Od wspólnoty do obcości. Rozwój znaczeniowy polskiego przymiotnika obcy na tle słowiańskim
From community to alienness. The semantic development of the Polish adjective obcy ‘alien; foreign’

Summary/Abstract: The article is predominantly concerned with the semantic development of the Old Slavic adjective *obьtjь, referring to a community, generality or commonality, whose Polish continuant (obcy) has become to mean ‘not belonging to the community’. It has thus approached the adjective cudzy ‘belonging to someone else’, which derives from the Old Slavic *tjudjь, and whose continuants in other Slavic languages are basic exponents of the concept of alienness or foreignness. The author also attempts to explain the meaning shift of obcy from ‘of a community’ to ‘alien, foreign’. A hypothesis is formulated according to which the meaning evolved from ‘common, general, belonging to everyone’, via ‘not mine’, then ‘not ours, not within our circle’ to ‘unknown, with which we have no connection’. The author also analyzes the semantic relationship between present-day Polish cudzy and obcy, and concludes that the two adjectives are linked through the concept of ‘possession’, differently profiled in each lexical item. Valuation inherent in the adjective obcy is also investigated. Its negative marking is revealed in context but it nevertheless derives from the word’s basic semantics.

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