Literary Czech, Common Czech, And the Instrumental Plural‪.‬

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 pl 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 pl 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 morphological 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 coloration but as agents of discourse function. Contemporary writers such as Hrabal in Prilis hlucna samota make selective functional use of colloquial morphology for thematic focus. 1. Introduction