On the competition of the possessive genitive and individual possessive adjectives in contemporary spoken Czech
Abstract
This article deals with the linguistic competition of the possessive genitive and possessive adjectives in contemporary spoken Czech language. It focuses on the differences between the constructions of the type Barbořin byt (Barbora's flat), byt (naší) Barbory (the flat of (our) Barbora) and (naší) Barbory byt ((our) Barbora's flat).
The paper's aimis to find out which of the possessive structures are preferred by speakers (and alternatively for what reason) or whether the frequency of their usage is equal. At first, both ways of expressing the possession with all their restrictions are described from the theoretical point of view.
Moreover, the semantic relation of possessivity is specified. The next section suggests the influences which may govern the preference of the speaker.
Within empirical research, data from the corpus of spoken Czech (ORALv1) are examined and it is seeked for explanation of factors that influence the choice of the structure. This also demonstrates whether one of the possessive structures has a dominant position or whether they occur in similar numbers.