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Katarzyna Sobolewska : Dialectologists’ transcripts as a historical source
The author of this texts proposes a new
application of dialectologists’ transcripts – as a source
of authentic autobiographical accounts useful in the
research on oral history. She presents and discusses a
transcript of an interview given to linguists and
students of dialectology by Maria Sztrecel, a resident of
Kwik, a village in the Masuria region, near the town of
Pisz, in 1951. What emerged from the informant’s
replies to the questions included in the dialectal
questionnaire was a local, emotional and unofficial
version of history told in the purest dialect.
As a result of the post-war change of borders, the
community and culture of the inhabitants of the
Masuria and Warmia regions were doomed to
annihilation. The dialectologists’ transcripts collected
at that time could help in the research conducted by
historians, ethnographers and culture experts on the
pace, course and costs of the process.
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Irena Bogocz : West Cieszyn Silesia dialectal vocabulary – an attempt to grasp the topic
This paper discusses specifically the language
situation in the Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia, where
a few language codes are used in communication:
the traditional West Cieszyn dialect, Czech – both
colloquial and standard, and – among members of the
Polish national minority – "scholastic" literary Polish.
While describing the situation where such codes can
overlap and mix, the author makes an attempt at
a presentation of the universal processes shaping
trans-dialectal variants which occur also in other
multi-ethnic and multi-lingual regions. This concerns
speaking “po našymu” (“our own language”), which can
be affected by other language codes (a dialect, majority
language, minority language) at any level of the
linguistic system (phonetics and phonology,
morphology, syntax and lexicology/phraseology). The
author focuses on the lexical layer and discusses
the question of what a dialect vocabulary actually is,
which of its parts are usually included in dialect
dictionaries (lexicons), how dialect users actually speak
when they do not use the “pure” dialect, etc. The
author presents her theses on the basis of a language
material contained in two – partly similar and partly
different – dialect dictionaries.
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Elżbieta Michow : On the excessive popularity of the commemorative model in popular etymologies of place names
This paper concerns a noticeable and intensifying
tendency for excessive popularisation of the semantic
commemorative model in popular etymologies of place
names. It discusses popular etymologies of a few
toponyms and the motivations popularised in the region
(inconsistent with the findings of onomastics): Wąchock :
wywąchały (smelled out); Kielce : kieł (a canine); Opoczno
: Opocz (Opocza), no, no!; Gniezno : gniazdo (a nest);
Bydgoszcz : Byd (to wake up), Gost (to stay up); Żywiec :
Żyw (alive), on the example of selected culture-based
texts. The proposed thesis provides that the primary
and principal cause of the heyday and popularisation of
commemorative semantics of toponyms is a coincidence
of contemporary factors such as: development of
regionalism as a social and cultural movement, care for
the cultural values of the homeland, regional education
development and model, implementation of regional EU
projects, implementation of local marketing and
promotion strategies pursued for business, in particular
tourist, purposes, and the regional megalomania related
to the creation of the cultural and literary Origin Myth of
the primitive settlement and its inhabitants. Etymological
and onomastic methodologies, which allow for the
specificity of the toponymic material and popular
thinking, were applied to the analysis of the popular
toponyms.
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Ewa Rogowska : On the topographic motivation in folk etymologies of Polish toponyms
This paper contains an analysis of selected folk
etymologies of Polish place names, which – based on
the semantic interpretation of their folk etymology –
can be classified as topographic names, and describes
the mechanism of making such reinterpretations.
The paper distinguishes a few types of such toponyms:
1) original possessive, family or patronymic names
formed based on anthroponyms corresponding to the
name of an animal, plant or another element of the
landscape, referring directly to the motivational basis
of such an anthroponym, 2) other names classified by
folk etymologists as topographic ones due to their
pronunciation similar to that of words associated
explicitly with the world of nature, 3) names classified
by folk etymologists as topographic ones despite their
alleged basic word belonging to the group of words
which do not usually constitute bases of place names.
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Anna Kłaczyńska : Anthroponym-based derivatives with the English origin
The contemporary Polish language is under
increasingly stronger influences of the English
language. This process can be noticed primarily in the
growing number of lexical borrowings. Some
Anglicisms owe their origin to those who had enormous
impact on the development of science, culture, art,
social life, e.g. darwinizm (Darvinism) < Ch.R. Darwin,
thatcheryzm/taczeryzm (Thatcherism) < M. Thatcher,
baskerville (Baskerville) < J. Baskerville. Their names,
through the process of appelativisation, as well as
borrowing and derivational processes, have become
symbols of their achievements. Hence, there are words
coming from English anthroponymic names in today’s
Polish. This paper presents a collection and specificity
of this type of lexemes codified in the largest dictionary
of foreign words – Wielki słownik wyrazów obcych PWN
(PWN great dictionary of foreign words) (2005), edited
by M. Bańko, with the etymology, semantics,
adaptation and word-formation processes in Polish
taken into account. It also presents the phenomenon of
the interference of English in a positive light as it
establishes the relation of the word not only with its
meaning but also with its origin in the consciousness
of the language user.
