English-based calques in present-day Czech and the invisibility scale

Abstract

The point of departure of the article is a preceding study on calques published in Czech (Klégr, Bozděchová 2022a). After outlining the terminology, definitions and methods of detecting lexical and semantic calques, the article gives an overview of the general properties of English-based lexical and semantic calques attested in Czech – the frequency of their structural patterns, word-class distribution and the semantic relationships between the loaned English sense and the meaning of the Czech word in semantic calques – based on a sample of 1360 calques (1065 lexical and 295 semantic). In the second part, utilizing updated and enlarged samples of calques, and a sample of hybrids, the focus shifts from the central categories to the description of important subcategories of calques: lexical-semantic, abbreviated lexical, multi-word semantic, hybrid, secondary, and echoic calques. The assessment of their status among Anglicisms leads to a tentative proposal for a two-layered taxonomy of Anglicisms and an in/visibility scale from manifest to cryptic Anglicisms.