Some Syntactic Features of the Spoken Czech Language of L1-Russian Speakers

This article is devoted to the spoken Czech syntax of Russian-language native speakers. The research is based on oral material which was collected during a study concerned with the L2-acquisition of Czech by L1-Russian speakers in a Czech environment. Much attention is given to the question whether the spoken Czech syntax of L1-Russian speakers is characterized by the same features as that of L1-Czech speakers. An overview of the general characteristics of spoken Czech syntax is followed by a detailed analysis of one specific feature in which the spoken Czech syntax of L1-Russian speakers differs from that of L1-Czech: the specific employment of free word order. Another phenomenon analyzed in this article is the frequency and usage of demonstrative pronouns in the spoken Czech of L1-Russian speakers. This is of interest because the increased frequency of demonstratives is a typical feature of spoken L1-Czech that is not present in spoken L1-Russian. Based on these analyses, the purpose of the article is to give a picture of the syntactical differences between the spoken Czech of L1-Czech and that of L1-Russian speakers, and to describe the demonstrative pronouns in spoken Czech as one such case. It discusses the correlation between the frequency of use of a demonstrative pronoun and the number of errors in this category, and the level of general language competence and the perception of the spoken Czech syntax of L1-Russian speakers, as judged by L1-Czech speakers. The article also deals with a typology of the causes of errors in the use of demonstrative pronouns.