ENGLISH AND SLOVAK LANGUAGE SYSTEMS IN CONTACT: SUPRASEGMENTAL LEVEL

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Current state of formation of national and territorial variants of English, known as New Englishes and World Englishes, is caused by the phenomenon of globalization of English in the world. Each of these variants forms a social and communicative system designed to provide communication of its speakers. The term "non-English speakers" defines the category of the speakers who speak and use English but their native language is the other. The need for the term "non-English speakers" is due to the emergence of New Englishes (World Englishes), and is proved by the existence in modern linguistics the terms Native speakers (NS) and Non-native speakers (NNS). Considering the typology of English language variants, the researcher B. Kachru proposed a classification of the variants and the idea of globe separation into three regions of English proficiency ("Kachru Circles"). The first circle, called the Inner circle, includes the countries where English is the native language; the second circle (Outer or Extended circle) includes those countries where English is the second language; third circle (Expanded circle) comprises the countries where English is spoken as a foreign language. B. Kachru suggests that boundaries between these circles are constantly changing in the direction of increasing due to the influence of the English language. A broader perspective has been adopted by D. Crystal, who used in his works a similar scheme to describe the languages and language processes that take place. It is quite natural that the newly created English versions retain the features of the British and American variants, however, each of them has its own cultural and linguistic features.