Czech word order - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Czech word order is relatively free. However, the Czech language

Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

belongs to the SVO type.

Main principles of the Czech word order

The Czech word order

Word order

In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...

is said to be free. This means that the individual parts of a sentence need not necessarily be placed in a firmly given sequence. The word order is very flexible and it allows many variants of messages. It is enabled by the fact that the syntactic relations are indicated by inflection forms (declension

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

and conjugation

Grammatical conjugation

In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...

) in Czech.

The free word order is not arbitrary at all. It must respect logical relations between words and some other principles. Constructions which enable two or more interpretations should be avoided. The speakers choose the word order according to the communication aim and the emotional state. This principle is called functional sentence perspective.

The basic word order is SVO (subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...

– verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

– object

Object (grammar)

An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...

) in Czech sentences. It is used in neutral messages:

Petr má nové auto. – Peter has (got) a new car. has (V) new car (O).)

Notice that definite and indefinite articles

Article (grammar)

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...

are not used in Czech.

Objective word order

A sentence usually begins with facts which are already known from a preceding sentence or context (theme). New and important facts (rheme) are usually placed in the final position. Compare:

Včera zemřel známý herec. – A famous actor died yesterday. (An announcement of a death of a person – who died?)

(Yesterday died (V) famous actor (S).)

(Ten) známý herec zemřel včera. – The famous actor died yesterday. (When did he die?)

((The) famous actor (S) died (V) yesterday.)

Byl jednou jeden král a ten král měl tři dcery. – Once upon a time there lived a king and the king had three daughters.

(Was (V) once one king (S) and the king (S) had (V) three daughters (O).)

Subjective word order

The rheme can be emphasized by the initial placement in emotive messages:

Tisíc korun jsem utratil za takovou hloupost! – I spent one thousand crowns for such a stupid thing!

(Thousand crowns (O) (null-S) am (aux. verb) spent (V) for such stupidity!)

Null-subject sentences

The subject

Subject (grammar)

need not be expressed in the Czech sentence if known from context because the categories of grammatical person

Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...

and number

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

are expressed by the verb conjugation forms:

Mám auto. = Já mám auto. – I have (got) a car.

((null-S) Have (V) car (O). = I (S) have (V) car (O).)

Máš auto. = Ty máš auto. – You have (got) a car.

((null-S) Have (V) car (O). = You (S) have (V) car (O).)

Personal pronoun

Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...

s as a subject are used seldom in literary styles. They are more frequent in colloquial styles.

Questions

The inversed word order (VSO) is often used for the question formation, but not always. The questions are primarily indicated by prosodic

Prosody (linguistics)

In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...

means, especially by the intonation

Intonation (linguistics)

In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...

, in speech, resp. by the question mark (?) in the script. Examples:

Petr nemá nové auto. – Peter hasn’t got a new car.
Petr nemá nové auto? – Hasn’t Peter got a new car?

(Peter (S) not has (V) new car (O) (?))

Attribute

The position of the noun attribute depends primarily on the fact whether it is in grammatical accordance with the superior noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

or not.

Attributive adjectives

Attributive adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s are usually prepositive, i.e. they precede superior nouns. The case

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...

and the number of the adjective and the noun are always in the grammatical accordance, i.e. the adjective is declined together with the noun:

a new car: nové auto (nom.
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...

), nového auta (gen.
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

), novému autu (dat.
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....

), etc.

In some special cases the adjective can be placed after the noun – e.g. in the scientific terminology, names of historical persons, listings, for the emphasis, etc.:

kyselina sírová (acid (noun) sulphuric (adj.)) – sulphuric acid, meduňka lékařská – lemon balm (Melissa officinalis)
Karel IV. (Čtvrtý) – Charles IV
Prodáváme dřevo smrkové, borové a lipové. – We sell spruce, pine and linden wood.

((null-S) Sell (V) wood (O) spruce (adj.), pine (adj.) and linden (adj.).)

Complex constructions are also usually postpositive:

hodiny řízené rádiem – radio-controlled clock

(clock controlled radio (instr.

Instrumental case

The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...

))

In declension:

Genitive: hodin řízených rádiem
Dative: hodinám řízeným rádiem

etc.

Notice that "rádiem" remains in the instrumental form, it evolves the adjective here, not the noun.

A further order inversion can occur, maybe due to the English pattern:

rádiem řízené hodiny

However, such word order is not natural for Czech and can sometimes cause confusion or lower the comprehensibility.

Appositional adjuncts

Attributes that are not in the grammatical accordance with the superior nouns are usually postpositional, i.e. they are placed after the noun. Such attributes keep their grammatical form regardless of the noun declension:

časování sloves – verb conjugation, conjugation of verbs

(conjugation verbs (gen. pl.

Plural

In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

))

cestování vlakem – travelling by train

(travelling train (instr.))

Clitics

Unstressed words form stress

Stress (linguistics)

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...

units with preceding stressed words. These are clitic

Clitic

In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...

s. For rhythmical reasons, they can never be the first words in sentences. They usually have the second position after the first part of a sentence. If more than one clitic occurs in a sentence, the order is the following:

the conjunction
Grammatical conjunction
In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. A discourse connective is a conjunction joining sentences. This definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each...

-li (if) – used predominantly in literal styles
auxiliary verbs in preterite
Preterite
The preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past...

(past tense) – jsem, jsi, jsme, jste; and conditional
Conditional mood
In linguistics, the conditional mood is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances...

s – bych, bys, by, bychom, byste
short form of the reflexive pronoun – si, se
short forms of personal pronouns in dative – mi, ti, mu,
short forms of personal pronouns in accusative – mě, tě, ho, tu, to

Examples:

Prohlížel jsem si ho. – I was looking at him. (I was studying him.)

((null-S) looked (V) at (aux. verb) myself (dat.) him (accus.).)

or:

Já jsem si ho prohlížel. – I was looking at him.

(I (S) am (aux. verb) myself (dat.) him (accus.) looked (V).)

Budeš-li se pilně učit … - If you learn (study) hard …

((null-S) Will (aux. verb) if yourself (accus.) diligently learn (V).)