Odrzeczownikowe osobowe nazwy zbiorowe w polszczyźnie XVI wieku
Nominal proper collective names in the 16th-century Polish

Summary/Abstract: The object of the research in this paper is 16th-century noun-motivated proper collective names. The conducted analysis proves that: 1) proper nominal collective names used in the 16th-century Polish were diverse in terms of semantics, and the most numerously represented were the names of collections of believers of religious theories that were inconsistent with the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings, collective forms naming clergymen, 2) the few collective structures bore negative emotional load, e.g. gburstwo (boors) (sometimes with a tinge of contempt for lower rank, uncouth, simple people), hultajstwo (villains) (sometimes abusively about rogues, blackguards, scoundrels), kacerstwo (heretics) (often insultingly about infidels from the perspective of Catholics), 3) the analysed forms were derived with formants -stwo/-two/-ostwo and -‘a 4) a quite numerous word formation type was created only by forms with the suffix -stwo/-two/-ostwo, with this trend noticeable in the entire history of Polish, 5) half of the discussed forms were 16th-century neologisms, and the majority of them disappeared, unlike the collective structures formed in Old Polish 6) new forms, like in the Old Polish period, were coined mainly with the formant -stwo/-two/-ostwo, 7) over half of all proper collective nouns present in the analysed material have survived until today (9 derivatives), 8) however, the majority of the preserved structures have lost their collective meaning (only 3 derivatives with the suffix -stwo still fulfil the function of collective nouns).

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