Verbal Forms Expressing the Past in 14th-Century Czech

Mgr. Jana Zdeňková Slovesné formy pro vyjádření minulosti v češtině 14. století Verbal Forms Expressing the Past in 14th-Century Czech Abstract The topic of the present dissertation is the use of verbal forms for expressing the past in 14th-century Czech. In this period, the Old Czech system of past tenses underwent far- reaching changes: the original Slavic periphrastic perfect was spreading into contexts typical for the past tense, and as a result, the simple past tenses, i.e. the aorist and the imperfect, were gradually disappearing. In the theoretical part of the thesis, we describe the Old Czech verbal forms for expressing the past tense meanings and discuss the ongoing changes not only within Old Czech proper but also in broader typological and areal perspectives. In the analytical part, we present results of a research into the use of past tenses in 14th-century Czech, based on our own collection of nearly four thousand examples from Old Czech texts. In the analysis, we focus on phenomena that testify to the ongoing language change. We deal with the functional distinction between the simple past tenses and the original periphrastic perfect, with specifics of recession of the aorists and imperfects, with distribution of past tenses in relation to the aspect and to certain semantic/functional..