Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2017
Abstract
The article deals with the use of prefixes in the Czech accentual syllabic trochee. We test a hypothesis raised by Miroslav Červenka, Květa Sgallová, and Petr Kaiser which states that some authors in the 19 th century used prefixes to moderate rhythmical irregularities.
In our analysis - based on automatic prefix recognition in a large body of poetic texts from the Corpus of Czech Verse - we observe a clear tendency in the work of some authors to employ prefixes in such contexts with a frequency significantly higher than would be expected merely by chance. Furthermore, we observe this technique to be very common in the first half of the 19 th century, but to gradually disappear in later works.