Polszczyzna Antoniny Zamoyskiej w listach do Józefa Wandalina i Konstancji Mniszchów
The Polish language of Antonina Zamoyska in her letters to Józef Wandalin and Konstancja Mniszech

Summary/Abstract: The present article is an attempt to characterize the Polish language of Antonina Zamoyska, who was the founder of the Order of Ladies Canonesses of Warsaw, a member of the Zahorowski family, a wife of Marcjan Dominik Wołłowicz, the Grand Marshal of Lithuania, and, later on, of Tomasz Józef Zamoyski, the fifth entailer in Zamość. The data analyzed includes the letters written by Zamoyska to Józef Wandalin and Konstancja Mniszech in 1717–1744. As shown in the analysis, the language of Zamoyska represents the regional, borderland variation of the Polish language. In addition to possessing the characteristic features of the general Polish language of the 18th century (e.g. the close pronunciation of vowels e, o), it is characterized by numerous regional features, typical of the Northern Borderlands (e.g. replacing the verbal suffix -ić with -eć) or the Southern Borderlands (e.g. the -ej ending in the genitive, dative and locative case of feminine singular nouns), or those common to borderline areas (e.g. denasalization of a back nasal in a coda).

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