Discussion Post 10: Linguistic Study of Slovak Morphology

[Emma Hoholik]

If I received a research grant, I would like to study the origins of Slovak morphology and how/why it broke off from other similar languages like Polish, Sorbian, and Czech. I would especially be interested in exploring the diversions between Czech and Slovak. One of the most difficult issues in conducting this research would be tracking Slovak back into history. Most records of written Slovak language only begin in the late 18^th century to the early 19^th century. Alternatively, records of written Czech language date as far back as the 12^th century. Luckily, these two languages (Slovak and Czech) first surfaced as the same language in the late Medieval period before splitting off from each other. Despite these difficulties, I would first want to gather data from different Slovak, Czech, Polish, and Sorbian speakers from different regions of the country. As this is a hypothetical situation, I would travel to several different cities in each country to account for different dialects. For example, Slovak has four major dialects to observe: Eastern, Western, Central, and Lowland. In each city, I would present a set of twenty common words to compare the differences and similarities for each language and each dialect. After collecting this data, I would want to access the earliest available written texts for each of these languages to check for similarities and differences. I will compare written text from roughly the late Medieval period to the current day with my survey results in order to understand the changes in Slovak morphology.