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Jakub Parkosz, also known as Parkoszowic, is the author of the first proposal of Polish spelling. In order to account for all the phonemes of Polish, some new letters were proposed. As his proposal was not widely accepted, the letters have not become available with the standard fonts, which makes it difficult to quote and discuss the proposal. Fortunately, the letters have recently been added to the Junicode font by its creator, Peter Baker.
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The point of departure of this paper is the hypothesis that, by examining the various labels used for the verbal expressions (also) known as light verb constructions (e.g., periphrastic constructions, pleonastic expressions, semi- compositional constructions), it is possible to pinpoint the features that the various approaches dealing with that particular category and that phenomenon interpret as definitive, essential specificities of the linguistic units in question (cf. 2.1). In addition, the exploration of the differences across categories referred to by terms that are synonymous (at least in some of their uses) might contribute to outlining the features of prototypical and non-prototypical light verb constructions, and refining the systematization of the above-mentioned expressions. In this article, I will first review the general characteristics of denomination (2.1), and those of terminology formation (2.2). After that, I will briefly sketch the approaches typically connected to the terms that are occasionally used synonymously with the term light verb construction (3). Then, on the basis of the intersection of the different approaches, I will outline a definition of light verb constructions that can currently be regarded as being the most general and accepted (4). Finally, combining several views found in the literature, I will attempt a prototype-based approach to the construction type under discussion and determine the features of prototypical light verb constructions (5).
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In the first half of the twentieth century, the fields of interlinguistics and Esperanto studies emerged as branches of linguistics focused on the study of languages designed for international communication (such as Volapük, Esperanto, and Ido). Yet, why are there specific fields to study language creation and why should linguists care about this? Looking at the history of constructed languages, this article explores the institutionalization of interlinguistics by focusing on the history of the Centre for Research and Documentation on World Language Problems (CED, in its Esperanto acronym), a research center founded in 1952 whose developments encapsulate certain aspects of this broader narrative. From an analysis of CED’s 44th Esperanto Studies Conference, in 2022, I flesh out the potential of interlinguistics to contribute back to linguistics and to the humanities disciplines that originated it. Ultimately, this article calls for the reinsertion of constructed languages into general linguistics debates.
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Although Verb-Object (VO) is the basic unmarked constituent order of predicates in Present-Day English, in earlier stages of the language Object-Verb (OV) is the preferred pattern in some syntactic contexts. OV predicates are significantly frequent in Old and Middle English, and are still attested up to 1550, when they “appear to dwindle away” (Moerenhout & van der Wurff 2005: 83). This study looks at OV in Early Modern English (EModE), using a corpus-based perspective and statistical modelling to explore a number of textual, syntactic, and semantic/processing variables which may account for what by that time had already become a marked, though not yet archaic, word-order pattern. The data for the study were retrieved from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (1500–1710) and the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (c.1410–1695), the largest electronic parsed collections of EModE texts. The findings reveal a preference for OV in speech-related text types, which are less constrained by the rules of grammar, in marked syntactic contexts, and in configurations not subject to the general linearisation principles of end-weight and given-new. Where these principles are complied with, the probability of VO increases.
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As regards Old English, the inflectional strength and weakness are characterised by a kind of inconsistency. In the case of Old English adjectives these two inflectional properties appear to be different from those associated with nouns and verbs. In the case of the latter the two properties seem to be lexically determined while in the case of adjectives they appear to be determined by syntactic conditions. The traditional accounts of the Old English grammar attribute two paradigms to one adjectival lexical item. The analysis presented in this article postulates that one can actually speak about one adjectival inflection and what is traditionally presented as strong and weak adjectival inflections is actually the result of two different syntactic derivations.
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Old and Early Middle English did not yet have modal sentential adverbs of low probability. Old Norse did not have such words, either. From the 13th century onwards first epistemic prepositional phrases of Anglo-Norman origin functioning as modal adverbials consisting of the preposition per/par and nouns such as adventure, case, chance were borrowed into Middle English. In the late 15th century an analogous hybrid form per-hap(s), the combination of the Old French preposition per/par ‘by, through’ and the Old Norse noun hap(p) ‘chance’, both singular and plural, was coined according to the same pattern and was gradually grammaticalized as a univerbated modal sentence adverb in Early Modern English. The Norse root happ- was the source of some other new (Late) Middle English words which had no cognate equivalents in the source language: the adjective happy with its derivatives happily, happiness, etc. and the verb happen.Together with another new Late Middle English formation may-be, a calque of French peut- être, perhaps superseded the competing forms mayhap, (modal) happily, percase, peradventure, perchance, prepositional phrases with the noun hap and, finally, per-hap itself in Early Modern English after two centuries of lexical layering or multiple synonymy. The history of perhaps is a clear example of grammaticalization, whereby a prepositional phrase became a modal adverb now also used as a discourse marker. We find here all the typical features of the process: phonetic attrition, decategorization, univerbation, and obligatorification.
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The Chinese term rou doukou has generally been taken to mean ‘nutmeg’. This identification dates from the nineteenth century. However, there is reason to think that rou doukou was originally not nutmeg, but the fruits of a plant of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae. Early descriptions and illustrations of rou doukou are clearly not of nutmeg: in Chinese pharmacopoeias, it is usually listed with herbs, not trees. The earliest reference to nutmeg is probably in the Zhu fan zhi of 1225. However, most Chinese references to rou doukou long after that date still refer to a plant of the ginger family.
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The Northern English dialect has always been a source of curiosities and many contrasts, boggling the mind of linguists who would wish to confine it within some limits of linguistic definitions. Starting from its Old English forefather, Northumbrian, onwards, the Northern dialect has proved to be both influential and resistant to external influences. Its borders defy clear categorization as understood by clear-cut variables, providing more for a fuzzy and volatile framework of relations among different Northern varieties. This is somewhat justified by the very nature of the Northern speech which seems to be a product of as much the history as the culture and tradition so deeply rooted in the hearts of Northerners. Against the backdrop of folklore and popular myths surrounding the local varieties, the Northern tongue has developed its unique features based on two contrasting linguistic trends in morphology and phonology. Among those, one can observe strong innovative and influential tendencies in the area of morphology and much resistance to changes or external influences in terms of phonology. It seems particularly surprising that the phonological analysis of the Northern dialect will very often appear to be an analysis of the dialect of the past with many characteristics having remained unaltered since the old times and being now a symbol of pride and affinity for a particular social group. The aim of this article is to investigate some of those phonological relics, trying to “establish historical continuities” and relating the today’s forms to the past.
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The text refers to the publishing series entitled "My z Nich" – it concerns a series of publications presenting the heritage of Polish linguists. The author of the review presents the value of the publication: he emphasizes that the authors of the articles in each volume resemble the achievements of the late masters, but also present a critical look at their scientific achievements and contribution to the development of the discipline.
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The aim of the paper is to present ephemeral printed texts as an object of a linguistic description as well as to submit the model of analysis in practice. Texts called as ephemera are usually an object of a non-linguistically targeted interdisciplinary approach, although ephemera, regardless of type and style, can be subject to the scheme of a linguistic analysis. The submitted Linguera model (lingua et ephemera) enables meticulous analysis of an ephemeral text followed by its detailed and accurate analysis. The model focuses on such aspects as the role of context, evaluative language, contents and form of ephemera, as well as analytical map designing. The proposal of analysis is presented on the material of the ephemera collection from the Free City of Danzig (1920 – 1939).
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The paper deals with the peripheral Czech lexeme sluzej 'bridge beam'. This word was analyzed in the journal Naše řeč as early as in 1923. The current paper corrects the assumption of the author at that time that the noun was adopted from another Slavic language in relatively recent times, and confirms its direct borrowing from German in the early modern period. The spelling of this lexeme, however, was different from the one reconstructed by etymologists so far.
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The main objective of the present study is to observe the influence of English on the Cape Verdean language, taking into account the historical events and the linguistic contacts between the languages in question. It is intended to observe how Anglicisms have been introduced in different contexts, especially in recent times, therefore, without forgetting the British and American influence in Cape Verde in past cen- turies and its impact on the lexicon. The semantic fields covered include, among others, new technologies, sports and music (rap kriol). The present descriptive research is based mainly on digital sources, such as social networks, online press, dictionaries available online and song texts. In conclusion, the analysis car- ried out proves the constant presence of Anglicisms in Cape Verdean reality, as well as their flow related to the emergence of new phenomena that need to be named.
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The article presents selected achievements of Indo-European linguistics that have been made since the beginning of the 20th century up to the present, concentrating especially on the laryngeal theory, the reconstruction of the proto-language accent-ablaut paradigms, internal derivation and the Caland system. The author observes that there are no Polish scientific publications describing the current state of research and, as a consequence, most of the Polish publications that deal with the Proto-Indo-European era are based on outdated reconstructions.
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The article presents the results of an analysis of the methods of marking consonants v and v́ in Szczyt duszny (‘Spiritual shield’), a collection of prayers from the prayer book of Olbracht Gasztołd from 1528. The analysis covered the quantitative parameters of the markings and their positional determinants (word, phonetic and lexical). The results of the analysis made it possible to formulate a hypothesis about presence of the doublelip articulation of the consonants v and v́ in the Małopolska variant of the Polish language in the first half of the 16th century, this being a relic of the old pronunciation, preserved in the intervocal position and in the post-vocal position in the forehead of the word.
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The paper examines the guidelines dedicated to Italian teaching and, above all, to the ideal thematic, language and stylistic features of school reading books in the programmes for primary school and in the related instructions for teachers issued by the Ministry of Education from 1860 to 1905: a decisive period for the arrangement of the Italian school system, the literacy processes and the spread of the national language. It can be seen how these official documents significantly shaped the writing of school books. The paper also explores the complex relationship between the institutional attempts to regulate textbook production, as evidenced by relevant ministerial documentation parallel to the programmes, and the rich publishing activity in this field. To complete the overview of the dialectic between school-educational publishing and the regulatory will of the Ministry and of the boards connected to it, responsible for the evaluation of textbooks, the witnesses of two prominent school female authors of the 2nd half of the 19th century are commented on: Ida Baccini and Felicita Morandi.
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In this study, we aim to analyse the origin and semantics of one of the lexemes used by Romanians to refer to Hungarians: boanghin(a), also used as boanghen(a). Besides a meta-analysis of this ethnic slur (emergence, meaning, semantic shifts, and etymology), we also refer to literary works in which these terms have been used. The archaic boanghin, or boanghen seems to be a political construct which has the purpose of naming the enemy and personifying the evil. It is a typical case of verbal abuse, mockery, or insult which used to display a significant amount of collectively formed, pejorative connotation. Today it is old-fashioned, as it has been replaced by another slur, i.e. bozgor, which is going to be presented in a forthcoming study.
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While making an indisputably relevant contribution to scholarship and Slavic culture, the discussions about the primacy of one or the other Slavic alphabet, Glagolitic or Cyrillic, and the presentations of their results or the elaborations on the issue that have ensued over the following decades, were very often burdened with stereotypes, errors and other shortcomings. A particularly peculiar case is the construction of an ideological narrative about inventing the Cyrillic alphabet at the behest of the Bulgarian prince, later Emperor Symeon, and its promotion as the official state and church alphabet at the Council of Preslav (893), which Angel Nikolov demonstrated to be unproven and questionable as a historical event, due to which anything related to it could not be verified. The hypothesis that Constantine the Philosopher (Cyril) followed the common patterns of Byzantine literacy of the time (primarily the practice of the Studite Monastery) to create a Slavic alphabet with two complementary graphical variants, Proto-Glagolitic and Proto-Cyrillic, should be taken seriously into consideration. To meet the need to simplify the complex model, but also to adapt it to the sensitivity of the Western Church, it had to be reduced to the Glagolitic alphabet, although the Cyrillic alphabet was also passively retained. Regardless of the sequence of creating the alphabets and the date when the Cyrillic alphabet was finally created, there are at least two cases where the presence of the Greek alphabet must be assumed. In the analysis and transcription of the Slavic phonological system, Constantine used the Greek alphabet. The created provisional Greek apparatus was the prototype of “both” Slavic alphabets, and especially of the Cyrillic alphabet. Also, the process of introducing others to the Slavic alphabet and spreading literacy must have been accompanied by deciphering already in the initial stages, where, again, the Greek alphabet was used. Thus, it can be assumed that the creation of the Slavic-Greek and Slavic-Latin abecedaria as interpretative-mnemonic compositions is related to Constantine (863–869).
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In this paper we deal with the distribution of adverbial demonstratives in Serbian literacy, i.e. with their use in the literary and vernacular language. Considering the fact that the system of pronouns in the Serbian language has undergone certain changes, the aim of the paper is to determine whether these changes affected the pronominal bases in spatial demonstratives, since they are all characterized by having a pronoun in their bases. A review of existing literature regarding these words showed that the Serbian-Slavonic language preserved the inherited state, while spatial demonstratives in the vernacular followed the changes in pronouns (e.g., the replacement of demonstratives based on the pronoun *s- with those based on the pronoun *ov-). It has also been shown that interfering with the demonstratives in the field of distality is not something that is only related to the modern Serbian language, but has also been noticed in earlier epochs of the development of the Serbian language.
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The paper analyzes certain phonological characteristics of the Accounting Ledger Journal of the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the document that has been kept under this name in the said church in Arad (under the signature INV 794). The document contains two protocols: the first one that was kept from 1728 until 1782 and the second one kept from 1776 until 1790. This paper analyzes the corpus from the first half of the 18th century (more precisely, the time period from 1728 until 1752). Since this is a text that encompasses two periods on the timeline: (1) the period in which Russian-Slavonic substituted Serbian-Slavonic and (2) the period in which Slavonic-Serbian was established and in which it existed – the basic task of this research is the identification of the language in which the Accounting Ledger Journal was written. In the paper, special attention is paid to the relation between vernacular and literary elements in the analyzed document, as well as to the dependence of their use on various contextual parameters. The analysis of the selected phonological characteristics of the Accounting Ledger Journal of the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (1728–1752) indicates the chronological matching with the data from previous research of documents with a similar profile on the territory of South Hungary. The fourth and fifth decade is, in fact, the time that saw a more prominent penetration of Russian-Slavonic elements into manuscripts. Their number, however, is not large enough to regard it as a mixed language. The Accounting Ledger Journal as a whole still had a vernacular basis, which confirms the previous assumption concerning the elitization of folk language as the basic model for creating the Slavonic-Serbian language in the manuscripts of the 18th century. The analysis also shows that literary features (Serbian-Slavonic and Russian-Slavonic) were conditioned primarily by the thematic and structural organization of the text, as well as the social stratification of the people mentioned in the aforementioned document.
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In this article, I analyze the philological ideas of the Serbian intellectual D. Tirol (1793–1857), as displayed in his first linguistic work Славенска граматика (1827). The views of the author about the development of the Slavic language, as well as his comments upon the normalization of the Serbian language standard, which reveal the influence of Josef Dobrovský and Vuk Karadžić, are also examined. In this context, I reach the conclusion that the innovative character of the linguistic conception of Tirol is due to the interaction of two methodological paradigms – Church Slavonic grammar tradition and comparative linguistics in the first half of the nineteenth century.
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