We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The author brings up important, from her point of view, problems of the history of language as a linguistic discipline. There are as follows: time and thematic limits, the question of links between historical linguistics and other scientific disciplines (interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, complementarity) and the matters regarding a possibility to apply basic linguistic paradigm in historical research. The reflexion refers also to the method and methodology which are hard to differentiate in this kind of studies.
More...
The typographic era of the Polish language beginned 1521 and 1522. In 1522 „Żywot Pana Jezu Krysta” was published twice in two competitive publishing houses in Cracow. These two editions are the textual basis of the paper. The typographical technology increased the pace of intellectualization of Polish. As result of the process the pace of standardization and graphization of Polish was increased as well. Intellectualization, i.e. increase of the functional efficiency of Polish, should be regarded as the causative predominant feature of gradual transformations of the standard language of that time. Standardization and graphization of Polish should be recognized as subordinate factors towards intellectualization. In beginnings of the typographical era, both complementary effects of intellectualization entered the new phase along with the publication of the first Polish printed books which were addressed to the wide range of readers becoming a good for sale. The analysis of two editions of „Żywot Pana Jezu Krysta” shows that in 1522 there were two diverse so-called particularistic norms, i.e. the diverse catalogues of standard solutions depended on the publishing houses. The hierarchy of the factors presented in the paper should be taken into consideration when the description of transformation of the Polish language at the beginning of the typographical era is intended.
More...
Renata Bronikowska and Aldona Przyborska-Szulc present „The electronic corpus of 17th and 18th century Polish texts (up to 1772)” which is being created in the Institute of Polish Language, Polish Academy of Sciences. The first part of the text is devoted to the sources included in the corpus. The authors discuss the types of collected texts and metadata by which they are characterized. They also show the geographical representation of the sources. The second part describes different types of annotation and tools which support works on the corpus.
More...
This paper discusses the relevance of manuscript studies in historical-linguistic and philological analyses of medieval texts. The aim is to show that in the process of textual edition many pivotal aspects of a source text may be lost, ommitted or inadequately transmitted. Examples of such editorial omissions come from Old and Middle English, and Middle High German metrical renditions of „Pater noster”. It is argued that an analysis of a medieval text must crucially involve studying its manuscript context.
More...
The article characterizes documents that are useful in the reconstruction of the old language of thought. One can distinguish among them the source material (this is a legacy of the author or period, the status of linguistic awareness is extracted from it on the basis of the analysis of the specific forms of written documents) and metalanguage sources (these are texts expressing a direct attitude to the language). The body of the article fills the description of the latter sources. The author deals with two issues. Firstly, he presents a typology of metalanguage sources. Secondly, he discusses specific variables interpretation useful in the process of explication.
More...
A starting point for the considerations presented in the article are the words by Stanisław Urbańczyk who in „Encyklopedia języka polskiego” („Encyclopaedia of the Polish Language”) writes that the task of historical dictionaries is “to depict Polish vocabulary of previous epochs” and “enable researchers to study the development of lexical resources of the Polish language”. The authors are convinced that those two opinions must be extended to include all and not only historical dictionaries. Each stock of words can provide material for historical linguistic studies, especially for the study into lexis, its history, formation and development. In order to corroborate the above thesis, the authors provide the selected examples of scholarly activities which are based on different dictionaries.
More...
Thanks to the Internet and electronic media the etymologists today have easier access to historical-linguistic, dialectal and onomastic sources as well as to etymological dictionaries. They also better access to many etymological monographs and studies. Moreover, today the etymologist has no problems making use of analogous materials published in foreign languages, the obtaining of which in the past had posed a major problem. This will clearly accelerate progress in etymological research, thereby opening up new vistas for etymology.
More...
Peter Loderecker’s „Dictionarium”, published in Prague in 1605, is one of the first dozen printed dictionaries containing Polish vocabulary items. Nevertheless, it has been scarcely studied. One of the scholars dealing with Loderecker’s work claims that the Polish section coincides with the lexical material of Jan Mączyński’s „Lexicon Latino-Polonicum” (1564). The poster deals with the question of possible sources of Loderecker’s „Dictionarium”.
More...
The basic aim of the article lies in the presentation of selected word combinations taken from the modern Polish language (phrasemes, paroemias, juxtapositions, terms) comprising archaic language signs of various types (phonetic, word formation, inflection, lexical, semantical and syntactical archaisms). Such word combinations are called by me as traditionalisms (in opposition to word combinations which do not possess archaic language forms).
More...
The article is a synthetic overview of the current state of research in the field of historical phraseology. Its purpose is to present some trends and directions dominating in the work on the historical phraseology and indication of the most pressing research needs. The text also includes the description of selected literature about range touched in the title.
More...
The object of the analysis consists in the metaphorical representation of the concepts-values of the mental sphere in the Old Polish and Middle Polish periods in the plant category. The metaphor a concept is a plant is realised by the use of various words of the lexical field of the plant; I analysed the metaphors which feature the lexeme kwiat [flower] (and its derivatives). The purpose of the article is to direct the reader’s attention to the richness of the realisation of the plant metaphor which represents values in the early ages, to the set of concepts which are thus represented, to the possible relationship of this metaphor with evaluation and a glimpse at its permanence in the Polish language. The metaphor a concept is a plant featuring the lexeme kwiat in the early Polish language was used to refer to concepts which represented various spheres of life – ethical, social, folk values, as well as anti-values, referring above all to the sphere of morality. Therefore the metaphor was used to represent concepts regardless of the evaluations which were ascribed to these concepts. With the course of the development of culture and due to the change of thinking about the world the way the lexemes used in the metaphor a concept is a plant, their frequency and the concepts themselves changed but the plant as a source domain of metaphors continues to be viable in the Polish language.
More...
Increased interests of 19th century scientists in entomological names resulted from considerable terminological confusion in the field. Attempts at systematizing the existing terms and introducing new ones, more adequately reflecting the features of specific butterflies, were made, among others, by Teofil Żebrawski in his monograph „Owady łuskoskrzydłe czyli motylowate z okolic Krakowa” and Maksymilian Siła Nowicki in two works considered as fundamental by his contemporaries: „Projekt polskiéj nomenklatury motylów krajowych” and „Motyle Galicyi”. This article provides an overview of the “butterly terminology” proposed in these works.
More...
The paper presents the lexical archaisms selected from material collected of the linguistic research carried out at the very Grodno region in 2015, the areas of concentration of the Polish nobility from the area of the Indura city (“szlachta zaindurska”). These tokens non-users in modern literary Polish language, including dialects unmarked in dictionaries, which testifies to the uniqueness of the dialects. Some tokens are not marked in any historical source language.
More...
The text discusses the diachronic aspect of regional studies placed at the boundary between the history of language and dialectology. The author presents how the two fields interact and intermingle, which is particularly visible in the context of the regional past as well as the linguistic and cultural specificity of regions. Applying the methods of diachronic linguistics to dialectology and using dialectology in the studies on the history of the language enables to create a multifaceted picture of linguistic phenomena and explain their cultural contexts.
More...
The progress of historical research, new interpretation of socio-political events and cultural changes form new premises dissertating for the necessity of creating a new synthesis of the history of the Polish language in Silesia. Thus far noted compendia do not clarify the historical background of the modern linguistic changes taking place in contemporary Silesia. In the article, the author presented the basic methodological assumptions of the proponed synthesis. Description of the issues should focus on two axes. The first one is the evolution of the normalized polish language that is settled in official usage and Silesian writing. This variation is characterized by canon import, system and stylistic archaisms and the development’s irregularity. The latter axis of the description focuses on the issue of the evolution of Silesian dialects in the systematic and functional aspect. The Silesian polish language developed under specific conditions – domination of two languages: Czech and German in particular. Therefore the matters connected with the linguistic policy of the countries, which boarders were Silesian, as well as with the formation of linguistic awareness of Silesians and linguistic changes being the result of postwar immigration will be discussed. The implied range of the description taking into consideration Silesian multiculturalism demand a specified methodological approach. The author formulates some rules that enable to meet those demands. Moreover, he discusses some specific issues such as the cognitive and material values of the studies published in recent years, issues connected with periodization of the historical events, and the canon of sources. The synthesis will be closed by the discussion of the discourse about the Silesian language status that last since the 1990s.
More...
The article is a reflection on historical-linguistic education in didactics of Polish language in Poland. On the one hand the author was inspired to take up this theme by headword of Congress of Historical Linguists, ie. „Historical Linguistics – Protecting the Future, Respecting the Past” (Katowice, 13–15 April 2016). On the other hand an inspiration of this elaboration was a book „Signs of memory” edited by Maciej Grochowski and Zofia Zaron dedicated to the great Polish linguists of the second half of the twentieth century. The author shares her insights on historical-linguistic education at the academic level, noting the need to strengthen master – student relationship. In addition she discusses the method of tutoring which is based on individual cooperation between master (tutor) and his/her student. Moreover she indicates a few possibilities of using this method in historical-linguistic education with students.
More...
Ewa Oronowicz-Kida and Agnieszka Myszka try to answer a question whether knowledge about the history of language may be interesting for former grammar school pupils. The authors analyse the position of historical and language issues in the national curriculum at all levels of school education and use a questionnaire to check knowledge of former secondary school pupils in this respect. An analysis of questionnaires leads us to conclusion that recent secondary school graduates know selected issues from the history of language, but they lack any knowledge about historical grammar. However, young people see in contemporary Polish language certain phenomena resulting from development of language that they would like to have explained. The authors are of the opinion that, at the level of university education, you cannot resign from relaying at least basic knowledge about mechanisms of language development, however, it should be done in close connection with an analysis of literature and culture.
More...
Two volume set of „Selected Essays on the History of Polish Language” edited by Marek Cybulski was published by the University of Łódź Publishing House in 2015. This edition compiles texts ranging from the oldest ones such as „Bulla gnieźnieńska” („Bull of Gniezno”) to those from the first decades of the 21st century. They are presented in the chronological order and arranged in such a way that one can easily compare them according to the theme, style and literary genre. The article presents the possibilities of using this edition in university teachings, for example by showing the formation of genres (e.g. advertising) or by exposing influence of pragmatic factors on linguistic layer of the text.
More...
In his academic work, Professor Witold Mańczak (1924–2012) explored thoroughly the questions of general and comparative linguistics of Indo-European, particularly Romance and Slavic, languages; especially the irregular phonetic development caused by frequency. He applied this concept to the Polish etymology, which bore fruit in a form of „Polish Etymological Dictionary” (in Polish; Kraków 2017, 238 pp. + CD-ROM). This dictionary’s major advantage is the fact that exact counterparts (instead of pre-language reconstructions established in accordance with laryngeal theory) in selected Slavic and Indo-European languages are provided therein, coupled with borrowings from Western European languages; the latter being indirect sources for words of exotic languages entering Polish. As an illustration of this approach may serve the following entries: bagnet, bóg, brat, bruk, car, chata, donica, dziś, gołąb, hrabia, jeden, jestem, każdy, kiełbasa, księga, mierzeja, olbrzym, włoszczyzna.
More...