CALQUES OF GERMAN ORIGIN IN THE CZECH LANGUAGE

Abstract

Contact between speakers of German and Czech and their languages has been carried out for centuries. On the basis of the mentioned relationship, Czech language has developed a great number of elements (Germanism) that serve as evidence for a long-term relationship on the historical, political and other fi elds. In a specifi c way, the eff ects of German (as a language of the
culture that used to be dominante) are testifi ed not only by the loan words, but also by the lexical calque that transmited German formation models into the Czech language. Such a transfer is possible only if it is preceded by the bilingualism. Also, it is usually the result of puristic eff orts to indicate the foreign term in the language or to defend the language from foreign infl uence. The article gives a brief explanation of the calque based on the German-Czech example, survey of Czech puristic tendencies, typology of lexical calque and its topical distribution in the Czech vocabulary and, to conclude with, a few examples of calque in the grammatical system of the Czech language.