Review of: Dumitru Chican, Omul de după om: Islamul în contextul modernismului şi postmodernismului, Editura Pastel, Braşov 2007, 168 pg.
More...
Review of: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Triada geostrategică. Convieţuirea cu China, Europa şi Rusia, Historia, Bucureşti, 2006. Traducerea: Sanda-Ileana Racovinceanu; prefaţă: John J.Hamre
More...
Keywords: gender; gender equality; feminist theory; men; minorities
In this paper I sketch the argument that the absence of „men” as a target group in the policies on gender equality in Romania is an effect of the way „gender equality” and „gender” are conceptualized at the level of European Union programmes and borrowed in the Romanian space. The implicit invisibility of men within these policies is a symptom of a prefigured failure of gender equality premised on a quantitative type of symmetry that cannot account for the ongoing power imbalance between women and men sustained within a capitalist logic of (re)production and social sustainability.
More...
Keywords: Roma; social movements; mobilization; identity discourse; Romani movement
This article looks at the Roma and social change from the perspective of mobilizing strategies used by Roma organizations and their leaders. It will analyze the types of structures developed by Roma, the context they emerged and the causes, as well as the capacity to mobilize Roma. The hypothesis is that there are structural factors within the organizations developed by Roma that negatively influences their capacity of mobilization. The literature on social movements will serve as bases for this analysis.
More...
Keywords: Cassubian (Cashubian) dialects; Cassubian (Cashubian) literary language; Polish language; neologisms
The analysis of the modern popular-scientific, literary, and religious texts that are written in the Cassubian literary language shows a particularly huge amount of neologisms that are developed by suffixes -izna and -ota. These neologisms are used to define the concepts and designates that so far did not exist in the Cassubian dialects and, as a rule, constitute the words that differ from their equivalents in the meaning, which function in the Polish literary language.
More...
Keywords: linguistic borderland; interferences; dialect; sociolect; linguistic communication; synchronous and diachronic perspective of research
The article briefly indicates the dialectic-sociolectic complexity as well as variability of communicative- linguistic processes in the historical area of Cieszyn Silesia, split in 1920 by Polish-Czech state border, which takes into consideration the national, generational and environmental determinants of differential behaviors in the area on both sides of the border river Olza.
More...
Keywords: vowel contraction; frequency; Polish; Slovak
The purpose of the article is to show that vowel contraction in Polish and Slovak is not a regular sound change, but an irregular sound change due to frequency. From the point of view of vowel contraction, endings and words are divided into three groups: (1) endings and words in which vowel contraction always occurs, e.g. in the ending ‑ego < *‑ajego or in the word pas < *pojasъ; (2) words in which vowel contraction sometimes occurs, e.g. memu/mojemu; (3) endings and words in which vowel contraction never occurs, e.g. in the ending ‑uje or in the word nadzieję. The analysis of the Polish piece Zemsta by Fredro and of the Slovak piece Sneh nad limbou by Bukovčan has shown that the mean frequency of endings and words in which vowel contraction always occurs is higher than that of endings and words in which vowel contraction sometimes occurs, and that the mean frequency of endings and words in which vowel contraction never occurs is the lowest. In addition, the author quotes the opinion of a statistician on irregular sound change due to frequency in general.
More...
This is the foreword to volume 57 Rozprawy Komisji Językowej ŁTN dedicated to the memory of Professor Karol Dejna on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Contains brief information about organized on this occasion of the conference, the awards granted after death and refers to publications that publish occasional biographical notes.
More...
Keywords: dialectology; dialectal word-formation and general Polish language word-formation; names of manners of action
Looking at the lexical category of names of manners of action it can be noticed that development of dialectal word-formation illustrates all-Poland tendencies in ways of forming words according to systemic rules. It is proved by productivity of formants such as -arka, -nik, -ak, shared with literary language, as well as by tendency to abbreviation, and forming univerbalisms which replace longer forms mainly of a descriptive type. Another sign of Polish language influence on derivational system of dialects is displayed by the existence of derivational forms, which were created by analogy of morphologic structures of all-Poland words, in dialects. The process of word-formational analogy leads to (among other things) the increase of frequency of a certain word-formational type (e.g. -arka) and indication of other than model possibilities of forming names of manners of action (e.g. names with formant -ówka derived from nouns and verbs).
More...
Keywords: Bohemisms; language transfers; calques
The growing influence of the Czech language on the general Polish language used by the Polish minority may lead to assimilation of the Polish language used in Zaolzie to Polish dialects used by Polish emigrants in western countries. Interferences occurring on the grammatical platform are more difficult to eliminate than the lexical ones. The increasing number of Bohemisms may even reduce Zaolzie people’s capability to use Polish high and popular culture.
More...
Keywords: conceptual metaphor; conceptual metonymy; image metaphor; slang
The paper discusses selected examples of borrowings from English and German into Polish youth slang. The expressions, all highly original, are related to various aspects of life, such as one’s outward appearance, relations between people, walks of life, one’s social position, addictions, participation in social life, or being a member of an ethnic group. The analysis is conducted within the framework of the second generation cognitive linguistics. It assumes that metaphor and metonymy are common strategies in human conceptual system. Having presented various ways of assimilation of borrowings from foreign languages into Polish, the paper briefly outlines basic assumptions of contemporary theory of metaphor and metonymy. It focuses on conceptual and image/“one-shot” metaphors, as well as conceptual metonymies of individual cases and those related to category structure. 24 slang expressions are analysed, 18 of which come from English and 6 from German. The conceptual metaphors underlying them are conventional in that they are also used in everyday expressions in English, German, and Polish. Their originality of the slang uses rests on the selection of elements of source domains which would not be used in conventional speech. Expressions based on image/“one-shot” metaphors are original by virtue of the very associations that they create between their two concrete elements. Metonymy-based expressions are innovative in that they select metonymic vehicles not used in conventional speech. Types of metonymies that they represent are, however, common also in colloquial language.
More...
Keywords: First name; surname; written Polish language; non flectioning
The article concerns the problem of non-flectioning names and surnames examined on the material of high school pupils’ written Polish language. The findings showed that the nominative of the personal names, no matter of their position in the sentence, gradually become automatising among the youngest generation of Pole. The nominatives of the surnames, and more and more frequently nominatives of the first names become established as the components of the language custom. One of the reasons of this status quo are language behaviour of teachers, priests and other people engaged in the didactic process. They often do not flection surnames because of the lack of knowledge or disagreement of the current language knowledge.
More...
Keywords: Polish linguists; humour
The author has collected a number of anecdotes concerning 22 Polish linguists from Lucjan Malinowski up to Stefan Warchoł. He has used tests printed in biographical productions as well as in comic stories such as Colloquium Thassicii. In since cases he has used oral tradition. Special attention deserve anecdotes concerning Aleksander Brückner and Kazimierz Nitsch, a men of confict, as well as in relation to Henryk Ułaszyn. In this partientar case his memoirs, recently published, been a really helpful. At the end the author quotes a fragment of these memoirs wich refers to the patron of the conference Karol Dejna.
More...
Keywords: Dejna; bilingualism; linguistic interferences; integration; transitional dialects; linguistic structure of a dialect and the dialectal system; the Polish and Ukrainian dialect of Kolechowice
The report consists in a way of two parts. The first part intentionally shows the outline results of Professor Dejna’s detailed studies in dialectography and dialectology which, consequently and after many years, enabled this scholar to formulate the concept of “the linguistic structure of a dialect”, highly significant also for the studies on the Polish-Ukrainian dialects on the linguistic borderland. My studies have shown that this term is especially useful in looking in bilingual dialects for non-systemic structural characteristics which, as a result of interference, were transferred from one primary dialectal system, or system A, into the other system, or system B, thus functioning as specific linguistic innovations in each of the systems. The detailed analysis of the bilingual dialect of Kolechowice has also demonstrated that those non-systemic structural characteristics occur first of all at the level of the phonetic and partly morphological systems except of inflection.
More...
Keywords: vulgarisms; linguistic interference; Polish language; Indo-European language
The Clan of “Ausra” was founded in 1954 by students from the University of Łódź as a “linguisticcultural- social” group [Simpson, 2000, p. 127]. A branch in Warsaw was created in 1958. There are some members of the Ausranian Clan in Gdańsk. The most striking feature of the Ausranians is use of the reconstructed Indo-European language in their rituals, religious texts, poetry and life. The “Ausranian” idiom (i.e. a modern version of the reconstructed Indo-European language) is not treated as a secret language. The members of “Ausra” (prof. I.R. Danka, dr J. Macjon, dr T. Roszak), all trained philologists, teach the “Ausranian” grammar, expressions and living speech during all open monthly meetings of the Indo-European Section of the Polish Philological Society. The Ausranians are rarely vulgar of speech and they conceive a dislike to somebody, who speaks in vulgar terms. However, their language contains a number of vulgarisms. The present author quotes many examples of expressions and phrases, which are (or may be) realized as vulgar or disparaging in the Ausranian society. It can be concluded that a similar bundle of words in Polish and Ausranian seems to be vulgar. The author concludes that most vulgarisms, used by the Ausranians, were created under a strong influence of the Polish language.
More...
Keywords: diachronic; morphology; suffix
The communication is to present a hypothesis about the Latin suffix -izna origin (Polish -izna, Latin -ismus).
More...
Keywords: onomastics; anthroponymy; surnames
The author discusses surnames which are compounds of German prepositions (also in dialectal forms) and corresponding proper nouns (proper name) or common nouns. The choice of names is based on Dictionary of surnames currently used in Poland (Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych), vol. 1–10, published by K. Rymut in Kraków, 1992–1994.
More...
Keywords: Polesie; Franciszek Wysłouch; lexical and semantic regionalisms
The research focuses on the lexical and semantic Polesian regionalisms found in the works of an emigrant writer, Franciszek Wysłouch (1896–1978), who was born in Polesie and spent almost half of his life there. The paper contains the analysis and description of words highlighted in the text by the writer himself, such as: budnik, kokoryca, mogiłki, ochotnik, pał, produch, wróżda||wrozda, żarnice. The author determines meaning of the words as functioning in Polesie on the basis of description of designata and writer’s commentaries as well as evaluating the value of writer’s explanation and commentaries as a research material for studies of the Polesian vocabulary in the late 19th and beginning of 20th century. The paper is also dedicated to the provenance of the analysed vocabulary, especially the East Slavic influences and borrowings as well as its functioning against the lexicon of the East Borderland variety of the Polish language.
More...
Keywords: national Polish language; stylistics; poetic style
The article proves the existence of Polish poetic style as an individual variety of national language. This dissimilarity result from some morphological and syntactical features repeating through ages. This style is also characterised by peculiar treatment of grammatical categories related to general figurativeness of poetry texts. The influence of verse form on linguistic structure of described texts may also be observed. In the range of vocabulary the use of various categories of lexical detachment as neologisms, archaisms, and others reveals. The category of lexical poet isms and adequate statistical structure become characteristic feature of poetic style. Stylistic codes present in poetic style also show the developmental continuity of poetic style.
More...
Keywords: borrowings; loanwords; Italianisms; Italian; Polish
The article presents an overview of different Italian borrowings in Polish, especially in their contemporary use. The author focuses on four problems: 1) the definition of modern and historical Italian, 2) the proposition of regionalization of Italianisms, 3) lexical fields and communicative spaces which contain Italian loanwords, 4) some specific grammatical aspects of Italian borrowings in Polish, their flexion in particular. The observations are based on the corpus that counts over 1500 Italianisms found in various linguistic sources, for example in corpora and data bases of Polish. The interesting topic of this essay is the introduction of methodological classification of Italianisms into dialectal issues that helps to indicate the real linguistic origin of Italian borrowings, not only in Polish.
More...
