The Sonority Sequencing Principle in Historical Czech: A Corpus-based Study

Markéta Ziková; Radek Čech; Martin Březina; Pavel Kosek

doi:10.2478/jazcas-2025-0011

Abstract

This paper investigates the application of the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) in historical Czech through a corpus-based approach. Drawing on texts from the 14^th and 17^th centuries, we examine the structure of word-initial and word-final consonant clusters with respect to both the strict and mild versions of the SSP. The results reveal two frequent types of violations: those involving liquids—specific to the diachronic development of Czech—and those involving sibilants, which are common cross-linguistically. Our findings provide new empirical evidence for the study of historical phonotactics in Slavic languages.

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The Sonority Sequencing Principle in Historical Czech: A Corpus-based Study

Abstract

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