A comparative study of palatalisation alternation systems in West Slavic languages

The thesis studies palatalisation alternations of the reflexes of Proto-Slavic velars and alveolars at morpheme boundaries in the three standardised West Slavic languages, namely Polish, Czech and Slovak. It presents the historical evolution of individual palatalising sound changes whose reflexes became the basis of these alternations. It identifies endings and suffixes which trigger different types of alternations and classifies the, into three groups (first palatalisation of velar + palatalisation of alveolars, second palatalisation of velars + palatalisation of alveolars, iotation). Endings and suffixes are selected from each group and are studied for deletion or preservation of alternation before them with the corpus tool Morfio. It further analyses the results and comments on them, providing reasoning for divergence from the historical system. In the end, it summarises the findings and asks for the application of the suggested classification of suffixes and endings according to the type of alternation together with exceptions in order to teach the respective features.