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Morphosyntactic variation and syntactic constructions in Czech nominal declension: corpus frequency and native-speaker judgments

Морфосинтакcическая вариативность и синтаксические конструкции в склонении чешских существительных: частотность в корпусе и oценки носителей языка

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Abstract

Data from the Czech National Corpus and a large-scale survey of acceptability judgments are used to investigate the scope of morphosyntactic variation in two cases (genitive singular and locative singular) of a Czech declension pattern. The syntactic construction in which a form is found is shown to have a significant interaction with its frequency in the corpus and with its acceptability rating. We conclude that the pattern of acceptability preferences lends support to the entrenchment hypothesis and in general to emergentist approaches to language.

Аннотация

В настоящей статье рассматриваются отношения между данными из Национального Корпуса чешского языка и широким опросом оценки языковой приемлемости. Целью работы является рассмотрение масштабов морфосинтаксической вариативности в двух чешских падежах (в родительном и локативном падежах единственного числа). Согласно результатам нашего анализа, синтаксическая конструкция, в которой имеется данная форма, состоит в тесном взаимодействии с ее частотностью в корпусе и с оценкой ее приемлемости. Таким образом, общая модель оценок приемлемости подтверждает гипотезу об «усилении» употребляемости более частых форм и в целом сходится с так называемыми «эмергентными» подходами к языку, т.е. с такими подходами, согласно которым созидание языковых структур происходит в ходе освоения языка.

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Source

  • Czech National Corpus [Český národní korpus, including SYN2000 and SYN2005], http://www.korpus.cz.

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Correspondence to Neil Bermel.

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Bermel, N., Knittl, L. Morphosyntactic variation and syntactic constructions in Czech nominal declension: corpus frequency and native-speaker judgments. Russ Linguist 36, 91–119 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-011-9083-x

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