Corpus-based analysis of the Czech syllable
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Beiträge der Europäischen Slavistischen Linguistik (POLYSLAV) 18 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | corpus; syllable; phonotactics; word classes; part of speech; phonological word |
| Description | This paper provides a quantitative analysis of the syllable in contemporary Czech in a corpus of 146,703 syllables contained in Czech words recorded in Slovník spisovné češtiny. It examines the syllable structure of words belonging to different word classes, showing that there are only minor differences between them where syllable structure is concerned, although pronouns and uninflectable words do have a less complex structure. It is also demonstrated that combinations of syllables within words shows certain tendencies. In multisyllabic words, Czech prefers all the syllabic nuclei to contain short rather than non-short vowels. Also, words with one closed syllable are preferred to words with more than one closed syllable or with none. Finally, the distribution of heavy vs. light syllables is examined. |