Na Zakroczymskiej, na Freta: o reinterpretacji fleksyjnej nazw miejskich
Na Zakroczymskiej, na Freta: on the inflectional reinterpretation of hodonyms

Summary/Abstract: The topic of the study is the phenomenon of inflectional reinterpretation (which may be understood as a kind of folk etymology, more appropriately called etymological reinterpretation) in urban names (hodonyms). It leads to a change of the inflectional paradigm of the onym, e.g. na Matejkach, na Strugarce, na Karasiej instead of na (ulicy) Matejki, Strugarka, Karasia. The examples were excerpted mostly from the Internet and – to a lesser degree – from scholarly literature. Twelve types of such reinterpretation have been identified, exemplified by a total of over 40 onyms. Possible factors contributing to reinterpretation were analysed, such as the specificity of proper names, their frequency and developmental trends, as well as semantic and structural mechanisms (internal analogy, the ellipsis of the identifying element). Some similarities were also found between the effects of the most common type of inflectional reinterpretation and the formation of informal, unconventional urban names.

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