms is examined.