Leksyka gwarowa Podlasia
The dialectal lexis of Podlasie

Summary/Abstract: The article shows chosen issues concerning the dialectal lexis of Podlasie on the background of information related to the history, tradition and state of dialectological researches. Podlasie is a territory whose administration, political and ethnic boundaries changed frequently throughout several hundred years of history. On these territories live Poles, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Tatars. From the varied interweavings of the region’s national, settlement and historical character resulted various linguistic issues. The linguistic space analysed is diversified, so it is difficult to establish acreages comprising the whole analysed territory. Examples of words given below are typical only for separate parts of this territory, and sometimes it is difficult to define precisely their scope. The richness of Podlasie lexis is a result of the existence of numerous synonyms, because of the proximity with different dialectal territories and the influence of common Polish (kruczek, pogrzebacz – English poker), competition between dialectal and nationally Polish words (biegunka and drystaczka – English diarrhoea); the existence of words, meaning designata, specific to a given, territorially restricted material and spiritual culture (such as zagowieć); the existence of dialectal names, which do not have one-word equivalents in general Polish. The particularity of the word-store in Podlasie can also be explained by a proximity with non-Polish dialects – East Slavonic (such as bałtun) and Lithuanian ones (such as kump). The dialectal lexis of Podlasie, apart from numerous isolated texts, awaits a monographic study.

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