Distribution and combinations of Czech consonants
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Zeitschrift für Slawistik |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | phonotactics; functionalism; distributional unit; consonant; positions |
| Description | This paper outlines distributional and combinational potentials of consonants in Present Standard Czech. We adopt a notion distributional unit introduced by Jan W. F. Mulder. It is defined as a bundle of positions such that in every such position a phoneme can stand and commute with other phonemes or with 0 (be empty). Nine positions are established for Czech: five pre-nuclear, one nuclear and three post-nuclear. The sum of these positions is an underlying grid upon which the structure of all the phonotagms (roughly: syllables) in Czech can be effectively mapped and thus exhaustively described. This paper focuses in particular on the distribution of Czech consonants and includes tables containing 413 pre-nuclear (= syllable-initial) and 82 post-nuclear (= syllable-final) consonantal combinations in Czech. Such a comprehensive list has not, to the best of our knowledge, been published elsewhere. |