O problemie rekonstrukcji formy podstawowej rzeczownika w zwrotach typu nie mieć równia
On the problem of reconstructing the nominative form of nouns in such expressions as nie mieć równia

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents the manner of reconstructing the nominative form of nouns used in such established expressions as nie mieć równia in dictionaries of Polish. The analysis included entries from dictionaries recording units of language at various stages of its historical evolution, from dictionaries of historical Polish, to the 19th- and 20th-century dictionaries, to the most recent ones. The N sg form was reconstructed there in the three following manners: rówień (sb m), równie (sb n) and równia (sb f). It turns out that only the texts originating from the period when an additional characteristic differentiating vowels was their quality provide convincing arguments on the noun paradigm to which the form G sg rowniå belongs. The close vowel in the grammatical ending of the case was characteristic exclusively of a certain group of neuter gender nouns, so the nominative noun should be równie. Additionally, Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku (Dictionary of the 16th-century Polish) recorded a form that is homonymic to the nominative form A sg rownie and the noun nierownie together with declension forms certifying the word’s grammatical gender. Upon the disappearance of close vowels, the genitive ending was deprived of clarity and therefore the form równia has become homonymic to masculine and neuter nouns. This probably contributed to reconstructing the nominative noun in the form of the masculine noun równień, and hence to shifting the lexeme to a different grammatical class of nouns.

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