Wkład dwudziestolecia międzywojennego w ewolucję polszczyzny
The contribution of the interwar period to the evolution of the Polish language

Summary/Abstract: The object of this paper is the extent and dynamics of language changes in the interwar period. The rebirth of Poland in 1918 and the resulting sociopolitical and cultural transformations caused major changes in the use of Polish as compared to the period of the Partitions. The process of language unification, in particular on the phonetic plane, accelerated in the new conditions. The interwar period set the language development directions as regards word formation, namely expansion of acronyms, use of surnames as the derivation basis, and creation of hybrid structures with prefixes and other elements of foreign provenance. The interwar period’s contribution to the evolution of the Polish language is internationalisation of vocabulary on the one hand and its Polonisation on the other hand. The ground-breaking nature of the period 1918–1939 is evidenced also by the multiplication of the lexical resource of the language. The unappreciated role the interwar period played in the evolution of Polish needs to be verified and exposed in the periodisation of the history of language.

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