Did the Expressions człowiek {niegodny} and {niegodziwy} Use to Mean the Same: The History of Adjectives with the {god-//godz’-} Root in Polish Cover Image

Czy określenia człowiek {niegodny} i {niegodziwy} oznaczały dawniej to samo? – Historia przymiotników z rdzeniem {god- // godz’-} w języku polskim
Did the Expressions człowiek {niegodny} and {niegodziwy} Use to Mean the Same: The History of Adjectives with the {god-//godz’-} Root in Polish

Author(s): Agnieszka Ewa Piotrowska
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Wydział Polonistyki Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: słowotwórstwo historyczne; godny/godzien; zmiany znaczeniowe; przymiotnik; historical word formation; godny/godzien; semantic shifts; adjective

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents the evolution of meaning, syntactic valency and relations between the adjectives {godny//godzien} ‘worthy’ and other adjectives from the same derivational family on the basis of dictionaries of contemporary Polish, historical dictionaries of Polish and citation files. Until the 18th Century those adjectives were synonymous. Some of them disappeared as early as the Middle Polish Era, while others underwent semantic diversification, which can be best seen in citation files and definitions from the so called {Słownik warszawski} (The Warsaw Dictionary) and Doroszewski’s {Słownik języka polskiego} (The Dictionary of Polish). In the 20th Century the number of contexts in which the adjectives can appear, have been significantly reduced. Due to social and cultural changes in the 2nd part of the 19th and the 20th Century, the processes leading to the establishment of the dominant meaning feature, initiated in the New Polish Era, have come to halt. This is best seen in the lexeme {godny} and the result is a certain semantic vagueness of this main representative of the derivational family. As a consequence, this adjective and other formations with the same root are becoming less frequent and obsolete.

  • Issue Year: 2011
  • Issue No: 62
  • Page Range: 215-248
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Polish
Toggle Accessibility Mode