On the Divergence of the Slovak and Czech Literary Languages at the Word-formation Level

Abstract

The object of the study is such lexemes of the Slovak literary language, which were originally similar to the corresponding Czech, but in the XX century they underwent changes, as their word-formation characteristics changed. At the same time, the corresponding Czech words remained unchanged. We call this phenomenon asymmetric divergence. Asymmetric divergence characterized many parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs. The source of the material was primarily the newspaper "Catholicke Noviny" for 1889-1890, as well as some publications of the early XX century. This article discusses cases of asymmetric divergence realized in small closed groups of vocabulary or even at the level of individual lexemes. The main conclusion of the author is that asymmetric divergence was an important factor in the formation of the lexical composition of the Slovak literary language and its acquisition of specific features that distanced it from the Czech. To the greatest extent, it affected nouns, and the most common means was suffixation, that is, replacing the original suffix that coincided with the corresponding Czech with another suffix. The divergence of the Slovak and Czech literary languages, as a rule, is beyond the field of view of researchers who consider primarily the influence of the Czech language on Slovak. At the same time, it was she who was the leading trend in the development of the Slovak literary language in the XX century.