Sussex R., Cubberley P. The Slavic Languages

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There is a similar preference for the suffixed form in -nik for people: serde

ˇnik

‘heart patient’, ‘heart specialist’.

11.3.2 Czech

Czech shows a particularly complex elaboration of codes between the written

and the spoken languages. The deliberate attempt in the late eighteenth century

to reform the literary language on the basis of the models of the sixteenth–

seventeenth centuries, in a conscious evocation of the historicity of the language,

contributed to the institutionalization of a considerable gap between the educated

written and spoken standards. There is a significant difference between spisovna

ˇesˇ

tina ‘Written Czech’, which is the formal written standard; obecna

ˇesˇ

tina

‘Common Czech’, the general spoken language of most of the people living in

Bohemia and Moravia, and existing in two somewhat differentiated versions which

show evidence of influence from the dialects; hovorova

tina ‘Spoken (Literary)

Czech’, the spoken form of the literary language which is sometimes claimed by

purists to be a spoken realization of the written language, and sometimes seen

(e.g. Micklesen, 1978: 438) as resulting from the ‘tension between the literary

language and the common language’ (2.4.5); and the local dialects. In his study

of spoken Prague Czech Townsend (1990) deals with the Common Czech of

Prague, which he calls ‘‘Spoken Prague Czech’’, a version of Common Czech

which has achieved wider acceptance because of the cultural pre-eminence of

Prague. We shall keep to the three terms listed above: Written Czech, Common

Czech and Spoken Literary Czech, bearing in mind that Common Czech in

particular has many variants.

The underlying situation is diglossic (Ferguson, 1959; and see 11.5 below).

Diglossia is endemic in modern Slavic, and has been a major factor in the formation

of the modern languages (2.5). But the situation in Czech is more complex than this.

Common Czech, with a strong base in Bohemian dialects, is spoken as a lingua

communis, with some local variation, throughout the Czech-speaking areas. Stieber

(1965: 86–87), Micklesen (1978: 446–449) and Townsend (1990) treat a number of

features which separate Written Czech from Common Czech:

(17) Written Czech Common Czech

a. Phonological

: velky

‘big’ [MascNomSg] ej : velkej

mly

n ‘mill’ [NomSg] mlejn

: dobre

ho mle

ko ‘good milk’ ı

: dobrı

ho mlı

[NeutGenSg]

11.3 Standard written and spoken variants 559

: u

ad ‘institution’ [NomSg] ou: our

#o-: on ‘he’ [NomSg] #vo-: von

oko ‘eye’ [NomSg] voko

b. Morphological

instrumental plural of nouns, adjectives and pronouns:

-ami/-emi -ama/-ema:

zˇenami ‘woman’ [InstPl] zˇenama

mi ‘(by) us’ [InstPl] na

l SgPres forms:

-i: kupuji ‘buy’ -u: kupuju

2 SgPres of the verb byt ‘be’:

jsi ses

adjectives and participles in predicates:

short form long form

bud’ tak laskav ‘be so kind’ bud’ tak laskavej

c. Syntactic (tendencies rather than across the board):

genitive > accusative in negated direct objects

nemı

t pene

ˇz

[GenPl] nemı

t penı

ze [AccPl]

‘to have no money’

genitive > accusative in verbal government (e.g. with partitives)

nabrat vody [Gen] ‘fill with water’ nabrat vodu [Acc]

dative > accusative

msec

tine

[Dat]/c

tinu [Acc] uc

msec

tinu

‘I study Czech’

instrumental case with prepositions

pı

u tuzˇkou [InstrSg] pı

u s tuzˇkou

‘I write with a pencil’

predicative instrumental predicative nominative

chte

ˇl

t dobry

m voja

kem [Instr] chte

ˇl

bejt dobrej voja

‘he wanted to be a good soldier’

possessive adjective possessive genitive

Petrova zˇena ‘Peter’s wife’ zˇena Petra [GenSg]

pronoun-drop include pronoun subjects

vı

m ‘I know’’ ja

vı

definiteness

syntactic (7.1.1) article from ten ‘this, that’

vzal jsi knihu vzal ses

tu knihu

‘did you take the book?’

560 11. Sociolinguistics

d. Lexical

‘match’: za

palka sirka

‘girl’: dı

vka holka

‘very’: velmi moc

‘now’: nynı

ted’

Common Czech coexists with the dialects, which are used locally. The written

language and its spoken form are a kind of diglossic ‘H’ superstructure (11.5),

with clearly defined roles. Two issues have exercised Czech linguists in particular:

the status of the various spoken forms of Czech relative to each other, especially the

status of Common Czech, as a de facto standard; and that of Spoken Literary

Czech, which is theoretically the spoken form of the written language, but in

practice shows elements from Common Czech.

In the early 1960s the issue of Spoken Literary Czech was hotly debated.

Kuc

era (1958) and Sgall (1960) had observed that Written and Common Czech

can be blended in a variety of communicative situations. This blending is

not entirely stable, though it does show some regularities, specifically (a) that

phonological elements of Written Czech can combine with morphological

elements of Common Czech, but not the other way round; and (b) that Written

Czech stems may take Spoken Czech inflexions, but not the other way round.

Purists like Be

lic

(Be

lic

,Havra

nek, Jedlic

ka and Tra

vnic

ek 1961) objected that

the Written standard was autonomous from Common Czech, and that Spoken

Literary Czech was closely bound to Written Czech. The key problem is therefore

the status of Spoken Literary Czech.

Spoken Literary Czech is not just a vocalized version of Written Czech. The

features of Spoken Literary Czech which do not accord with Written Czech are

clearly accommodations in the direction of Common Czech. Spoken Literary

Czech, then, occupies an intermediate position, showing morphological penetra-

tion from Common Czech, with some two-way lexical penetration. Spoken

Literary Czech, however, is not yet stable enough to constitute a self-standing

variant of Czech proper. Spoken Literary Czech – if indeed it does exist – matches

Ferguson’s description of variants intermediate between the ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’

varieties of the classic diglossic situation. Townsend (1990), however, would not

accept that Common Czech is in any sense ‘‘low’’ and, with Sgall and Hronek

(1992), argues that Spoken Literary Czech is little more than a conservative fiction.

Micklesen (1978: 454) suggests that Spoken Literary Czech will eventually

become the single spoken Czech standard. However, it is also plausible that

increasing adjustments will occur between Written Czech and Common Czech.

How this will affect the formal written standard is less predictable, and will depend

11.3 Standard written and spoken variants 561

to some extent on the importance which Czech language legislators place on the

historicity of the written standard, and on the need to maintain a direct link with

the great Czech literary monuments of the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries.

The situation in contemporary Slovenian shows a development in one sense

parallel to Czech. Lencek (1982: ch. 6) observes that, in spite of the notably archaic

character of standard written Slovenian, there is emerging a spoken variant which

is less rigid than the written medium, and which is starting to form what he calls an

‘‘interdialect’’ within the highly varied dialect map of Slovenia. This interdialect is

similar in its sociolinguistic properties to Spoken Literary Czech. Lencek believes

that the Slovenian interdialect will become a new lingua communis in Slovenia.

11.3.3 Toward a more analytic Slavic?

The data from Russian and Czech suggest that some aspects of their spoken

variants at least are moving toward a more analytic model of language, like that

which is already in place in Bulgarian and Macedonian, particularly in nominal

morphology. The evidence often coincides with phenomena in other standard and

non-standard Slavic languages, and so allows us to ask to what extent the relatively

conservative nature of Slavic morphology in particular is being modified under

pressure from the spoken variants.

The general direction of many of the changes involves morphological simplifica-

tion, the regularization of irregular forms, and the reduction of the number of

morphological paradigms. This is not of itself a sufficient condition for an analytic

restructuring, but it does tend to weaken the morphological articulation of the

languages. More specifically analytic is the lexicalization of formerly grammatic-

ized relations (e.g. the use of Preposition + Case form instead of a case form by

itself), a tendency to favor lexicalized options where the language offers both

lexicalized and grammaticized possibilities, and a tendency to leave grammatical

relations implicit and contextual rather than explicit and morphosyntactically

marked. Comrie and Stone (1978) identify the growing analyticity of Russian in

phenomena like indeclinable nouns, the use of the nominative (citation) form with

nouns in apposition ((3a) above), the declining use of oblique case forms of

numerals, and the increasing use of verbs with preposition objects rather than

case-marked objects alone.

Townsend’s (1990) evidence from Spoken Prague Czech, as cited above (11.3.2),

broadly supports a more analytic interpretation. There is some paradigmatic

levelling, for instance in the loss of short-form adjectives and participles in pre-

dicative position. The case system is under attack: the genitive and dative are giving

ground to the accusative, and the instrumental now tends to be used with

562 11. Sociolinguistics

prepositions, and to give way to the nominative in predicative position. On the

other hand, possessive adjectives are often replaced by nouns in the genitive.

Pronoun drop is often inoperative. And definiteness may be lexicalized with an

article derived from ten ‘this, that’.

The tendency toward analyticity in Slavic is not universally accepted. Dunn

(1988), for instance, argues that the evidence from the indeclinability of nouns

does not necessarily lead to a more analytic structuring of Russian, since other

grammatical information in the sentence, in word order and constructions, main-

tains intelligibility. What is lost is some of the redundancy otherwise present in the

Russian sentence, whereby morphology and syntax, as well as grammatical and

lexical semantics, can over-determine grammatical information.

In addition, some pieces of the evidence from the colloquial variants do not

favor the analytic interpretation. While spoken Russian is showing more use

of the predicative instrumental (Comrie and Stone 1978: 117–120), Spoken Czech

is going in the opposite direction (Townsend 1990: 105). Some of the data from

Russian prostore

ie (11.3.1; Patton 1988) also favor morphological diversification

rather than reduction: the growth of the -a

masculine plural of nouns (Rus ofice

‘officer’’ [NomSg] – oficera

[NomPl] ) on the model of Rus profe

ssor – professora

;

extension of the locative in -u

in nouns like Rus pljazˇ ‘beach’, na pljazˇu

‘on

the beach’; or declension of indeclinables like Rus metro

‘metro’, as in na metre

‘on the metro’.

Both linguistically and sociolinguistically, the prospects for this more analytic

tendency, especially in the written languages, depend centrally on the policies of the

language-governing bodies in the Slavic countries. As we have seen (11.2), these

academies play a conservative and directive role in regulating the written lan-

guages. If they conduct a rearguard policy against analytic changes in the spoken

languages, there will be more situations like that in Czech, Sorbian and Slovenian,

where the written standard is some distance from the spoken standard. This

distance could grow even wider. On the other hand, if some of the analytic changes

are sanctioned, the languages may begin to converge on a position in some respects

more like that of contemporary Bulgarian and Macedonian.

11.4 Sociolectal variation

The sociolinguistic effect of the Proletarian Revolution in the Slavic countries was

neither consistently proletarian nor revolutionary. The most obvious change was

some rapprochement between the social extremes. The nobility and/or upper

classes of most of the Slavic nations were, at some time in the past, linguistically

far removed from their more lowly subjects, sometimes to the extent of speaking

11.4 Sociolectal variation 563

another language – as happened with Slovenian, Sorbian and Czech (where the

upper classes spoke German), Croatian and Slovak (German and Hungarian),

Russian (French), Ukrainian and Belarusian (Russian and Polish). By the twentieth

century, however, most members of the Slavic language-cultures were speak-

ing their own languages. But it has taken the restructuring of society by the

Communist regimes, and the destruction of a significant part of the aristocracy

and intelligentsia during the Stalinist terrors, to remove some of the linguistic

barriers which still existed. While regional varieties have been largely maintained,

there has been some reduction of sociolectal diversity, although still far short of a

linguistically classless society. These developments can be partly explained by the

weakening of traditional social structures. More important, however, are increased

social and geographical mobility, increased urbanization, equal rights for women

and universal education.

Enhanced vertical social mobility, and the elevation of proletarian labor

to prestige status, did much in the heyday of Communism to erase the old

linguistic association between social class and occupation. The removal of the

hereditary upper classes tended to spread the educated variant more widely over a

range of socio-economic and professional groups. Instead of assimilating the old

upper classes to lower class speech, the Communist Revolution tended to make

the language of the proletarians less proletarian. In the history of the Slavic

languages, education has been one of the keys to national and linguistic self-

establishment. With universal education, the educated norm has spread socially

downwards. Literacy has also made enormous advances: before the turn of

the twentieth century less than 21 percent of the inhabitants of the Russian empire

were able to read, let alone write, and the figure for women was close to half that

for men.

Against this we must set three factors: conservatism, specialization and

volunt ary de-standardization. The influence of Communist language policy

was more uniform among the urban proletariat. But the rural peasant element,

which is traditionally a strong and conservative component of Slavic commun-

ities, showed less of the standardizing effect of national language policies. This

represents a source of sociolectal variety, though a declining one. A different

type of sociolectal stratification, and one which is clearly on the increase, is the

growth of specialized jargons for various professions. The differences are

mainly lexical, and can generally be treated as technolects which are substan-

tially international in character. They contrast with more homeland-based

restricted codes like prison-camp jargon, which was found principally in

Russian, and which became more widely known through the work of writers

like Solzhenitsyn.

564 11. Sociolinguistics

We select pronominal and nominal address as a typical case providing important

insights into a key area of the social dimension of Slavic. In 11.4.2 we outline some

key social and linguistic features of the transition from the Communist to the

post-Communist Slavic world.

11.4.1 Address systems

Slavic languages share with Romance and Germanic languages a well-established

system of polite and familiar address in pronouns and titles, though not as elabo-

rate as the honorifics of languages like Japanese (Shibatani, 1990: 374–380). The

sociolinguistic factors underlying these usages were discussed by Brown and

Gilman (1960), who identified the parameters of power and solidarity as having

the crucial roles in the selection of forms of pronominal address. In Slavic the most

broadly based model is that of the T/V opposition, with the familiar T pronouns

like French tu, German du, Russian and Polish ty, Bulgarian ti contrasting with the

V pronouns like French vous, Russian vy, Polish wy (with some significant quali-

fications) and Bulgarian vı

e (Stone, 1977). The T series is used only for singular

address, where it has the overtones of familiarity and emotional solidarity. The

V series, though morphologically plural, can be used for either plural, or polite

singular, address. In addition to pronominal address, however, there is an elabo-

rate system of nominal address, using both names and titles. In terms of power and

solidarity, the T/T pattern, where T is both given and received, is mutual and

solidaristic; V/V is mutual and non-solidaristic, since it lacks the element of greater

emotional or personal closeness expressed by T; and T/V is power-oriented and

non-solidaristic, since it implies a hierarchical distinction between the interlocu-

tors. The causes of the hierarchical dislocation can be inherent factors like age,

gender or acquired factors like social or professional status. Typically, the superior

can choose the mode of address, while the inferior is restricted to respectful forms

of pronouns and titles.

11.4.1.1 Pronominal address

The history of the T/V system in Slavic shows that before about the eighteenth

century the address system in the pronouns was semantically based: one said T to

singular addressees, and V to plural addressees. Politeness was expressed by

address in the third person, using titles like ‘Excellency’. During the eighteenth

century French influence encouraged Slavic imitation of the French conventions

for the use of tu and vous, with the result that the address systems of Slavic

underwent a significant reanalysis (Friedrich, 1966). The parameters controlling

the selection of the T and V forms of nineteenth-century Russian, for instance,

11.4 Sociolectal variation 565

reflect the structure of interpersonal communication in a society very conscious of

social position and relative social distance:

(18) topic of discourse kinship

context of the speech event dialect

age group membership

generation relative authority

sex emotional solidarity

The relative significance of these factors varies between contexts of usage. Polovina

(1984), on the basis of a sample of 258 speakers of Serbo-Croatian, was able to

report a ranking which she described, in order of descending importance, in terms

of age > distance > respect > social status > educational level > and custom.

Asymmetrical T/V systems, where the senior person would give T and receive V,

were common. Husbands would give T and receive V from their wives. Adults

would give T and receive V from their children or pupils.

During the Soviet era, and beginning with East Slavic, the egalitarian ethos of

Communism resulted in a strong movement away from ‘‘power’’-oriented

(¼ asymmetrical T/V) address, where T and V are not simultaneously given and

received. Indeed, strikes in Russia in 1912 were partly to do with demands for the

management to address the workers with V. After 1917, Party usage also promoted

the introduction of symmetrical T between Party members. Of these two changes, the

first has had a more widespread effect, so that in modern Russian asymmetrical

T/V usage has theoretically become more restricted, especially to adult–child contexts;

it also persists in some South Russian dialect areas (Jachnow, 1973). The attempt to

propagate the use of T, however, sat relatively ill with two centuries of respect for

strangers and superiors. The result is that strangers will give and receive V until they

agree to switch to T: a premature transition to T, especially in socially or sexually

asymmetrical contexts, can give offence or may be rejected by the other party. In a

number of institutions, including the Soviet army, legislation was introduced to

enforce symmetrical V. The evidence of Nakhimovsky (1976), however, suggests that

practice in the Soviet army could be at odds with official regulations.

There is, nonetheless, significant variation within and between the languages in

the use of T and V. Ukrainian uses ty less, and in fewer contexts, than Russian does

(Stone, 1977), so that Russian speakers find that Ukrainian tends to sound more

formal and studied. In Russian the use of ty to strangers is very much a matter of

age and shared context. Kindergarten children will use ty to each other and some-

times to the teacher, but they learn at the same time to use forename + patronymic

to the teacher for more formal communication. University students, even students

of opposite sexes, may exchange ty if they clearly belong to the same class or

566 11. Sociolinguistics

institution, but will exchange polite vy in more formal settings outside their shared

context. Some West Slavic cultures imitate the German habit of drinking to

Bruderschaft, linking arms and downing a glass of vodka to cement the agreement

to exchange ty. Slavic languages have verbs for ‘‘ty-saying’’, like Rus ty

kat

(alongside more formal phrases like Rus govorı

na ‘ty’ ‘speak using ty’), parallel

to French tutoyer, Ger duzen.

The question of agreement with the semantically singular but morphologically

plural ‘‘V’’ gives rise to some differences between the Slavic languages. Polish has

strictly plural agreement, though the usual masculine personal gender, whatever

the actual gender of the addressee, can vary in usage (Stone, 1977):

(19) Pol Aniu, czy wys

cie to napisali?

Ania-Voc Q you-Aux2Pl Dem wrote-PlMascPers

‘Ania, did you write that?’

Czech and Bulgarian do the converse, with singular agreement:

(20a) Cz napisal jste to?

wrote-MascSg Aux2Pl Dem

‘Did you [Sg] write that?’

(20b) Blg vı

e ste razse

jan

you be-2PlPres absent-minded-MascSg

‘you [SgPolite] are absent-minded’

Russian takes an intermediate position, with plural agreement for verbs and

short-form adjectives, but singular (semantic) agreement for nouns and long-form

adjectives:

(21a) Rus vy

napisa

li e

to?

you wrote-Pl Dem

‘did you [SgPolite] write this?’

(21b) Rus vy

ø boga

you (are) rich-Pl (Short-form adjective)

‘you are rich’

(21c) Rus vy

- boga

tyj

you (are) rich-NomSgMasc (Long-form adjective)

‘you are rich/a rich man’

(21d) Rus vy

- boga

you (are) rich man-NomSg (Noun)

‘you are a rich man’

11.4 Sociolectal variation 567

V in Polish is a special case. Although promoted by the Party after the

Communist take-over in 1945, nominally in the name of Party solidarity, it did

not achieve wide popularity, and is now mainly found in rural dialects. Its functions

have been taken over by pan (see below).

A third type, which Stone (1977: 499) calls ‘‘O’’ because of its use of 3 person

plural pronouns, expressed or implied, is found to some extent in Polish, Czech,

Slovak and Slovenian (Cz onika

nı

‘saying oni’). There were remains of it in Russian

at the turn of the twentieth century (Comrie and Stone, 1978: 178). The 3 Person

plural can be used for formal address:

(22) Cz jak se ma

/ma

te/majı

how self-Cl have-2Sg/2Pl/3Pl

‘how are you?’

The ‘‘O’’ type was found only in asymmetrical address, and is generally thought to

originate in German (Sie) or Hungarian (maga/

on; both are singular). In Sorbian,

however, the Slavic language with the greatest degree of exposure to German, it is

unknown (Stone, 1977: 499).

11.4.1.2 Nominal address

The tradition of nominal address (for English, see Brown and Ford, 1961) involves

three related phenomena in Slavic: the Polish use of the Noun + 3 Person Verb

structure for second person address; the use of forenames, in various forms, for

expressing solidarity or intimacy – or, in the appropriate contexts, their converses;

and the use of titles in respectful or more formal address. These three phenomena

can also be combined to form complex modes of address.

Polish has taken the habit of 3 Person address further than the other Slavic

languages. A transitional stage between pronominal address and the use of titles

(see below) is the standard use of pan ‘man’ and pani ‘woman’ for respectful 2 Person

address. There are also forms for the plural: panowie ‘men’ and panie ‘women’, as

well as the neuter collective pan

stwo for addressing sexually mixed groups:

(23) CS-Pol czy pan

stwo wiedza˛,

ze ...

Q people-Sg know-3Pl that ...

‘do you [Pl] know that ...’

The function of 2 person address has resulted in a colloquial and non-standard

use of 2 Person verbal inflexions with pan (etc.):

(24) Colloq-Pol czy pan wiesz?

Q man know-2Sg

‘do you know?’

568 11. Sociolinguistics