Main Principles of The Czech Word Order
The Czech word order is said to be free. This means that the individual parts of a sentence need not necessarily be placed in a firmly given sequence. The word order is very flexible and it allows many variants of messages. It is enabled by the fact that the syntactic relations are indicated by inflection forms (declension and conjugation) in Czech.
The free word order is not arbitrary at all. It must respect logical relations between words and some other principles. Constructions which enable two or more interpretations should be avoided. The speakers choose the word order according to the communication aim and the emotional state. This principle is called functional sentence perspective.
The basic word order is SVO (subject – verb – object) in Czech sentences. It is used in neutral messages:
- Petr má nové auto. – Peter has (got) a new car.
- (Peter (S) has (V) new car (O).)
Notice that definite and indefinite articles are not used in Czech.
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