The aim of this paper, concerning the first grammar book of Polish, published by a French, Piotr Statorius, in 1568, is to determine its significance in the history of Polish linguistics. First, the author presented Statorius’s biography and a general description of his work titled “Polonicae grammatices institutio”, with a focus on the influence this grammar book exerted on authors of later ones. Afterwards, he determined its position in the Polish linguistics by referring to the studies by S. Urbańczyk, who associated the beginning of the Polish linguistics with 1751 although he was not consistent about it. In order to get a new perspective on this problem, the author referred to the history of the European linguistics and presented the grammar book by Statorius against many grammar books of modern languages prepared in Europe in the 16th c. Finally, the author recalled the existing “Historia nauki polskiej” (“History of Polish science”) edited by B. Suchodolski (1970), where P. Rybicki recognised P. Statorius and J. Mączyński as the first representatives of “a scientific work on the Polish language”. The author supported this view by arguing in favour of moving the beginning of the Polish linguistics back by 200 years, that is to the 1560s.
This paper is dedicated to an analysis of morphological exponents of intensification, the origin of which in Polish is associated with Czech influences, i.e. prefixes na- and prze-, from the viewpoint of the history of language. Each of the two parts of the study discusses researchers’ opinions about the genesis of the prefixes, indicates the oldest formations containing them, and points to the frequency of the selected forms in Old Polish and in the 16th c. The observation of the language material excerpted from the studies by e.g. K. Kleszczowa, M. Karpluk and S. Urbańczyk, and from lexicographic and corpus-based sources showed that the adjectival intensives with na- were restricted in Polish to rare accounts in Old Polish and in the 16th c. (nasilny (extremely strong)). The intensification prefix prze- has remained present in the contemporary language in examples such as przemiły (extremely nice), yet the scope of its usage has changed over the ages, since formations based on adjectives marked negatively (przezły (extremely bad)) have vanished.
This paper presents the results of stylistic and semantic research on Middle Polish vocabulary represented by 300 nominal names excerpted from selected works by Wacław Potocki (1621–1696). The insufficient number of studies dedicated to stylistics of the 17th-century lexis encouraged the author to carry out the analyses. Based on the works by A. Markowski and D. Buttler, which describe methods of identifying common inflection vocabulary of the contemporary Polish, the author makes an attempt to apply similar examinations to old lexis. By means of vocabulary research and her own analyses, she separates, among others, sets of expressive, specialist and erudite vocabulary from the collected material, which in turn permits her to distinguish a group of neutral, stylistically unmarked, lexis from among 300 nouns. The employment of the structuralist method of semantic fields for Middle Polish common words enables the development of a thematic grid representing the distribution of the studied units in individual classes of real meanings. A comparative analysis of the semantic layer of the common vocabulary in two distant historical phases confirms a high stability and universal anthropocentrism of this part of the lexical resource of Polish.
This paper presents a fragment of research on the history of the Polish geographical vocabulary. In the 18th century, geography became a separate discipline of modern knowledge and, in consequence, also an independent school subject. Handbooks are valuable sources in analysing discipline-related lexis, in particular in the period when this word resource was formed in the Polish language. This paper discusses various methods of introducing and explaining geographical vocabulary that are applied in handbooks, and the characteristics of the lexis of those days, such as vague distinctions of semantic scopes of lexemes, lack of stabilisation of the resource. The examinations of the material enable the observation of the evolving crystallisation process of the Polish geographical vocabulary. Handbooks have undoubtedly played a significant role in popularising geographical lexis.
The scope of the author’s interests covers medical vocabulary, with a particular focus on names of diseases. In this paper, she focused on observing the development of Polish names of diseases in the period from the 18th to the 20th century, when the development was most dynamic. The author based her analysis on the lexicographical material composed of over 500 lexical units. The excerpted names of diseases were first classified and then analysed in terms of their presence in a given period. Based on the results of the analysis, the author made an attempt to formulate an answer to the question how the Polish medical terminology regarding names of diseases was formed in the examined timeframe, what changes occurred there, and in what percentage the contemporary nomenclature of diseases consists of the 18th-, 19th- and 20th century terminology.
In methodological terms, this study falls into the stream of structural linguistics as regards diachronic research, since the object of the examination is a section of the lexical resource coming from the Modern Polish period (the 18th-20th c.).
This paper is an attempt to recreate the cooperation between Bronisław Trentowski and the Vilnius lexicography team as part of Słownik języka polskiego (Dictionary of Polish), which was developed in Vilnius in the 19th c. and published by Maurycy Orgelbrand. Przedmowa (Preface), published in the dictionary, and some of the correspondence preserved in its editions were used as sources.
