Showing papers on "Czech published in 1988"

The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870-1918

Abstract: The turn of the 19th century found society and culture in the Czech lands undergoing transformations that would alter the face of Bohemian Jewry forever. Intensified ethnic nationalism, urbanization, demographic pressures, and changing prospects for integration combined to produce what would be in effect a second Jewish modernization, one which would give rise to two large-scale cultural experiments - the "Czech-Jewish Movement" and "Prague Zionism". In this first modern history of Czech Jewry to appear in English, Hillel J Kieval examines the post-emancipatory, post-industrial world of Czech Jewish society. Emphasizing the multi-ethnic character of the region, the linguistic dexterity and cultural ambiguity of its Jewish population, and the decisive impact of national conflict on the creation of Jewish attitudes and behaviour, he argues against the prevailing image of of Prague and Bohemian Jewry as bastions of German culture and political liberalism in a hostile Slavic world.

How the czech language lost its correlation of palatalization – a case study of languages in contact

Abstract: It should be made clear right at the outset what exactly is meant by such a correlation. Surely we can justifiably only speak of it if the hard and soft counterpart are both independent phonemes and occur regardless of the vocalic and other environment (with some limitations permissible in sequences of consonants etc.). Thus, in Russian, to take one of the less obvious cases, /k/ occurs before back äs well äs before front vowel, e.g. in tJcot 'he/she weaves' äs against kot 'cat', Ivanliuj Acc. Sg. of the hypocoristic name IvanJiaj äs against \\ruku\\, Acc. Sg. 'hand' and in final position in Voc. VaÄK! PefJc! (Avanesov 1949: 162), and these types are, moreover, spreading. In Bulgarian, there certainly exists a correlation of palatalization, though somewhat limited, because in the Standard language at least the softened consonants precisely do not occur before front vowels, where one might expect them äs the result of a phonetic adjustment, but on the contrary only before back vowels, i.e. they do not anticipate the timbre of the following vowel (e.g. lesen 'narrow' mas. äs against fern, tasna etc.). The three palatalizations which Proto-Slavic underwent apparently after contact with the Huns in IV ct. and perhaps somehow in connection with this event (Shevelov 1964: 254 f., Noväk 1980: 292) did not create a correlation of palatalization, only a dozen or so palatal consonants äs a good starting point for one. It is in fact very interesting to see what Slavic made of this instance of \"languages in contact\" — something ultimately completely different in essence from the vowel harmony of Ural-Altaic. It is very doubtful that the Slavs ever imitated the Altaic principle of inter-syllabic harmony, rather, the specific development of Slavic after that

Phonological Space and System Simplification: Coronal Spirants and Affricates in Sorbian and Other West Slavic Languages

Abstract: O. One of the few Sorbian innovations in the area of phonology is the treatment of *r and *r' in the environment after voiceless stops, i. e., ρ t k. In that environment, r and r' changed into a spirant or affricate at some point in the historical development of the two Sorbian languages. The assibilation of r and r' is reminiscent of a similar change in Czech and Polish; however, chronology, conditions, and results of assibilation in these two languages are sufficiently different from that in Sorbian to warrant the assumption of at least partially distinct developments. The present article will (1) review briefly the literature dealing with assibilation in Sorbian (section 1 .); (2) examine in more detail the chronology of assibilation in Sorbian and the relationship of this process with assibilation in Czech and Polish (section 2.); and (3) describe the structural consequences of assibilation in the Sorbian dialects (section 3.). The goal of our investigation is to show that while the assimilatory change of r after/? / k is an internal Sorbian development not shared with other Northwest Slavic languages, the assibilation of the resulting voiceless r in Sorbian is part of a general tendency towards the assibilation of alveodental stops in a large area of West Slavic. The contemporary assibilized reflexes of r, referred to henceforth as f, in various environments in LS, US, P, and Cz are given in Table I below. For the sake of comparison, the CS and R forms are also included

Pormal morphology

Abstract: A formalism for the description of a system of formal morphology for flexive and agglutinative languages (such as Czech) is presented, borrowing some notions and the style from the theory of formal languages. Some examples (for Czech adjectives) are presented at the end of the paper. In these examples, the formalism's rules are used for the phonology-based changes as well, but nothing prevents the use of a separate phonology level (e.g. of the Koskenniemi's two-level model) as a front- (and back-) end for the analysis (and synthesis).