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The participial system of Czech and the position of the active past participle in -vš- in it

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2012

Abstract

In the participial system of Czech at the beginning of the 19th century a couple of changes took place. The most eminent one was the formation of a new active past participle in -vš- according to the Russian model.

The new participle was built in the circle of J. Jungmann before 1820.

It was first mentioned in the grammar by František Novotný z Luže in 1818. After 1820 it was already quite usual, although its frequency was not very high.

Compared to the situation today it was often built from imperfective verbs and it usually was syntactically extended. Nevertheless a glance at translations from Russian from this time shows that the translators were quickly aware of the fact that the imperfective active past participle can be replaced by a present participle when expressing contemporaneity and that many intransitive Czech verbs had already an active past participle in -l- that could be used instead of the new participle in -vš-.

The emergence of the Czech active past participle in -vš- is an interesting case of intentional language contact in a bookish part of the system of the standard language.