Analytical forms of expressing the category of definiteness / indefiniteness in Slovene non-standard idioms

Abstract

The article focuses on the article-like particle ta in Slovene non-standard varieties, which is used to express the category of definiteness / indefiniteness. We identified the peculiarities of functioning of the article-like particle ta in the contemporary Slovene speech, examined its functions and roles in the sentence. In our study, we relied on the data from the Corpus of the Spoken Slovene Language (GOS), materials of the Interactive Atlas of Dialectal Texts, some texts published in the adapted series “Kmečki glasovi” and in T. Logar’s collection “The Slovene dialects”. The emergence of the article-like particle ta is associated with the need to fill the gap after the loss of the opposition between short and full forms of adjectives. It is an indicator of the analytical way of expressing the category of definiteness / indefiniteness on the morphological level and is widespread in Slovene colloquial non-standard varieties. The particle indicates the familiarity of a certain person or object to the participants in communication and characterizes the object on the semantic level. In combination with ordinal, possessive and demonstrative pronouns, it is also a means to express the additional meaning of certainty. It can also express typicality of a feature. When combined with superlative forms of adjectives, it can emphasize uniqueness and specificity of a feature.