Rozwój semantyczny kontynuantów prasłowiańskiego leksemu *blaznъ a jego etymologia

Author(s): Szymon Pogwizd / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2019

The article discusses the semantic development of the Proto-Slavic lexeme *blaznъ. The text analyses the examples of the descendants of the word under research, whose basic meanings may be defined as: ‘mistake’, ‘temptation’, ‘sin’, ‘a mentally ill man’, ‘a stupid, gullible man’. Bearing in mind the diversity of opinion about the problem of the origin of the word, an attempt is made to seek new arguments in support of one of the two most common etymologies of the lexeme *blaznъ.

Język filozoficznie odczarowany. O Przewodniku po filozofii języka

Author(s): Grzegorz Trela / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2018

Gdyby za miarę siły poszczególnej, narodowej kultury akademickiej uczynić liczbę ogłoszonych w danym języku wydawnictw o charakterze encyklopedyczno‑słownikowym z zakresu filozofii, Polska wypadałaby raczej „średnio”. Nigdy nie byliśmy ani wiodącą nacją w kulturze filozoficznej, ani także jej centrum. Średniej wielkości naród o znacznym potencjale kulturowym i określonych — nawet w skali światowej — osiągnięciach ma wszelkie powody do tego, aby partycypować w światowym ruchu filozoficznym nie tylko jednostkowo. Nasz rodzimy dorobek w zakresie publikacji tego rodzaju jest więcej niż skromny: próżno szukać polskiej encyklopedii (czy innego kompendium wiedzy) filozoficznej. Przyczyn takiego stanu rzeczy należy upatrywać w obiektywnych tendencjach geopolitycznych warunkujących status kulturowy Polaków w ostatnich dziesięcioleciach, a wręcz stuleciach.

Откуда же появился русский мат?

Author(s): Gennadi F. Kovalev / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2020

Most people usually believe that all abusive vocabulary is a filthy, gross component of any national language, especially in Russian. A widely shared opinion is that the Russian dirty vocabulary (mat) is an external borrowing. Studies in Slavic languages show however that their obscene vocabulary is a product of their own. Moreover, in ancient times this vocabulary, including descriptions of genitals and the childbearing process, belonged to the sacred lexis tabooed for anyone except adult men. The article provides a detailed description of the etymology of the most common Russian dirty words and expressions.

Zwiększenie czytelności wypowiedzi w polskim języku migowym przez animowaną wirtualną postać. Badania użytkowników z wykorzystaniem nowych technologii

Author(s): Anna IRASIAK,Elżbieta Sroka,Adam Piasecki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 19/2021

Research in construction of sign language avatars, which are computer-generated representations of linguistic phenomena, can be used to arrive at solutions facilitating communication with hearing-impaired persons. The clarity of content of the sign communication is particularly important for its recipient. As part of its project “How to Increase the Comprehensibility of Utterances in the Polish Sign Language through Animated Virtual Assistant”, the research network Łukasiewicz – Instytut Technik Innowacyjnych EMAG from Katowice (Ł-EMAG)23 has undertaken research with a view to evaluating the efficacy of the Polish Sign Language (PJM) through a virtual assistant; the other objective is to single out those traits which most contribute to satisfactory reception and comprehension of communication. The present article reports on the comparative studies conducted so far, which include surveys and in-depth interviews with hearing-impaired users of sign language by means of dedicated research tools. The first (introductory) stage consisted in gathering users’ opinions on the comprehensibility of the sign language of the first created avatar, including features which either facilitate of hinder communication as well as the level of experience of hearing-impaired persons in the use of on-line translators. In the second stage, a model of a 3D virtual assistant was developed, which took into consideration all the above-mentioned features facilitating or hindering communication. This part of the research yielded data concerning the comprehensibility of the virtual avatar as well as users’ comparison of the two avatars.

Polskojęzyczna przestrzeń internetowa wokół powieści Hobbit, czyli tam i z powrotem Johna Ronalda Reuela Tolkiena

Author(s): Michał Rogoż,Emanuel Studnicki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2020

The Internet is a unique place that allows for tracking and analyzing the reception of literary works while considering various trends shaping the evolution of cultural contexts in which the literary contents exist today. Using benchmarking analysis tools, such as Google Trends, answerthepublic.com and Senuto, the authors analyzed 4 phrases related to The Hobbit, or there and back again by J.R.R. Tolkien. The results depict the network structure associated with 3 terms referring to characters in the novel and 1 name pertaining to fantasy geography. By analogy, the interest in these terms has been shown for the period between 2004 and 2020. Particular attention was drawn by the role of film adaptations in shaping the online discourse on Tolkien’s novels. Similarities and differences highlighted by the structure of the webspace in two temporal periods have also been recorded. The side contexts are evidenced by numerous questions related to the phrases of interest as well as various parts of speech cited in reference to those topics. The study confirmed the Internet’s unification indicating the primacy of consumption over deepener critical reflection, the advantage of marketing contents and the resulting hybridization of popular culture.

Geschichte und Gegenwart der kaschubisch-polnisch-deutschen Sprachkontakte

Author(s): PIOTR BARTELIK / Language(s): German Issue: 75/2019

This contribution examines various aspects of historical and contemporary language contacts between Kashubian, Polish and German (and its dialects), which are excellent examples of heterogeneous and correlated processes, mechanisms and tendencies with phylogenetic, contact-induced and normative background. Beginning with a wide historical context of language contact, which has been illustrated with lexemes of particular language contact stages and which can be characterized mainly with the phenomena of diglossia and triglossia, the survey concentrates on the contemporary, normative status of German loanwords. On the basis of the investigated corpus, which has been collected from newer dictionaries of Kashubian, various tendencies in the language norm of contemporary Kashubian have been analyzed. These involve, above all, the processes of the substitution of assimilated German loans with native equivalents and their positioning in the hierarchy of a given lemma’s equivalents.

Magister, mistrz, majster – o drogach przenikania wyrazów łacińskich do polszczyzny

Author(s): Katarzyna Jasińska,Dariusz R. Piwowarczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 75/2019

This article deals with the ways in which Latin words entered the Polish language. The Latin word magister is discussed as an example of such a case. It is the source of 7 words that function in contemporary Polish: magister, mistrz, majster, maestro, metr, mister, master. Each of the quoted nouns was borrowed into Polish through the medium of various languages. The article discusses the origins of the Latin word magister, along with its corresponding forms in Polish in the form of direct (magister, maestro, metr) and indirect (mistrz, majster, master, mister) loans. In a discussion of the quoted loans, attention is given to the medium through which each of these words entered Polish, to the time of their appearance in the recipient language, as well as to the phonetic and semantic adaptation of the loanwords.

Wpływy czeskie w kształtowaniu się polskich wykładników intensyfikacji

Author(s): Barbara Mitrenga / Language(s): Polish Issue: 75/2019

The article describes Polish exponents of intensification of Czech origin. The detailed analysis includes intensifiers which are equivalents of Old Bohemian přieliš, i.e. bezlisz, brzezlisz, przelisz, przezlisz and przylisz, the expression na porząd and the unit wielmi. The paper focuses on their origin, meaning, text frequency, scope of use in ancient texts and functioning in the history of Polish. The analysis shows that the above-mentioned Bohemisms existed mainly in Old Polish and in the 16th century, which was a time when the Polish literature was developing under the Czech influence. The influence of the Czech language on the development of Polish exponents of intensification was not strong. This is evidenced by the low frequency of the analyzed forms in the few monuments of the Polish language of that period.

Wpływ logiki formalnej na kształtowanie się polskiej terminologii gramatycznej w drugiej połowie XX wieku

Author(s): Maciej Grochowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 76/2020

The generation of the Polish language theoreticians who were born in the 1930s and started their scientific activity in the 1950s searched for new methods of the grammatical description of Polish. The methodology of European structuralism and formal logic had a significant influence on numerous studies on Polish grammar authored by Andrzej Bogusławski, Stanisław Karolak, Zuzanna Topolińska, and by other scholars of the same generation. They used terms taken from functional and sentential calculi, and created new ones that were based on logical terminology. The article first discusses two basic terms used in logic, namely, predicate and implication, to then address two sets of grammatical terms which are based on the logical terms. The first set includes terms such as e.g. predicative expression, predicate-argument structure, whereas the other set contains terms such as semantic implication, contradiction.

O wieloznaczności i funkcjonalności terminu dopowiedzenie. Na przykładzie nowotestamentalnych apokryfów staropolskich

Author(s): Olga Ziółkowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 76/2020

The article contributes to the discussion about the possibility of transferring terms between diachronic and synchronic linguistics. Using the term dopowiedzenie (‘apposition’) as an example, we address homonymy and confront various definitions that can be found in the literature. The examples analysed in the article are sourced in Old Polish New Testament apocrypha (Historyja trzech kroli ‘The history of the Three Kings’ and Rozmyślania dominikańskie ‘Dominican Meditations’). The term dopowiedzenie was defined by Laskowski and adopted by, among others, Grochowski, Wiśniewski, Dobaczewski. The definitions in which apposition is seen as an asyntagmatic and contextually dependent unit have been created on the basis of synchronic research and assume, to a large extent, appealing to the language competence of the speaker. Most examples cited in such articles are invented, i.e. created deliberately by the writer. Problems with the adaptation of a term that has developed in the field of synchronic research to diachronic research were already pointed out by Pastuchowa, who suggested that a historical linguist should take language material as a starting point. This, in turn, leads to an observation that the proposed definition and the criteria for the identification of apposition are not applicable to old material. Moreover, the term thus defined is non-intuitive. The term dopowiedzenie was also used by Krążyńska to describe one of the medieval techniques of expanding simple sentences. In this approach, however, the term is blurred, imprecise, although intuitive. Most probably the term was not adapted from one research area to another, but it was created independently. The reason for this can be its transparent word-formation structure and intuitive understanding. It is difficult to propose clear and unambiguous criteria for the extraction of appositions from Old Polish texts. This is due to the fact that we do not know whether a particular language element is an integral part of a sentence (constituent) or whether it is secondary, added (with or without the use of a conjunction). Examining the origin (e.g. the use of a rhetorical figure, the glosses incorporated secondarily in the main text) or the range of the added meanings does not help in resolving the issue. It is the knowledge of the written relic and scholarly intuition that seem to be the key.

Korzyści poznawcze z dyskursologicznego spojrzenia na teksty dawne (przypadek renesansowej polemiki religijnej)

Author(s): Magdalena Hawrysz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 78/2022

The study discusses the cognitive benefits of a discourse-oriented reading of old texts whose confessional polemic discourse of the Reformation period becomes meaningful again. The object of research are the communicative aspects of language and the various dimensions of socio-cultural life. The aim of the analysis is not so much discussing the characteristics of the code, but the description of its users, seen as subjects of discourse, and of the relations among them, of their knowledge system, ways of thinking about the world, basic concepts, ideas and values (or rather their profiles) contained in discourse, the communication strategies used, as well as the cultural and social conditions and institutional framework in which the discourse takes place. While on the one hand, from the research perspective, all these parameters make up the characteristics of discourse, on the other, the category of discourse allows for a consistent inclusion of such diverse properties in its description.

Zapomniana gramatyka języka polskiego Ignacego Trąbczyńskiego (1778)

Author(s): Marcin Jakubczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 78/2022

Applying research methodology used in the history of linguistics, we present the content and reception of the first printed French-language grammar book of Polish (Grammaire raisonnée ou Principes de la langue Polonaise… [Rational grammar or Principles of the Polish language…]). Selected issues presented in this grammar book are discussed in relation to both previous and subsequent grammatical descriptions, which allows to determine which of them refer to linguistic tradition (e.g. certain problems in the field of syntax) and which are innovative (e.g. the perception of perfective and imperfective verbs). We also verify selected opinions about the analysed grammar book, formulated since the early 19th century. The paper is the first study in linguistic literature devoted entirely to Trąbczyński’s grammar.

Pejzaż onimiczny a kontakty językowe polsko-francuskie w XVII-wiecznych pamiętnikach François Paulina Dalairaca

Author(s): Rafał Zarębski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2022

The article discusses the landscape of proper names, understood as a kind of linguistic landscape adapted to the purposes of diachronic linguistics. The research material for further considerations was excerpted from the 17th-century memoir of François Paulin Dalairac, a courtier to Jan III Sobieski. It has been concluded that old texts from the field of ego-documents (including memoirs) in which different languages appeared have a significant potential for the study of the concept of linguistic landscape and contacts. The primary language of the analysed memoirs is French, but there are also passages in other languages (mainly Polish), which may have played an important role in the learning and improvement of the author’s Polish.

O wyrazie bestseller w polszczyźnie: częstotliwość, znaczenie, konteksty użycia

Author(s): Marcin Zabawa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2022

The aim of the present paper is to analyze the English borrowing bestseller used in Polish. The first part of the article provides a description of meanings and the frequency of use of the form bestseller in the source language, i.e. English; then, analysis of the frequency of use of the word bestseller in Polish is provided and definitions of the word available in Polish dictionaries are analyzed. The paper essentially focuses on discussing new contexts of use of the word in question, presented against the background of dictionary definitions (in both Polish and English dictionaries), and illustrated with numerous examples, taken primarily from the Internet. The article shows that although the word under scrutiny was initially used mainly with reference to books (and later also music and films), now it significantly expanded its scope and appears in various contexts, such as those connected with food in restaurants, hotel rooms or dance lessons. The final part of the article is devoted to normative assessment of the word bestseller in Polish: it does not pose any problems in connection with morphology, but it is not always the most appropriate form in a given context. It seems that sometimes marketing and advertising needs, rather than purely semantic ones, are given priority.

O pewnych i domniemanych edycjach dykcjonarza Mikołaja Volckmara

Author(s): Anna Lenartowicz-Zagrodna / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2022

Mikołaj Volckmar’s Dictionarium is the first translation dictionary in the history of Polish lexicography in which the Polish language was introduced as the source language (the Polish-Latin order of language sections was introduced in the second part of this dictionary). Although researchers have often been interested in this dictionary, publishing issues still raise doubts (for example, how many editions it actually had). The purpose of the study is to determine and to sort out unequivocally the dates and edition counts of Volckmar’s dictionary. Using information contained in the titles, prefaces, and privileges printed on the pages of the preserved copies, it was established that editions that certainly existed come from years: 1596, 1605, 1613, 1623, and 1624. Other dates of editions mentioned in the available literature (among others: 1559, 1595, 1599, 1620) should be considered false. The analysis also confirms that the alleged edition from 1594, which was mentioned very often and considered by many researchers to have been the first edition of this dictionary, in fact did not exist. The number of editions is still a problem to be explored — the numbering of the editions declared by the publisher is not the same as the number of preserved editions.

Pevnosť a voľnosť v slovoslede vedľajších vetných členov

Author(s): Ján Kačala / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 5/2023

The topic of this article revolves around the word order of subordinate clauses, particularly from the perspective of whether their position in relation to the superordinate clause element in the phrase is fixed. In cases where the superordinate clause element is moved, it is necessary to determine whether the subordinate clause element must also be moved alongside it, or whether it can remain in a free position, allowing for the word order to be rearranged freely within the sentence, with both syntagmatic components behaving independently. Based on this, subordinate clause elements can be categorized into two groups: those that maintain a fixed position in the word order arrangement of the phrase, which applies to postpositive non-agreeing and agreeing attributes, and those that allow for a free arrangement in the word order, typically found in phrases where the superordinate verb is followed by the object of action or by an adverbial determination. This distinction in word order also facilitates the differentiation between a non-agreeing postpositive attribute and an adverbial determination.

Jaka jest twoja ortografia?” Szkic o pisowni polskiej do połowy XIX w.

Author(s): Renata Makarewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2022

The article primarily concerns an approach to the core of conventionalised rules of spelling contained within the pronouns twoja (‘your(s)’) and nasza (‘our(s)’). The former symbolises a convention reached by a single person, usually the author of the published rules of spelling him- or herself. The latter is plural, which suggests that the convention was agreed upon by multiple persons, and thus, the published spelling should also be used by multiple persons. The aim of this article is to prove that Polish orthography only truly began after the 1830 publication of Rozprawy i wnioski o ortografii polskiej (‘Studies and Conclusions Regarding Polish Orthography’). The article takes an essay form and describes the situation in Polish spelling before the publication of Rozprawy i wnioski, which is a collection of theoretical articles written by the authorities of that period. The article also discusses the role that the dictionary edited by Samuel Bogumił Linde played in solidifying a single model of spelling of the registered lexemes. Furthermore, it provides short biographies of the authors of each study included in Rozprawy i wnioski and an overview of the core arrangements regarding non-conventionalised spelling. Each section of the article includes a commentary of its author.

Keď to, čo nepripomína jedlo, sa predsa len dá zjesť

Author(s): Dagmar Šimunová / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 5/2023

Cvičíme sed-ľahy alebo sedy-ľahy?

Author(s): Kristína Piatková / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 5/2023

Wariantywne wyrażenie dziesiąta, dziewiąta, siódma, piąta itp. woda na, po kisielu w słownikach i w tekstach

Author(s): Jolanta Ignatowicz-Skowrońska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2023

The research on the title expression was inspired by its semantic actualizations which come unnoted in majority of latest language dictionaries but are found in contemporary texts. The objective was to prove the thesis that in the contemporary Polish language the unit expands its real reference and takes on new meanings – this was done by the analysis of its notation in lexicographical collections and its use in old and contemporary Polish. The findings show that the title unit has had two shades of meaning – ‘very distant relative’ and ‘loose relationship of something with something’. The latter has been inconsistently noted in dictionaries, exemplified by one quote only and has not entered majority of lexicographical collections. The research proved also that the expression was subject to various modifications which made it a multiform unit whose components undergo semantization in certain actualizations. Certain formal transformations of the unit, namely the alternation of isomorphic components and prepositions like the change of preposition ‘na’ for preposition ‘po’ (… woda na kisielu → … woda po kisielu) facilitated the arising of new motivation of the phraseological unit which appeared in Polish as a borrowing.