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3.2 Spoken English
Unlike Written English, which is fixed and uniform, Spoken English
requires inexhaustible variety. There are many types of English different from each
other in many aspects such as pronunciation, grammatical forms or names of
common objects. Literary form of English is not able to represent the language as
spoken locally, e.g. in individual British counties. This means that we can find many
varieties of English associated with particular geographical areas; these varieties are
called Regional Dialects. Beside these, there are numerous other varieties of English
which are connected with certain social division or section of the population. The
chief of these is so called Received Standard English, which is supposed to be the
good or well-bred English and which differs from Regional Dialects in many ways.
The most remarkable of these differences is the fact that it is not dependent on any
locality, nor associated with any special geographical area. Rather, it is the product of
social conditions; therefore, it essentially is a Class Dialect. Received Standard
English is spoken all over the UK. Within the group of Class Dialects there exist also
other varieties which more or less resemble Received Standard, but at the same time
differ from it in numerous ways. It is proposed to call these varieties Modified
Standard in order to consider the fact that they all originated from Received
Standard and are variously modified by influence of Regional speech on the one
hand and on the other hand by language of certain social groups (Wyld 2-3).
The forms of Modified Standard may differ slightly from Received
Standard; in that case they are viewed as eccentricities by the speakers of the latter,
whereas other forms differ considerably and in many ways. Consequently, these
forms are regarded as vulgarisms. There are deviations from Received Standard
which occur in speaking of educated people
4
who quite naturally do not make
mistakes in grammar but rather tend to use a type of pronunciation which is strange
to Received Standard. These deviations can be detected in over-careful pronunciation
4 Thereby meaning highly trained, instructed and learned persons. (Wyld 3)
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aimed at correctness
5
or on the contrary in a too careless and slipshod
pronunciation.
6
However, the deviations do not have to be in neither of these
directions, they can simply occur in the form of a difference of sound or the
difference may not have to be connected with pronunciation at all. In fact, it can be
created by the inappropriate use of a word.
7
Moreover, different social grades have
different standards concerning what is or is not appropriate in speech. Thus some
people frequently use words like 'em, ain't or broke, whereas some other would treat
this with disapproval (Wyld 3-4).
Although Received Standard English has its origin in several Regional
types, the modifications of the spoken language which occured during the last two
centuries are results of Class Dialect's influence. There are two kinds among the
forms of Modified Standard - the first of them is modified by some existing Regional
Dialect and the second one seems to be a Class Dialect with no visible influence of
Regional Dialects. The former kind is represented by many varieties and may be
heard in towns such as York, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham etc. The other kind
exists mainly among the more or less educated Middle Class of the South and
especially in the surroundings of London (more or less within fifty miles) and in
London itself (Wyld 4-7).
3.3 Chosen parts of Czech and English grammar
This sub-chapter is aimed at those aspects of Czech and English
grammar which frequently occur in direct speech and also in the texts I am going to
analyse. The source language (Czech) serves as a basis to which the grammar of the
target language (English) is compared. After analysing the texts I chose these
categories which I would like to mention in this sub-chapter: word order, past tenses,
simple sentence, complex and compound sentence.
5 e.g. when t is pronounced in often (Wyld 4)
6 e.g. object is called objic (Wyld 4)
7 "...say of lady or gentleman, or some other simple 'derangement of epithaps'" (Wyld 4)
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3.3.1
Word order
Word order is multi-functional means of language which operates on
several levels. The degree of its use in different languages differs according to their
grammatical structure. Consequently, the function of word order in different
languages differs too (Dušková 518).
In English the word order fulfils primarily grammar level, e.g. the
place which a word takes in the sentence signals its syntactic function. Thus in
indicatives a noun in front of a verb serves as a subject, while a noun after a verb is
an object as in the hunter killed the bear/the hunter killed the bear. One cannot
simply change the position of the subject and the object, because doing so would
completely change the meaning of the sentence. On the contrary, the grammatical
function of word order is secondary in Czech language. It serves here primarily as a
related feature of syntactic dependence which is marked by other means (inflection).
Thus we can say lovec zabil medvěda/medvěda zabil lovec without changing the
meaning (Dušková 518).
Czech word order is typically relatively free, which means that the
position of sentence elements is not strictly prescribed. However, the words cannot
be sequenced arbitrarily since there are some rules which have to be obeyed
(Graciasová 11).
On the other hand, English word order is very strict in comparison to
Czech. The typical word order of English simple sentence follows the S-V-O-A
pattern, i.e. the subject precedes the verb, the object follows the verb and the
adverbial follows the object. In certain cases post-position of the subject can occur,
as in it doesn't matter what I think. If there is a prepositional object in the sentence, it
always follows direct object, e.g. let me say a few word about it. Concerning
adverbial, the adverbial of place is usually placed before the adverbial of time; the
adverbial of manner usually directly follows the verb. In addition, adverbials of time
and place can occur at the beginning of the sentence if they function as setting, e.g.
outside, the light began to fade. Adverbials of frequency (rarely, sometimes etc.) are
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