Uwagi o składni Paterykonu Sylwestra Kossowa (1635)
Selected Remarks on the Syntactic Aspect of Paterykon by Sylwester Kossow (1635)

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses a selection of issues relating to the syntactic structure of Paterykon, as translated by Sylwester Kossow. These observations are put in the context of the specialist literature devoted to the status of the Polish language in the 17th century, including its Borderland dialectal varieties. The analysis focuses on the following syntactic structures: causal constructions – with preposition, with infinitive (modelled on the Latin n.c.i and a.c.i. constructions), syntax of negative sentence constructions (single negation after the conjunction ani [either]), syntax of quotes (a merger of reported and direct speech constructions), numerals, and the semantics of the subordinators (i% [that], je li [if], skoro [if/unless]). A more important part of the analysis concerns the use of grammatical tenses in the text. The analysis shows that tenses are not always ordered logically in the complement sentences with the adverbial of time as well in the complex complement sentences (the present tense expresses an action taking place prior to the one signalled by the perfect tense). The examination helps to discover the systemic parallelism between the analysed text and the 17th-century Northern Borderland Polish language variety. At the same time, by pointing out to the systemic discrepancies between the text and the above-mentioned language variety, the author indicates that Paterykon should be classified as representative of a regional variety of Polish.

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