The asymmetric overabundance of synthetic and analytic imperfective future forms in contemporary Czech

Abstract This study focuses on synthetic and analytic future forms of imperfective verbs in Czech, a highly inflecting West Slavic language. The two types of imperfective future forms represent a phenomenon at the intersection between overabundance (two forms occupying the same paradigm cell) and inflectional periphrasis (one of the forms is periphrastic). Using data from representative linguistic corpora of contemporary written Czech, the paper studies the ability of Czech imperfective verbs to form the synthetic and/or analytic future forms, the relationship between each type of future form and the lexical meaning expressed by the verbs, and factors that might influence the existence and usage of each of the future forms. The results show that Czech imperfective verbs are organised along a spectrum: from verbs with the analytic future form only, through verbs that have both forms, to a very small group with the synthetic form only. Verbs with overabundance in future forms are not a unified group but use each of the forms to different degrees. The lexical meaning and frequency of use of the verbs are important influencing factors: Verbs that have both future forms tend to use the synthetic form to express physical motion and the analytic form for more abstract meanings. The synthetic future form of frequently used verbs is less prone to changes.