Literary Czech, Common Czech, and the Instrumental Plural

Author(s): George M. Cummins

Source: Journal of Slavic Linguistics , summer—fall 2005, Vol. 13, No. 2 (summer—fall
2005), pp. 271-297
Published by: Slavica Publishers

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24599659

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 Literary Czech, Common Czech, and the Instrumental Plural

George M. Cummins

The gap between spoken Czech and the stylized literary language, spisovna cestina, is so
great that in categories such as the instrumental plural of all nominals, the prestige-code
desinences are bookish or archaic, while in the spoken code they are nonstandard and
colloquial; no neutral register exists. Instr pi noun phrases (modifier plus noun) are
among the most marked in colloquial morphology, as they have both nonstandard theme
vowels and a nonstandard case-marking vowel. Nonetheless, they are fully established in
all supraregional spoken forms of Czech, Common Czech of Bohemia, Moravian inter
dialects, and Lach. Unlike one-dimensional morphological markings such as the loc pi in
-ach in velar stems, they cannot be recognized in the prestige code. The hierarchical
differentiation of these forms is analyzed in the wider context of other colloquial mor
phological features. It is argued that in code mixing or code switching all varieties of
nonstandard morphology make their way into formal speech not as mere stylistic colora
tion but as agents of discourse function. Contemporary writers such as Hrabal in Pfilis
hlucna samota make selective functional use of colloquial morphology for thematic focus.

1. Introduction

It has long been recognized that the morphology of nominal forms in

Literary Czech (LC, spisovna cestina), along with other phenomena of
phonology, morphology, and lexis, reflects an arrested stage in the devel
opment of the language.1 In spoken Czech functional gender differen
tiation in noun plurals disappeared centuries ago, with the exception of
masc personal. Oblique plural declensional types tend toward unification,

1 Contemporary Literary Czech is the idealized creation of the national Revivalists

Dobrovsky (Ausfiihrliches Lehrgebaude der bohmischen Sprache, 1809, 1819) and Jungmann
(Slovnik cesko-nemecky, 1834-1839) in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Jan
Blahoslav's important contributions to the translation of the New Testament in the Bible
kralicka (1579) served the Revivalists as an important model (Vecerka and Slosar 1982).
Blahoslav, striving for integrity and purity, created a language devoid of colloquial or
dialectal elements. In his New Testament translation he used the old monophthong y,
which had changed to ej everywhere except in Eastern Moravia and Slovakia, as well as
unraised e, which had become L In morphology he retained the old classical Czech masc
neu instr pis in y/i, and neu gender agreement in plural noun phrases, all of which even
in his time ran contrary to spoken practice. These principles were adopted by the
linguists of the Revivalist period in their creation of a fragile new standard language still
very much under the shadow of German linguistic influence and penetration. Today,
more than 420 years later, Blahoslav's features remain anchored in Literary Czech, the
national standard for cultivated written and spoken communication of the Czech
Republic.

Journal of Slavic Linguistics 13(2): 271-97, 2005.

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272 GEORGE M. CUMMINS

as they do in other North Slavic languages. Dat and loc pis2 in all Czech
dialects and interdialects, including LC, have the shape V-m, V-ch, as in LC
loc stromech, Lach (Silesian) stromach, Hanak (Central Moravian) stromoch.3
The instr pi in all Czech spoken forms of speech has everywhere become
nearly fully unified around a central model with the case marker -ma. All
declined nominals without differentiation by gender or class share this
common ending. In Common Czech (obecna cestina) the nouns are full
integrated, with V -a- for hard stems, -e- for soft.

Table 1. Instrumental plural forms.

Literary Czech Instr PI Common Czech Instr PI

syny (masc an) synama sons

hochy (masc an) klukama 'boys'

duby (masc inan) dubama 'oaks'

stroji (masc soft) strojema 'machines'

mesty (neu) mestama 'cities'

mori (neu soft) morema 'oceans'

rybami (fem) rybama 'fish'

dusemi (fem soft) dusema 'souls'

danemi (soft,mixed type) danema 'taxes, tributes'

kostmi (/-stem) kostma 'bones'

temi (demonstrative) tema 'these, those, the'

velkymi (adj) velkejma 'big'

2
Abbreviations for categories are as follows: masc 'masculine', fern 'feminine', neu
'neuter', dat 'dative', instr 'instrumental', loc 'locative', acc 'accusative', nom 'nomina
tive', gen 'genitive', pi, pis 'plural(s)', sg 'singular', (in)an '(in)animate', imv 'imperative',
adj 'adjective'.
3 See Vazny 1970: 31-32. The vowel marks part of speech or declensional type (vzor) and
the following consonant marks case; the vowel varies while the case marker does not.
Slovak uses a for all fem and neu, hard and soft, and o for masc: -a(a)m, -a(a)ch, masc -om,
-och. Cf. oblique plurals of the demonstrative ten: LC tech, tem, temi, Brno city speech tech,
tem tema, regional Moravian tych, tym, tyma. This structure traces back to Czech pre
history, as in the oblique pi forms of the possessive mym, mych, mymi, which are not true
contractions but levelings based on the compound adjective declension. In this declen
sion the masc neu sg oblique forms dobreho, dobremu, dobrem are analogical formations.
Here, too, the V marks part of speech, the following C(V), case. True historical
contractions in masc sg dobry, gen pi dobrych, instr pi dobrymi supported this structure
early on (Vazny 1970: 112-14). In adjectives and pronouns the vowel is grammatically
fixed, while in the nominal lexicon there remain many vacillations left over from the old
declensional types, e.g., the on-going interpenetration of old soft feminines of the duse
type with old i-stems of the type kost and the newer model piseh. See Sgall and
Weisheitelova 1968 for a demonstration of the enormous complexity of their arrested
development in LC.

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 273

In most of Moravia the connecting vowel in nouns is a; in Silesia, the

case marker is the older -mi.4 LC y/i in masc and neu declensions is to be
found only in the peripheral SW Czech Doudlebske dialect, a vestige
doomed to be lost in the process of interdialectal leveling (Vazny 1970).5
Jakobson (1971) and Slosar (1986: 131) point out that the loss of the declen
sional distinction between a direct case (acc or nom) and the instrumental
is not to be found in the modern Slavic languages with unified plural
endings.

1.1 LC and CC from Gebauer to the 1960s

Why then has LC for so long approved this case ending? For an answer
we may look to the complex relationship of LC and spoken forms of
Czech. The history of the theory of LC is long and colorful and can only be
adumbrated here. Jan Gebauer (1960) and the Pravidla ceskeho pravopisu
(Gebauer 1926; first edition 1902) set written standards for the past
century, including progressive innovations imported from the literary
work of Czech writers of the late 1800s. Puristic fears of German

encroachment on the fragile language of the first Republic (1918-1

fears resurrected from the time of the Revivalists of a century past,
Czech was truly imperiled—were effectively countered by the Prag
guistic Circle and their leaders Bohuslav Havranek, Vilem Mathesiu
Roman Jakobson (see Jakobson 1932). The Circle defended LC from
unhealthy and artificial incursions of "lawgivers" (zakonoddrci jazykove

4
For example, in the Ostravsko-Moravian dialects, -ami is the full ending for all nouns;
-mi is the case marker. Loc pi is everywhere -ach; dat pi is -am, but with older -um for
masc and neu hard stems (Sochova 2001:10).
5 The dialects of the Czech Republic are classified as Czech or Bohemian dialects in the
narrow sense (nareci ceskd), Moravian and transitional dialects, and Lach or Silesian. See
Lamprecht (1986: 422-23).
6 The generally asymmetric development of nominal declension is the fruit of the
complex history of Czech. Prehistoric contractions of V-j-V, followed by Czech umlauts
(prehldsky) a> e, u> i and raising of e produced syncretisms of endings in soft types which
were functionally disordered. The neu soft type znamenie 'sign' (soft jei-j-e) historically
ought to have had the pi oblique forms gen znameni dat znamenim instr znameni, so that
two of the forms would be identical to the direct cases znameni As a verbal substantive
the type is morphologically important; the instr znamenimi, very early imported from the
compound declension, aligned the dat, loc, and instr in the structure VC(V) common to
these endings in spoken dialects and in neighboring Slavic languages. The pi declension
of this important type developed progressive endings in dat znamenim, loc znamenich,
instr znamenimi but failed to distinguish gen from the direct cases. The tendency to merge
case endings where they need to be formally opposed is what Jakobson had in mind
when he referred to the "degeneracy" of Czech declension.

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274 georce M. Cummins

spravnosti), arid advanced the functional development of LC base

temporary literary norms, some of which were remote from spoke
In the 1940s the French linguist Vey described a colloquial var
Prague Czech strikingly at variance from literary norms and cod
(Vey 1946); in 1955 and 1961 the Czech emigre Henry Kucera p
statistical studies of colloquial speech, opening the discussion to
of the hierarchical switching or oscillation between codes (LC
quial Czech) and, significantly, variants within the two codes su
their functional alternation in discourse (Kucera 1955). In the ea
in the journal Slovo a slovesnost a heated and amusing debate to
about the nature of the colloquial language, its relationship to LC
functional status of both of these structures (utvary). I will dis
results in brief. Petr Sgall and others suggested what seemed at the
be radical changes in the formal codification of spelling and mo
(Sgall 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963). Belie, Havranek, and Jedlicka (19
group of three defended the demarcative lines between LC an
cestina 'Common Czech' (CC), as the Central Czech interdialect ca
known specifically in its role as a developing Czech koine "aspiri
level of a national colloquial variety of speech" (Skalicka 1962:
group of three, fearful of the incursion of CC usage into the na
guage that LC represented, insisted that switching or oscillation
stank of intellectual nihilism (Belie et al 1962: 112). In their respons
appealed to a putative intermediate colloquial level called hovorov
'colloquial Czech', a linguistic entity which was proclaimed to be
nothing other than LC devoid of its bookish elements, a true c
spoken literary language not unlike English or German.

1.2 Hovorova cestina, Obecna cestina, and the Instr PI

When the patriarch of Czech linguistics, Bohuslav Havranek (n

this is the same Havranek whose insightful liberalism defende
from the purists in 1932), wrote a summary of the debate (Havran
he admitted CC's de facto status as obecne mluveny jazyk 'curre
language' while rejecting zrovnopravneni 'granting of equal legal st
this entity in relation to LC. At the same time Havranek began to
the notion of the existence of a literary colloquial Czech, a hovorov
The reason for this shift in theoretical stance is that Sgall and oth
debate suggested to him that there existed a yawning gap, esp
the morphology of nominal and verbal inflection, between LC
There are structures which in LC are bookish or archaic while their cor
respondences in CC are markedly nonstandard; no neutral form is avail

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 275

able to the speaker. Chief among the nominal categories are the LC morph
y as theme marker vs. the CC ej, neu pi adjective agreement (LC ta velkd
mesta vznikla 'those large cities arose' ~ CC ty velky mesta vznikly), and the
instr pi of all nominals. Sgall tried to prove that colloquial Czech
conceived as LC without archaisms but also without nonstandard CC

forms is an impossibility—and this is very much what Havranek

of as colloquial Czech: LC without its ancient overlay. If LC instr
archaic and CC V-ma is nonstandard, then the entity hovorova ce
colloquial Czech cannot exist as described; it may be rescued onl
stubborn insistence on the present-day viability of these and other a
morphological tools. Indeed the LC instr pi ending is today functiona
it stands in a relationship to the forms of CC that is far more delica
complex than "old/bookish/archaic" ~ "in colloquial usage though
standard", as in the debate of the 1960s. This nature of this relat
will be the focus of the discussion that follows.

1.3 Advances in Codification

The last forty years have seen steady progress in easing the introduction
of grammatical markings into LC as acceptable written or at least
colloquial variants (Sgall 1961, Belie 1977). There have been steady advan
ces in the theory of codification, usage, and norm (e.g., Kravcisinova and
Bednarova 1968, Kraus and Kuchar 1981), and, in the years after the
Velvet Revolution of November 1989, in the study of the functional and
geographical structure of all colloquial varieties of speech (e.g., for CC,
Hammer 1986, Townsend 1990, Sgall and Hronek 1992; for Moravia,
Cizmarova 1998, Krcmova 1981, Davidova et al. 1997). In recent years
foreign scholars have published functional studies of code switching in
literature (Gammelgaard 1997, Bermel 2000, Bermel 2001a).

2. A Brief History of the Instr PI in the Context of Literary Czech

I cite here generalized pi paradigms for the period after the vowel shift
a > e (fourteenth century) and before ie > / (fifteenth century).

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 276 GEORGE M. CUMMINS

Table 2. Nominal Plurals in Four

Masculine and Neuter.

'serf' 'plowman' 'ladder' 'city' 'ocean' 'sign'

N chlapi oraci rebri mesta more znamenie
G chlap orac rebri mest rnori znameni
D chlapom oracom febfim mestom morom znamenim
A chlapy orace rebrie mesta more znamenie
L chlapiech oracich febfich mestiech morich znamenich
I chlapy oraci rebri mi mesty mori znamenimi

2.1 The Early Emergence of Spoken Instr PI -ma

Masc febfi 'ladders' and neu substantival type znamenie 'signs' already
show oblique plurals with a unified vowel plus case marker as in the
modern dialects, with instr pi borrowed from the compound adjective. In
the other paradigms the development is more complex. The masc and neu
hard-stem loc vowel comes from a long jat', which was narrowed in the
1300s to i (ie > i), the same vowel used by the soft type. The Hradecky MS
has kralech 'kings'—with a vowel which is probably ie but with deiotation
after I—a soft stem using the hard ending instead of the soft i. Not only do
we read in many texts both hard and soft endings in masc neu Iocs, but a
from the feminines is also to be found and, by the end of the fourteenth
century, e from the z-stems, at first only after dentals: o darech 'of gifts'.
Only in the 1700s do we read o chlapech 'of serfs', with the modern LC (and
CC) vowel. Jat' (ie) forced mutation of velars and r, so we read o dafiech, o
jich skutcech 'of their deeds' (with deiotation). The loc pi in LC today is still
in transition from bookish forms with mutation in velars, such as
dotaznicich, 'questionnaires', chodnitich 'sidewalks', to endings in velar
plus -ach (see section 3 below). Spoken varieties of Czech have resolved
the question in favor of a single unified vowel for nearly all declensional
types. The development of the dat is analogous (see Vazny 1970: 22-32);
cf. neu dat forms such as mestam, generalizing a from the nom-acc pi, also
to be found in dialects in loc mestach.
In the instr pi the masc and neu o-stems, hard and soft, borrowed -ami
from the feminines and -mi from the /-stems, and these are reflected in the
texts beginning in the late 1300s. We read rohami trkati 'butt with horns'
(Passional Klementinsky, 1395; nom sg roh), s pokladmi 'with baggage'
(Kronika Pulkavova, c. 1400, nom sg poklad). Examples abound from the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of both endings, e.g., in the Tkadlecek,
c. 1400, dobrymi obycejmi 'with good traditions'. In 1623 Komensky writes
in the Labyrint sveta a raj srdce ("Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 277

the Heart"): domy sve nddobimi, satarni, potravinami naplhuji 'they fill their
homes with kitchen wares, clothing, and foodstuffs'. Literary examples
~(a)mi beginning in the sixteenth century were paralleled by -(a)ma in
dialects. This universal ending derives from the dual dat instr, as in classic
Old Czech masc neu chlapoma, oracoma, mestoma, tnoroma, but with t
feminine vowel of -ama generalized from the dat and loc theme vowels
zenam, zenach and parallel forms in masc and neu declension types.

2.2 Developments in Normative Grammars from 1571 to 1785

The sixteenth-century churchman and linguist Jan Blahoslav wrote a

important and influential grammatical commentary, begun in 1571, and
translated New Testament (1579-93).7 Strictly conservative in morpholog
and phonology, his work set the standard for a literary language, the first
LC. By the 1700s German had effectively replaced Czech as the centra
administrative and literary medium, and the strict normative controls
Blahoslav collapsed. Popular literature, such as the kramdfskd pise
(Vecerka and Slosar 1982: 93-94) was saturated with dialectisms and wa
morphologically unstable. In written texts of the time, as well as in th
progressive grammar of Rosa (Cechofecnost seu Grammatica lingu
bohemicae, 1672), one finds the first appearance in written form of many
the features of today's CC: the new ej, z in roots and endings, loc pi neu in
-dch in non-velar stems like v prdvach 'in the laws', compound-decline
possessive adjectives like knezniniho pfedpovedeni 'the princess's pred
tion', infinitives without -i like moc 'be able', 3rd pi in -ej such as pfedlozej
'put forward' (like modern CC trpej 'suffer'), neu adjective agreement in -y
as in hanlivy usta 'abusive mouths', instr pi muzmi 'men'. Rosa in his
grammar (Vecerka and Slosar 1982: 99-102) was the first to supply varia
morphology as acceptable alternates to archaisms, a practice which toda
remains an efficient means of ushering new forms into the code, e.g., instr
pi in -ami, -ama as well as y/i in the masc hard type, adjective model
krdsnej 'beautiful' alongside krasny, gen, dat krasnyho, krasnymu alongside

7
Masaiyk University has the single surviving copy of the grammar (Vecerka and Slosar
1982; see the recent scholarly editon of this work, Cejka et al 1991). Blahoslav vehemently
opposed dialectal incursions into formal writing but took a more reserved stance on
Germanisms (79-84). While retaining the advances of humanist syntax of the late
sixteenth century, his Bible retreated to Old Czech norms in phonology and morphology,
including old y, e, neu pi adjective agreement, as well as the old instr pi endings.

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278 GEORGE M. CUMMINS

krasneho, krasnemu* None of these, of course, has gained acceptance in

today's LC. Pavel Dolezal, a Slovak from Skalice, wrote in 1746 a grammar
combining Czech and Slovak morphology in an undifferentiated mass o
variants, such as dat pi zubum, zubom, loc pi zubech, zubich, zuboch 'teeth'
(Vecerka and Slosar 1982: 103). While Rosa tried to discriminate between
older and more progressive morphology in Czech, Dolezal believed in a
single literary language for both Czech and Slovak and presented the
reader with unnecessarily complex inflectional material. Other grammar
of the time (Pohl 1756, Simek 1785) never extricated themselves from the
confusing morass of forms. What is more, they recommended lexical an
syntactic innovations that were without basis in usage. Much archaic
morphological material has survived the centuries in contemporary
codifications. Kun 'horse', an item common to LC and CC, even today ha
gen and dat pi variation between hard and soft types (kohu ~ koni, kohum ~
konbri), and LC has instr pi either koni or kontni. The latter form was
invented (Vazny 1970) with no textual basis, while koni is a hapa
legomenon (Zivot svatych otcu, c. 1400); these forms are completely artificial
vs. CC real spoken instr konema, konma.

2.3 Dobrovsky (1809-1819) and Beyond

In his 1809 and 1819 studies, the great Revivalist Josef Dobrovsky turne
his attention to the establishment of a viable new Czech vocabulary
independent of German influence, leaving morphology to the settled
norms of Blahoslav and pre-White Mountain (1620) classical Old Czech. I
the following generation Jungmann developed hierarchies for the
introduction of new vocabulary (Vecerka and Slosar 1982: 111), namely, i
order of priority: (1) the revitalization of Old Czech vocabulary, (2) the
introduction of material from spoken Czech and dialects, (3) borrowing
from other Slavic languages, and only lastly (but still of critical impo
tance), (4) calquing from Latin and German.9 After the Revivalists, the
benign influence of Czech national writers of the mid and late nineteenth

8 Later generations, especially the nineteenth-century purists, unfairly hurt Rosa's legac
by castigating him for failures in the creation of new technical vocabulary built on Latin
models.
9 vr
Dob
'nat
scie
tio
jazy
'logical'.

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 279

century shaped LC until its next codification in the 1902 Pravidla (Gebauer
1926) and the school texts of Jan Gebauer.
Nominal and verbal morphology (and some points of syntax)
remained the great sticking points, however, and it was not until the
stories of Tyl (1808-1856) that many archaisms were at last abandoned,
e.g., loc pi po domich, with the old hard-stem vowel ie, became po domech
'in homes'; the archaic gen of negation and outdated verbal compound
tenses like jsou byvali 'used to be' were discarded. The writers Nemcova
(1820-1862), Havlicek (1821-1856), and Neruda (1839-1891) became
pioneers of new norms of cultivated literary style. Unfortunately, puristic
incursions of the early twentieth century, with their unrealistic and
unclear criteria, deepened the long-standing gap between spoken Czech of
all varieties and registers and LC, and blurred the delicate interplay of
cultivated language usage, norm, and codification.10

3. The Instrumental Plural in Spoken Czech Today

The last forty years after the debates in Slovo a slovesnost have witnessed
advances in the theory of LC both at home and abroad." The study of CC

10 The Czechs speak of the "theory of the cultivation of literary Czech" which defines and
specifies these notions. Usage (uzus) is actual linguistic practice in speech and writing,
whether approved by dictionaries or not. Structures contrary to the norm may eventually
win acceptance and codification. Nebeska (2002: 516) cites as an example the familiar
word slehacka 'whipped cream', with a nominal suffix usually denoting instrument, now
the accepted word. Norm (norma) is the full arsenal of linguistic means of LC felt to be
obligatory, zdvazne, e.g., the future of jit 'go' is pujdu, not budu jit. The norm encompasses
every linguistic means (jazykovy prostfedek) of LC in all its manifestations: morphology,
verbal valence, syntax, diction, pronunciation, spelling. As it is implicit, the norm needs
formal codification to guide the speaker on register and the relative acceptability of vari
ants. Disputed forms may finally reach codification, e.g., gen. tfech, ctyfech, which are far
less formal today than tri, ctyf but overwhelmingly common in spoken usage, or third pi
sfl'zf alongside historically correct sazeji.
For a succinct statement of a progressive and up-to-date understanding of LC as it has
been achieved in the debates of the last forty years, see Nebeska 2002. She remarks that
the notions literary vs. nonliterary should well be supplanted by written vs. spoken; that the
dynamics of spontaneous spoken expression need to be studied and acknowledged (486);
that in both written formal and spoken public communication, speakers freely mix LC
and CC within the context of a single utterance. Further, she writes that "the literary
norm in the consciousness of speakers is not sufficiently anchored, that many forms [viz.
morphological forms, such as the instr pi—GMC] are felt to be bookish or even archaic....
The gap between codified norms and linguistic practice narrows very slowly".
11 Discussions have been especially fruitful since 1989 and the abandonment of political
conceptions of LC vs. CC. See Cizmarova 1998, Danes 1988, Davidova et al 1997 (for
Moravian), Hronek and Sgall 1999, Chloupek 1995, Mullerova and Hoffmannova 1997,
Sgall et al. 1992, Sgall 1998, Sgall 1999, Sramek 1996, Ulicny et al 1995. International

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280 GEORGE M. CUMMINS

and the interrelationship of LC and varieties of spoken and written Czech

is seen as a first-order topic of discussion.

3.1 Further Advances in Codification

Czech inflectional morphology is linked in the mind of many speakers

with schoolbook correctness. The need to speak spisovne 'prestige
standard style' can produce discomfort and even terror in Czechs, for
whom the gap between literary and spoken styles is too wide to bridge in
spontaneous speech. This situation produces a wealth of hypercorrect
forms, such as sazt 'they plant' (see note 10 above) in place of historically
correct LC sdzeji, because trpeji is condemned as incorrect; obemi dvemi
mnozinami 'both of these (mathematical) sets (instr pi)' for obema dvema
mnozinami because the noun ending -ama is condemned as incorrect (from
Sgall and Hronek 1992); dat and loc pi pracem, pracech 'work' because
nemotich 'illnesses (loc pi)' is condemned as incorrect. Nonetheless,
progress has been made in bringing many widely used colloquial forms
into LC. Forty years ago Havranek promulgated natural spoken forms
such as umfou 'they will die', upec 'bake (imv)', mliko 'milk', ved sem 'I led',
while steadfastly opposing instr pi forms in -ama.12 In the rage of debate
Sgall 1961 managed to get gen dat acc mne 'me' into LC alongside the
purely bookish gen acc mne, which has long disappeared from colloquial
speech. The codified masc inan acc pronoun jej is long obsolete; Belie 1977
managed to get ho codified in this function for both masc and neu, as well
as the post-prepositional masc gen nej alongside bookish neho.u These
additions properly reflect usage while providing the LC speaker with a
range of stylistic possibilities within the accepted norm itself—keeping
bookish forms like gen acc mne alongside neutral mne enriches LC's
stylistic arsenal. Dictionaries (Spisovny slovnik jazyka ceskeho 1978, 1998),

scholars have contributed statistical studies of spoken and literary styles (Hammer 1986,
Gammelgaard 1997) and full-length studies of CC (Townsend 1990). Native studies of CC
were pioneered by Hronek 1972 and include a popularization by Hronek and Sgall 1992.
12
The last two examples are still today not recognized in LC. Ved is felt to be too regional,
while LC mleko belongs to a special terminological register (Sgall and Hronek 1992: 32).
Nonetheless, the widely used form mliko is not yet recognized even as an alternate by the
1993 Pravidla.
13
Jej appeared in the gen as a hypercorrection; the conservative code had insisted upon it
and it alone as masc inan acc—if correct there, then it was felt to be correct in the gen too,
like ho and jeho. Functionally gen jej (not after preposition) and nej (after preposition) are
asymmetrical: the first is an artificial, now bookish hypercorrection, while the second has
risen from CC to become the basic form in LC. Contrast jemu ~ nemu (emphatic, not after
preposition ~ after preposition), where both forms are neutral and genuine.

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 281

handbooks (Mluvnice cestiny 1986) and the spelling guide Pravidla ceskeho
pravopisu (Gebauer 1926) bear the stamp of official acceptance and
authorization.

3.2 The Role of the Lexicon

Why then have the oblique plural nominal endings (e.g., loc pi -ach and in
particular the instr pi), so long prominent in colloquial usage, remained
unacknowledged in codification? The key issue here seems to be the role
of the lexicon and its functional stylization. All vocabulary is graded on a
continuum ranging from high style/technical/formal on the left to neutral
vocabulary common to all varieties of speech in the center to localisms/
slang/marked colloquial/vulgarisms on the right. In geographical-func
tional terms (Sgall 1981): "literary-standard-sub-standard-interdialectal
dialectal". Czech linguists since Hus have known that grammatical cate
gories such as personal pronouns are universal and closed, while vocabu
lary is unlimited in its size and range and geographically and stylistically
motivated. Thus lidma 'people', a neutral vocabulary item in universal
daily usage, and klukama 'boys', a CC universal item, though colloquial
and nonstandard by virtue of -(a)ma, are in spontaneous speech less
conspicuous than hradama 'castles', a culturally sensitive word, or
neurologama 'neurologists', a technical term; in CC, of course, all of these
14
occur.

3.2.1 The Progressive 1978 Spisovny Slovnfk

One goal of Filipec and Danes's forward-looking

spisovne cestiny (1978) was "that the codification shou
as far as possible, of the living norm of LC and its
ment" (p. 786); that is, it should reflect structures and
accepted usage or colloquial in neutral styles. To th
appended a concise and accurate morphological app
dotaznik 'questionnaire' the student finds the referenc
I); on page 784 he reads the note: "In nouns with co
coloring (esp. diminutives) in velars and esp. suffixes -
in LC alongside -ich also -ach: bryndakach 'baby bibs'.
type without coloration LC still today uses -ich (e.g., c
ending -ach is to be found in these nouns as well in

14

See Bermel (2000: 74-79) for a discussion of degrees of spis

register in the lexicon.

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282 GEORGE M. CUMMINS

note goes on to explain), but in these nouns the form is stylistically

marked and colloquial: chodnicich 'sidewalks (formal)' ~ chodmkach (coll.)
In appellatives in common domestic usage (e.g., hrnek 'mug') the stylisti
marking of -dch may be neutralized, so that hrndch and hrnkdch both occur
(hrndch is more formal). The interplay of part of speech, stem-final
consonant and suffix, as well as lexical register—neutral, colloquial
everyday spoken standard—is presented in this dictionary with clarity
and sophistication.15

3.3 Hierarchies of Lexical Differentiation

There are no such fine discriminations in the case of instr pi -ama, which is
everywhere condemned as nonstandard. Sgall and Hronek (1992: 25-27)
rank se starejma domama 'with old houses' on the level of voboum 'both
(dat)' and vratnejm 'doorman (dat pi)', nonstandard and not approaching
LC codification. Statistical studies of CC (Hammer 1986, Kucera 1955,
1961, 1973, Kravcisinova and Bednarova 1968) put -ama somewhere in the
middle range of frequency, less common, for example, than first pi
conditional bysme or lack of neu agreement in dobry auta 'good cars
(nom/acc)'. Yet all three are examples of grammatical morphemes that are
bookish in LC. Bermel 2000, in his study of the register of literary texts,
(p. 105) ranks dobry auta, panama, 1st pi vedem, 3rd pi pracujou, and masc an
pi dobry hraci all together as "unmarked, unofficial". Just above this
ranking lies "neutral", including 1st sg and 3rd pi muzu, muzou 'I am able,
they are able', 1st sg pracuju 'I work', infinitive net 'say, tell' and nom pi
an lidi 'people'. The group of neutral items has passed into LC as at least
alternates of the older forms; of the "unmarked, unofficial" group, only
vedem, pracujou are recognized. It is notable that, unlike the instr pi with its
salient CC morphology, these "neutral" forms show progressive and
productive morphology that CC has in common with LC, e.g., infinitive in
-t (fict) and masc pi an in -i with palatal substitutive softening (lidi),
allowing a seamless assimilation into LC, vs. the jarringly different
morphology of CC nom pi dobry hraci, instr pi dobrejma panama.

15 Unfortunately, these distinctions proved to be too much. Recent editions of the

dictionary (1998), while retaining the authors' fine print at the end of the book, have dis
creetly eliminated the "T 1" in the heslo as too confusingly linguistic for school children.
A new edition of the 1993 Pravidla (FIN, 2001) offers a note on dotaznik which begs the
question of style and fails to answer the reader's question (What do I say or write here?)
while warning ominously that "in spoken varieties of LC the ending -ach is used more
and more". See this otherwise well-organized, user-friendly, voluble 2001 edition of the
Pravidla, replete with up-to-date morphological information.

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 283

3.3.1 The CC Adjective

CC is a fully developed linguistic structure (utvar) with a phonological

repertoire identical to that of LC, although with differing implementation,
and with a morphology that will serve the future development of the
literary language. Arising from the Central Czech interdialect, CC effaces
salient historical dialectisms while maintaining a fluidity of variation that
comes from its constant interplay with the standard language. Kucera
(1955, 1961) named as the distinctive characteristics of its interplay with
LC vacillation and code switching. The CC adjective, with its vowel-markers
-ej- and raised -e- to -z- (spelled y in the adj, as no softening occurs),
combines two basic features banned since Blahoslav (Cejka et al. 1991)
from LC. Here is the CC adjective paradigm, from Sgall and Hronek (1992:
42).

Table Three. Common Czech Adjective Paradigm.

Masc Neu Fem PI
N dobrej dobry dobra dobry
G dobryho dobryho dobry dobrejch
D dobrymu dobrymu dobry dobrejm
A = Gen or Nom = Nom dobrou = Nom
L dobrym dobrym dobry dobrejch
I dobrym dobrym dobrou dobrejma

The form -ej- is very common in the masc nom sg but is less frequent
before consonants, so that the CC pi endings are more markedly non
standard than the masc sg. No gender exists in the plural: CC has dobry
kluci 'good boys', dobry zeny 'good women', dobry auta 'good cars'.16
Classical Old Czech loc dobr'iem, from an ancient contraction, was re
placed by dobrem by analogy with mem. Raised to -ym, the loc tends to
shorten in CC and merge with the shortened instr -ym (Lamprecht, Slosar,
and Bauer 1986: 188; Sgall and Hronek 1992: 43).

16 In Moravian city speech -ej- is generalized in spoken styles only in the masc sg in place
of traditional Hanak -e-, but the influence of CC is felt more and more in the pi as well.
Masc nom pi gender in adjectives is distinguished as in LC, unlike CC, and the neu adj pi
ending is -e- alongside CC -y/y. The nominal instr pi ending generalizes the vowel a:
stolama 'tables', strojama 'machines'. There is a popular resistance to CC even as it
continues to spread its influence eastward (Krcmova 1981). It is not clear that vacillation
and code mixing is as prevalent in central Moravia, or in Brno, as it is in Prague.

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284 GEORGE M. CUMMINS

3.3.2 Code Mixing in Noun Phrases

Kucera was the first to document the hierarchies of code mixing in noun
phrases. Priznivy okolnosti 'promising circumstances', for LC pfiznive okol
nosti, is less marked (one feature vs. two) than priznivy vokolnosti (wit
prothetic v- as well as the CC ending) and is more natural than the
apparently forced pfiznive vokolnosti, with the LC adjective ending and the
CC prothetic v-. If the root or prefix of a noun contains -ej-, then the
adjective is forced to CC: novej vejsledek 'new result' is CC for LC novy
vysledek, while novy vejsledek, with LC adjective ending and root -ej-, is rare
or impossible.17 The situation is more difficult with instr pi noun phrases,
according to Sgall and Hronek, as the ending, if of masc or neu type, ha
three phonemes to one in LC, adding yet another marked CC feature. Th
CC adjective dobrejma has two other marked features, the theme vowel
and the vowel of the ending. Pure CC masc neu instr pi noun phrases ar
more strikingly different from their LC counterparts than in other
morphological categories: s tema starejma stolama 'with those old tables'
LC s temi starymi stoly.Xi The hierarchy follows the general principles of
Kucera, with extensions (Sgall and Hronek 1992: 37-39). Here is my
analytic restatement of their results:
(1) If CC -ej- is the adj theme, then CC -ma must follow in the ending;
hence dobrejma, not *dobrejmi;
(2) if LC -y- is the adj theme, then either LC -mi or CC -ma may follow
in the ending; that is, both dobrymi and dobryma are permitted.
Rule (2) is a useful compromise as it avoids -ej- and marks CC only in
the vowel -a of the ending. Further, this is the form used in LC with the
old dual instr as in malinkyma rukama 'little hands'. Its presence in th
prestige norm, though restricted, certainly makes it less strikingly col
quial than -ejrna. With its more subtle hint of colloquialism, this form
very common in literature, especially fiction (see 4, below).

17 Cf. the infrequent instr type za tema mlejny in corollary (b) below, with root ej but th
LC ending; the adjective, indeed, must be CC.
18 Sgall's example s tenia starochetitskejma textama 'with those Old Hittite texts' showed
that mixing occurred in technical language among linguists. This mixing has occurred fo
over a century in Prague Czech, and the notion maddened Havranek (Belie, Havranek
and Jedlicka 1962), who asserted that Travnicek did not deny the reality of mixing b
frowned on it as a snobbism (112) and that "fifty years ago professors Smetanek and
Kadner mixed levels, and it had a nihilistic effect on the students.... We welcome the
contributions of young linguists", the polemic continues, "even though they often act li
the discoverers of unknown continents, and though they do not see well enough t
work that has been done and is now going on".

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 285

Next,
(3) if dobryma is chosen, it is permissible to use the LC noun instr pi,
dobryma stoly so that only the single desinential -a remains as a delicate
functional signal that the utterance is not official high style but something
a touch to the right on the scale.
(4) One may choose to combine dobryma with the CC noun ending,
dobryma stolama. This adds two new CC features and is only one step away
from full CC dobrejma stolama.
As corollaries, note that
(a) if the adjective is fully LC, the noun must follow with LC; only
dobrymi stoly is allowed, not *dobrymi stolama;
(b) divergent or peculiar noun phrases are occasionally to be heard, for
example, fully CC adjective with LC noun: dobrejma stoly, pod starejma
mosty 'under the old bridges', za tema mlejny 'behind those mills' (see Sgall
and Hronek 1992: 107).
These structures apparently seek to avoid the two-syllable noun
ending with its repeated -a. These complexities, needless to say, are
difficult for many speakers. Also difficult are the LC forms dvema, obetna
'two, both (dat instr)', which as instr combine with LC adjectives in -ymi,
and the LC instr forms usima, ocima, rukama, nohama 'ears, eyes, arms,
legs', which take modifiers in -yma as in (4) above. The numerals dvema,
obema have CC -ma but a non-CC lexical marker; adjectives with them are
fully LC -ymi.'9

Table Four. Instr PI Noun Phrases, CC and LC.

Code CC features

dobrymi stoly LC none

lidma CC -ma; item very frequent across styles

zenama CC -ma; neutral item, fem permits -ama
easily in place of LC -ami
dobryma stoly CC, LC -ma; colloquial flavor, frequent; this so
called compromise form has adj theme y
dobrejma stoly CC, LC theme ej, -ma; nonstandard, less frequent
dobryma stolama CC, LC adj -ma, noun -ama; nonstandard; the adj
has the compromise y, while the noun is
fully CC

19 v
LC has s dvema prateli
ucho has an extended m

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286 GEORGE M. CUMMINS

Code CC features

dobrejma stolama CC adj theme ej, -ma; noun -ama; non

standard, fully CC in four vowels
za tema mlejny CC, LC adj -ma, noun root ej with LC -y; rarer
*dobrejmi CC theme, LC -mi; does not occur
*dobrymi stolama LC adj, CC -ama-, does not occur
*dobrymi lidma, LC adj, CC -ma; does not occur
zenama

3.3.3 Mixing of LC and CC Morphology and Phonology

There is no other nominal morphology like that of the instr pi; it is unique.
Kucera's original claim was that, as a rule, CC morphology plus LC
phonology was permitted, but not the reverse—that is, LC morphology
and CC phonology. Among his examples were *bejti 'to be' ~ byti, bejt, byt,
*votekou 'they swell' ~ otekou, votecou, otecou. But, as Bermel (2000: 38^40)
points out, the LC morphology in these cases is very archaic. There seems
to be no situation as complex as the instr pi, where theme vowel and case
vowel are both morphological markers, and the modifier is typically
followed by a noun. Very close to acceptability are forms like lidma and
zenama, which differ from LC by only a single vowel in the case-marker.
Remote from acceptability and bearing a very strong nonstandard flavor
are noun phrases like dobrejma stolama. The reason for this seems clear:
popular V-ma has always been denied literary status despite its grounding
in the spoken language. Compromise noun phrases like dobryma stoly are
analogous to lidma and zenama; they differ from LC by one vowel.

3.4 The Possessive Adjective muj

The possessives muj, tvuj, svuj have numerous uncontracted forms

crossing over between LC and CC and present an interesting pattern of
variation in register that is pertinent to the problem of the instr. Fem and
neu nom sg have, respectively, LC and CC ma ~ moje, me ~ moje. Masc neu
obliques mojeho, mojemu are frequent in CC but are markedly colloquial,
while fem obliques moji (~ bookish me) and acc moji (~ older standard mow)
are neutral and have actually reached LC. The colloquial contracted forms
myho, mymu, though not codified because of the raised vowel, are more
neutral and acceptable in a wider range of styles than the uncontracted
forms and are analogous in acceptability to instr dobryma. Oblique fems

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 287

me, tve, sve have a bookish feel; CC has the variants my, tvy, svy, with non
LC raising. Thus for fem oblique we have the markings: me 'formal,
bookish', my 'colloquial, nonstandard', and moji 'standard, neutral'. (Here
again colloquial -y is refused entrance to LC, while -i, a soft desinence in
many nominal patterns, is permitted.) The direct pi moje in place of masc
inan and fem me, and moji in place of contracted masc an mi are also LC
and good neutral style. Neu pi direct ma is bookish as there are no pi
gender distinctions in CC, and moje may be used in both styles. The
oblique pi in CC has uncontracted gen loc and dat mojich mojim, as well as
three possibilities in the instr pi, mojima, mojema, and myma. These three
forms are all non-LC; myma, like myho, mymu, has the compromise shape
of the attributive adjective dobryma and so is widely used across styles.

3.5 Sociolinguistic Factors

Statistical studies of spoken varieties of Czech have yet to determine

precisely how these forms occur. Statistics alone, as pointed out by Sgall
and Hronek (1992: 17), are not transparent, however, as the interplay of
both functional and geographical differences among speakers to a large
extent influences functional register. A Moravian may feel a social
pressure to hide his origin in the cloak of LC forms, while a CC speaker
from E or NE Bohemia, depending on the speech situation, may or may
not feel a need to suppress localisms such as dat loc tatoj 'daddy' for LC
and CC tdtovi. The speaker may use one or another form of the CC
indeclinable possessive adjective bratruv klobouk or bratrovo klobouk 'my
brother's hat'. CC usage itself varies in register and geographical
influence. 3rd pi prosi 'they ask' alternates with prosej in Bohemia, but
prosi jo, sedijo, mluvijo are heard in everyday Brno speech. These
Moravianisms are consciously felt to be non-LC, as are other features,
many of them common to CC (prothetic v-, -ej in masc sg, raising in nom
acc pi dobry). Others are local (masc nom sg dobre, root o < ou as in kofijo
'they are smoking').20

20
The morphology of possessive adjectives in street names such as Helfertova 'Helfert
Street' vs. street names in appellatives like Kfenova has been reversed in local Brno
speech, so that the former declines like an attributive adjective and the latter in direct
cases like the possessive: na Helfertove, 'on Helfert Street', preset jsem Kfenovu 'I crossed
Kfenova Street'. For many speakers these forms cannot be easily distinguished from LC.
See Cummins 1993.

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288 GEORGE M. CUMMINS

3.6 Register Factors

As Czech linguists have long recognized, the lexicon is central to func

tional register. Bookish vocabulary and progressive morphology mix les
well, while neutral CC vocabulary makes a better fit; substandard or ob
scene vocabulary mixes poorly—or with comic or ironic effect—with con
servative morphology. A lawyer arguing in court may say tazi se vas, pane
doktore 'I ask you, doctor', with bookish tdzat se and 1st sg -z, but not when
she is at home questioning her son, unless she is being sarcastic. Some
lexemes have a slight bookish flavor, e.g., stale 'continually, all the time'
while pofad, with the same meaning, belongs to both LC and CC and fur
is CC only. The same continuum may be found in chory 'ill' - nemocny ~
marod. There are many natural gaps, on the one hand, in technical vocabu
lary and in vocabulary associated with the public realm where CC has n
equivalent, and, on the other, in words with emotional colorations or
patently local or slang origins which are lacking in LC, e.g., zvorat 'foul up,
botch' with prothetic v- (a word which Sgall and Hronek 1992 cannot
imagine without v) ~ organizace 'organization', where vorganizace would be
deliberately ironic. In grammatical lexemes such as the personal pronoun
v- is normal in CC and prohibited in LC; here, too, there is variation.

3.7 Discourse Factors

Recent studies of discourse theory find that the communicative situation

with its generalized scales of high style/public/official ~ intimate/
emotional is inadequate to account for the manifold complexities of code
switching. Bermel (2001a: 19), in a study of the penetration of CC into
novels of the 1990s, finds that varying discourse factors and structures,
such as direct ~ indirect speech, change of participant, parentheticals,
reiteration, activity type, topic shift, puns, word play, and topicalization
all play a role in code switching or mixing (see also Auer 1995).21

4. A Note on the Instr PI in Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude

Recent studies of CC ~ LC in current fiction (e.g., Gammelgaard 1997,

Bermel 2001a) have advanced our understanding of code switching. It
must be borne in mind that prose fiction, including the colloquial realism
of Josef Skvorecky, a master of CC whose elaborate and sustained

21 Fidlerova 2001 shows that modification of addressee relation, entity properties, and
reference define the hierarchy of power relations between interlocutors.

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 289

dialogues mirror NE Bohemian interdialect as well as Prague speech,

presents an artificial stylization of linguistic reality that intentionally
distorts and deforms the writer's conscious conception of his speech.
Czech presses every year produce masses of light fiction in translation; CC
is typically the spoken medium of servants, lower class or secondary
characters, the villain and his collaborators, cameo voices, speakers of
English country dialects, and television Indians. The overwhelming
majority of written text is invariably LC. This is a gross distortion of the
reality of CC ~ LC, especially in its Prague manifestation, where a
technician might speak more LC than a writer, and both in interaction will
mix codes. Bermel finds that "literary texts do not necessarily reproduce
the hierarchies of usage found in speech, even when they are meant to be
taken as representations of speech" (Bermel 2000: 53-54). There is a "sharp
discrepancy between real-life frequency and aesthetic value of forms"
(p. 60), and "novelistic dialogue promotes certain features and demotes
others" (p. 56). The Czech novel reader willingly uses his or her
imagination to project written CC in a villain's speech onto the illusionary
verbal world of the translation. In the national literature this illusion is
maintained, as it is in television and radio shows, where the villains use -
ej-, -y-, v-, and, indeed, CC instr pi forms in abundance. Most recent
studies of CC agree, however, that a speaker—not a stereotyped villain,
hero, intellectual, or saint, but a real speaker—will often shift from one
code to another, depending on the situation and discourse motivation,
often in mid-utterance. The cause of the shift may be conscious, that is, a
striving for emotional or expressive coloration, but it may accompany or
facilitate an unconscious shift in utterance dynamics, e.g., a move to
quoted speech or topic shift. More and more of this sort of true functional
representation of CC ~ LC is appearing in contemporary Czech fiction.23
22
One motivation for this is mere readability, as it is in many national literatures.
Cummins 1994 showed that in Twain's Huckleberry Finn the speech of the black slave Jim
is given with careful phonetic precision, while that of the narrator, the boy Huck, sup
presses all phonetic localisms and maintains the loose colloquial syntax of the speaker. If
the book were written in Jim's phonetic transcription the reader would soon tire. It was
obvious to Twain that the phonology of both speakers was very close, closer than today's
Black American Vernacular to educated white Southern city speech. Twain reverses the
negative stamp spoken speech carries in literature by making Jim the moral hero of the
novel.
23
Contemporary fiction more and more uses CC as a discourse-functional device. Con
sider the comic conversation between the child intellectual Kvido and the postal official
in Michal Viewegh's Bdjecnd leta pod psa (Those Marvelous Crummy Years). Dialogues in
this book are in LC; CC on all levels, morphosyntactic and lexical, is used only with dis
course function, typically in strongly emotionally scenes. Kvido's family has received a
telegram notifying them of his grandfather's death days after the event; the smug postal

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290 ceorge M. Cummins

4.1 Hrabal's Prflis hlucna samota (Too Loud a Solitude)

The literary expression of colloquial language is an intimate matter

taste and style. Bohumil Hrabal in his long career developed a dithyr
bic prose style often couched in apparently normal-looking LC, but
rated with lexical colloquialisms, technical slang, dialectisms, and n
gisms, so that the veneer of LC is only a cloak. His masterpiece no
Pfilis hlucnd samota (Too Loud a Solitude), a companion piece to Nezny bar
(The Tender Barbarian), is narrated by the Prague press operator Ha
who has spent his life studying the classical literature he has been hired
shred for recycling in his dim cellar. Hant'a is a typical Hrabal autod
who wanders about Prague pondering the physical and mechan
realities that have brought him the intoxicating ideas of Kant, Sartre, an
Aristotle. In his first sentence the narrator states his theme: tficet pet
pracuji ve starem papife a to je moje love story 'I have been working in o
paper for thirty-five years and this is my love story'. The third and fin
version of the novella, according to the editor of the 2001 reprint
"written in prose in literary language", which is correct only in regard
spelling and, generally, morphology. CC is used only in a few direct
quotations (see p. 35, or p. 63). In one case, p. 24, there occur the CC for
umeju, umejvam 'I wash' (in narration); in one other isolated cas
narration, p. 27, there is the CC raising kterymu 'to whom'. Other
throughout the full 73 pages of the novella there are no phonologic
morphological CC forms, with the striking exception of the instr p
approximately 30 forms Hrabal writes CC instr pis, while in the remain
instr pis—more than 94% of the total—the endings are LC. It is pos
that the CC forms are the author's oversights, left over from at least t
earlier versions, but as Hrabal was a meticulous craftsman, we can t
this to be a deliberate stylization.

4.2 Instr pi forms in Prflis hlucna samota

Let me briefly examine some of the forms. Seven are from the nouns p
'fingers', rty 'lips', pacicky 'paws, hands (coll.)', which Hrabal treat
duals like LC ruce, nohy, oci, usi. His eccentric instr pis for prsty and rt
prstoma, rtoma: dotykdm se nakonec mokryma rtoma kolena 'I finally touch m

official, driven at last to exasperation by Kvido's expressive complaints, loses his d

and switches to coarse CC: "Now the lowest of door attendants wants to complain, is
a matter of course? Nebo jeho pfemoudrelej spratek?! Koukej vypadnout!" 'Or his wis
whippersnapper of a kid? Get the hell out of here!' (Michal Viewegh, Bdjecna leta p
[Brno: Nakladatelstvi Petrov, 1997], chapter 8.1, p. 166).

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 291

knees with my wet lips'.24 Note that the modifier has y and not ej (see 3.3.2
above), and is thus less marked. These forms go together with Hrabal's
vast colloquial and technical vocabulary, e.g., sacovat se 'search one's
pockets', kvelb 'closet, shop, vaulted room', kanalpucr 'sewer worker',
stamp/ 'printed material for recycling', kofdni 'roots', loktuse 'kerchief'.
They lend a breath of colloquiality without violating LC spelling as do -ej
and v-. On the third page of the text is the first CC instr pi, this time with
vowel -ej-. Hant'a has prepared a child's coffin for some of his special
literary finds. The coffin is zasypan[d] zvadlejma kvetinama, tfepenhn staniolu,
andelskymi vlasy 'sprinkled with dried flowers, tinfoil worn at the fringes,
angel hair'. The first instr pi noun phrase is fully CC and carries an
emotional charge—this is a coffin for his great love, his favorite books—
while the second returns to full LC, avoiding the repetition of -ejma, -ama.
Two pages later, p. 14, we learn of a fresh delivery of old leather-bound
books, which delights the narrator: vzduch se tfpytil zlatyma ofizkama a
napisy 'the air sparkled with gilt paper edging and inscriptions', and very
soon again the truck arrives with a second load of books se zlatyma
ofizkama a napisama. Hant'a is beside himself with delight. Note that
napisama has no modifier and the vowel a is repeated in a Hrabalian poetic
intonation with just the right rhythmic effect. On p. 17, we learn that cellar
mice have been inadvertently caught by the press with the paper. The
baby mice crawl into Hant'a's clothes and crawl out when he is outside.
Stena koryta hrne ... osudove vsechen papir i s myskama do stresove situace ... ja
nekdy ztratim kontrolu nad myskama, jdu v hluboke meditaci pro pivo 'the wall
of the trough ... fatally gathers all the paper together with the mice into a
situation of stress ... sometimes I lose track of the mice and go off in deep
meditation to get beer'. On his strolls he finds two Gypsy girls in tur
quoise and satin red skirts delightedly posing for a Gypsy photographer
with a camera but no film; on another occasion the girls are so proud to
see a Gypsy directing traffic at a busy intersection that cikanky tema suk
nema lestily sluzebni zaprdsene boty 'the Gypsies polished his dusty service
shoes with those skirts' (p. 32). The narrator is moved by this scene and by
the Gypsy girls. Elsewhere he tells how a Gypsy girl, "the love of my
youth", came to stay for some months with him, wearing one and the
same bespattered work skirt from the store. Later Hant'a was to learn that
she perished in the camps at the end of the war. Tema suknema is a concen
trated metonymic image that has emotional meaning for Hant'a. Indeed,

24
These forms are identical to the original Old Czech dat instr dual, hard pattern: chlap
'serf', nom acc voc chlapy, gen loc chlapu, dat instr chlapoma, neu mesto 'place', meste,
mestu, mestoma.

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292 GEORGE M. CUMMINS

this is another "love story", a brief moment in his life when the loud soli
tude of his life is broken, so to say, by the silence of intimacy with another
The CC instr pi in modifier and noun is a mark of its thematic importance
and intimacy. One day Hant'a discovers the massive press that will de
stroy him and his cellar meditations, "a machine like the great altar in St.
Nicholas' in the Little Quarter", surrounded by workers with America
baseball caps with visors and yellow and orange gloves. They laugh
(affectionately, he thought at first), a tfasli do vzduchu zlutyma a oranzovym
rukavicema 'and shook into the air their yellow and orange gloves' (p. 5
The text continues: "I held my head and went down the long hall, heari
laughter in all tonalities, from which I fled down a hallway lined wit
thousands of packages of books". The instr marks his reaction—surpris
dumbfounded amazement, irony, and later, bitterness—and is the mor
effective as it is the first CC instr pi to appear (except for the old dual form
prstoma, which is not normal CC) in 13 pages of text.
Other examples do not encapsulate the central themes of Hant'a
narrative—his passion for his recycled books and the memories of pa
loves—nor are they associated with moments of high emotional conten
as with the workers' orange and yellow gloves. Rather, they are associated
with colloquial or everyday vocabulary and are scattered here and ther
among the preponderance of standard LC forms in the text: p. 21 jse
chodil za klukama 'I went to see the boys', kamaradil s kanalpucrama 'made
friends with the sewer workers', p. 22 pod mytna botama fincely ostre zoubk
krys 'under my shoes clattered the sharp little rats' teeth', p. 62
myslenkama nekde jinde 'he is thinking of something else' (but three lines o
p. 65 LC se vsemi mymi myslenkami 'with all my thoughts'). Colloqu
morphology associated with neutral vocabulary—in the context of LC
morphology—is yet another narrative and thematic focusing agent,
minding the reader that Hant'a's spiritual life in his books and ideas
passionately lived and felt though it is, must ultimately be shaped by t
inscrutable physical reality in which it is anchored.
It is not likely that these forms in aggregate represent mechanical slip
that crept into the text in the developmental history of the early draf
Rather, they are deliberate, consciously literary functional devices th
Hrabal uses in ways analogous to the penetration of CC into qua
colloquial, quasi-formal LC in many varieties of spontaneous pub
utterances.

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 LITERARY CZECH, COMMON CZECH, AND THE INSTRUMENTAL PLURAL 293

5. Conclusion

I have shown that nominal instr pis in -ejma, -a(e)ma (-mi,-ami) have been
established in spoken Czech for at least five hundred years. Classical Old
Czech texts from the fourteenth century show vacillations in the masc neu
hard and soft types, with the older yli gradually receding in favor of
-(V)mi, while -(V)ma is to be found from the seventeenth century and was
recorded by Rosa, who in his 1672 grammar granted literary status to both
yli and -ami, -ama. The founder of modern Czech schoolbook norms, Jan
Gebauer, acknowledged the widespread neu pi forms kolam, koldch, kolatni
but did not suggest their codification. The second generation of Revi
valists followed Blahoslav's biblical usage, outlawing progressive features
from Central Czech, including the instr pi.
Instr pi noun phrases (modifier plus noun) are among the most
marked in CC morphology, as they have both non-LC theme vowels and a
non-LC case-marking vowel. Nonetheless, they are fully established in al
supraregional spoken forms of Czech, Common Czech of Bohemia,
Moravian interdialects, and Lach. Unlike one-dimensional morphological
markings such as the loc pi in -dch in velar stems, they cannot be
recognized in LC. In code mixing or code switching these forms make
their way into formal varieties of LC with marked discourse function, e.g.,
emphasis, topic change, parenthesis, quoted speech, emotive coloration
and the like. Although the instr pi forms do not stand as high on the
statistical scale of CC as do ej, raised y, prothetic v-, or other newly
accepted or high-style colloquial morphology such as do trech 'until three',
pracujou 'they work (3rd pi)', they appear in mixed utterances. Lexical
register plays a major role: lidma 'people' has been nominated for LC
codification, while politologama 'political scientists' has not. Syllable count
and salient difference from LC forms can also play a role, as in pdnama
'gentlemen'- LC party. Multiple markings in instr pi noun phrases form
unique and discrete functional hierarchy that was noted in 1955 and 1961
by the emigre linguist Henry Kucera. Thus fully CC noun phrases such as
dobrejma stolama have CC theme vowel(s) and morphology, while so-called
compromise phrases, like dobryma stolama and dobryma stoly (especially the
latter) have only a flavor of nonprestige style. It is known that the inter
penetration of codes in the instr pi is constrained by rules first discovered
by Kucera. CC theme vowels may not combine with LC morphology
(*dobrejmi); an LC modifier may not combine with a fully CC noun
(*dobrymi stolama). Phrases with CC adjective and LC mixed noun, though
rare, can be heard, such as za tema mlejny.

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294 GEORGE M. CUMMINS

5.1 Instr pi in Literary Texts

In literary prose as in spoken styles, forms like ndma, vcima 'we, you' for
LC nami, varni lend a hint of relaxed style. Noun phrases such as tema
malyma (~ malejma) zenama are more colloquial, while s tenia zatracenejm
faganama 'with those blasted little brats' is very marked. The range of
expressivity in the colloquial instr pi, whose natural home will always
have to remain nonstandard style, is unparalleled in morphological
categories.
More and more Czech literature uses CC functionally rather than
cosmetically (section 4). In Pfilis hlucna samota Hrabal chooses the instr pi
as his only morphological instrument of nonstandard style. He exploits
the marking of the instr from slightly nonprestige to fully CC: zlutyma a
oranzovyma rukavicema ~ zasypan[a] zvadlejma kvetinama, alternating and
mixing styles for rhythmic poetic effect: zlatyma orizkama a napisy ~ zlatyma
ofizkama a napisama. Two items from everyday vocabulary appear exclu
sively in Hrabal's eccentric old dual instr, different from both LC and CC:
prstoma, rtorna. The phenomenon in Hrabal is a case of deliberate literary
code mixing rather than stereotyped stylistic coloration. No other feature
of CC morphology or phonology is to be found. The instr pi is often
associated with central themes and images or moments of crisis in Hant'a's
life. Hrabal uses the salient expressivity of this feature—which has no
parallel in his text—to draw the reader's imagination into Hant'a's
immediate physical world: pod myma botama fincely ostre zoubky krys 'under
my shoes clattered the sharp little rats' teeth'. The selective, deliberate,
and functional mixing of codes is more and more to be found in
contemporary Czech literature.

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Department of Germanic and Slavic Received: November 2001

Languages Revised: November 2004
305 Newcomb Hall

Tulane University
New Orleans, Louisiana 70118
gcummiris@tulane.edu

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