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Adam Pawłowski : Polish Language Today and in the Future
The subject of the article is the development of Polish language in the 21st century. In the paper, special attention is drawn to techniques used to foresee language development. There is a presentation of scholarly literature concerning Polish language development in the 19th and 20th centuries. Analyzing possible changes in 21st-century Polish, a division has been made into external and internal linguistics. The internal one includes such phenomena as: growing analytical character, higher nominalization, an appearance of the definite article, more positional character, simplification of linguistic structures in mass communication, faster vocabulary exchange and diminished vocabulary associated with rural tradition and agriculture as well as a decrease of the vocabulary of Slavonic origin. The external linguistics includes the following phenomena: Polish becoming similar to other European languages, higher prestige in Mid-Eastern Europe, demographic stabilization, lower position of Polish as a scientific and scholarly language, weaker national categories in language defining, creation of the norm of minimal communicability, the process of regional disintegration, predominant influence of communication technologies on language development.
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Antonina Grybosiowa : On a Few Aspects of Barriers in Intergenerational Communication
An attempt to seize the Polish language in its dynamic development is based on two major concepts introduced to the social communication theory; these are communication competence and intergenerational barrier. As far as the former is concerned, the external factors determining culture, including language, cause that the language carriers must continually correct and enrich their competence so as not to expose themselves to the consequences of unfortunate discrepancies in discourse. If, for example, a representative of the %grandpas generation’ has an ambition to catch up with the %grandchildren generation’, s/he should understand the language games the young play (życie na maksa %life to the max’, luzik %being cool’, ścieżka %motorway’). If the young are anxious to have proper contacts with the elderly, they should respect a minimum of polite forms (pan/pani %Sir/Madame’) contact, a few basic speech acts (e.g. making requests, saying thank you) and a concept of keeping a distance in relations with others, superiors, the older.
The paper includes examples of the barriers appearing when both generations do not realize the above mentioned rules. The generation of the ones born BEFORE 1989 and of those born AFTER the date keep distancing themselves from each other every single day.
An influx of English acronyms surprises all. Students asked about the meaning of Hi-Fi acronym are still able to decipher it, but in case of High Definition (the language of advertising), they are helpless. They cannot catch up with absorbing foreign elements, they lose a considerable part of cultural heritage (e.g. mówienie kimś – Przyborą %speaking somebody – Przybora’).
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Urszula Żydek-Bednarczuk : Information Society and Linguistic Norm Issues
Contemporary times dominated by technologies create a new image of a man communicating in the information society. The situation requires another view on the linguistic norm. The analysis is focused on how to handle the norm in the categories of skills: linguistic, social, pragmatic and communicative. What the norm also includes is the criteria of functionality, variability and dynamics. There are changes and shifts going on within communication. They bring about changes in the language norm criteria. The notion of norm acquires a special meaning in written texts, internet ones, as they characterize with: lack of the border between a creator, a critic and a repetitive follower, a verbal process transforming into an image making one, an unstable, fragmentary text, economy of linguistic means, language creativity, appearance of English forms, functionality of linguistic means, the change of the esthetic criterion, the change of identifying function of language. Such texts need the user to work out new linguistic and communicative competence which would cover the following 4 areas: linguistic, pragmatic, discursive and strategic.
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Agata Rozumko : Winged Words, %Proverbial Creations’ or Proverbs? New English Proverbs in Contemporary Polish
The subject of this article is the use of sayings considered to be contemporary English proverbs in Polish, and their status in Polish. The appearance of new proverbs in Polish, both native and borrowed from other languages, has not received much scholarly attention. The present analysis concerns 9 sayings regarded as new proverbs in Anglo-American paremiology. These are: Gentlemen prefer blondes, Diamonds are a girl’s best friends, It takes two to tango, If you can%t have what you like, you must like what you have,There%s no such thing as a free lunch, The murderer [criminal] always returns to the scene of the crime, Figures dont lie, The camera doesn%t lie, You can%t tell a book by its cover. The first four are included in the collection Skrzydlate Słowa (Winged Words) by H. Markiewicz and A. Romanowski (Cracow 2005), the other ones are not listed in any collections of %winged words’, Polish proverbs or proverbial phrases. The study is based on the author%s corpus of Polish Internet sources, comprising online versions of newspaper articles, political, economic and social commentaries, various Internet forums, and advertisements. In the analyzed sources, the sayings appear with such qualifiers as %a proverb’, %a folk saying’ and are used as to comment on various social situations, which suggests that they have acquired the status of proverbs in the intuitive judgments of many Polish people.
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Agnieszka Bal : Romantic Neologisms to Name Color Qualities in Poetic Writings by J.B. Zaleski
The article refers to the words introduced by J.B. Zaleski, the representative of the Ukrainian school in Polish Romantic poetry, which define color qualities, which in turn might be classified as neologisms (both word-forming and semantic ones). Neologisms are a crucial element of the romantic style and serve mainly expressive purposes. Words not registered in dictionaries but enumerated in T. Skubalanka’s paper (1962), acquired the status of neologisms. The article presents an analysis of word formation, semantic structure and stylistic function of those words. It shows how the neologism functions in the poetic context. The distinction of neologisms is supposed to serve characteristics of the author’s individual language. Among word-formation neologisms, there are: eight verbs (including three participles), five adjectives (including three complex ones) and a noun. Semantic neologisms are represented here by two nouns (białogłowa and pokrasa). There are forms referring to Russian and Ukrainian lexis: pokrasa (neosemantic), syzopióry and zielono-kosy. The neologisms in Zaleski’s writings have mainly expressive function – they highlight the beauty of the described landscape (orumieniowa water) or they suggest the pessimistic mood (czarno-żałobne (%black-funeral’ shadows). The poet uses neologisms to describe a designate more clearly or to underline one of its qualities (starzec białagłowa %a whiteheaded old man’, anioł w krasie śnieżej %a snow white angel’, brzoza zielono-kosa %a green-saw birch). Creating neologisms informing about color qualities, the author also referred to the cultural color symbolism.
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Marek Cieszkowski,
Jolanta Mędelska : Unknown and Uncommon Lexical Germanisms (Based on the Dictionary of Language Errors by Julian Szwed)
The authors analyzed some of 180 lexical Germanisms, excerpted from the Dictionary of Language Errors by Julian Szwed (Vilnius, 1931). Their study focused on the 50 borrowings from German that were not recorded by the most relevant definitional Polish dictionaries.
The discussed group of Germanisms does not consist, as one could assume, of occasional loans, as J. Szwed recorded only common language errors. Unknown and uncommon loan words from German are ephemeredes, and besides this, they are the units limited to narrow territorial scope or having a very narrow circle of users (e.g. people of the same profession). The Germanisms excerpted from the Vilnius language guide do not come from the Vilnius Polish language.
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Halina Horodyska : Two Hundred Years of Słownik języka polskiego (The Dictionary of Polish) by Samuel Bogumił Linde
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Grzegorz Dąbkowski : On the Language of Musical Writings by Karol Szymanowski
The analysis of musical writings by the great Polish composer Karol Szymanowski provides us with the image of a man of sophisticated intellectual culture and outstanding sensitivity, certainly over-sensitive about himself, awareness of his own value as an artist and an exceptional literary talent.
