Chapter 8

Pseudo-coordination of the verb jít (‘go’) in contemporary Czech

This chapter investigates the use of the verb jít (‘go’) in two construction types in the Czech language; they have in common a binary coordinative structure where the verb jít is coordinated with any other verb with the coordinator a (‘and’). These constructions are prototypical coordination (ProCo) and pseudo-coordination (PseCo). The main claim is that even though these two types share the same surface structure jít-a-V2, they represent distinct phenomena.

The resolution criteria are based on a two-part analysis. First, PseCo is analysed as a complex predicate. This analysis immediately accounts for a number of properties of PseCo compared to ProCo. Second, the formal features of the construction are linked to its semantic structure: PseCo expresses aktionsart via coordination over sub-stages of events.

I argue that ProCo is a biclausal structure coordinating two separate events, while PseCo coordinates two verbs into one complex predicate and the coordinator a (‘and’) serves for a coordination of sub-stages of this combined event. It appears that the first verb expresses the preparatory phase for the activity denoted by the second verb. The pseudo-coordinative verb in the first conjunct lexicalises a manner component in the internal event structure. The verb ‘go’ is desemanticized and instead of the meaning of physical motion expresses dynamic aspects of the second event.

This research is based on 1611 examples from the Czech National Corpus, subcorpus SYN2005, from which 923 examples are analysed as ProCo and 668 as PseCo.