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Rafał Zarębski : Polish-French bilingualism from the diachronic perspective – the state of the research and research postulates.
This paper discusses the current state of research on
Polish-French contacts and Polish-French bilingualism. It
describes examples of language contacts reflected in nonliterary
texts from various periods in the history of Polish
written by bilinguals (both those for whom Polish was the
first language and French – the second one, and those for
whom Polish was the second language). The study presents
also the following research postulates: to cover the most
extensive (also in chronological terms) corpus of texts
documenting Polish-French and French-Polish
bilingualism possible by the research, to analyse bilingual
speech of individuals with an average feel for language and
not too high language awareness, to include the instances
of French-Polish bilingualism where French was the first
language, which have been ignored to date.
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Ewa Woźniak : Diaries as a source of the history of Polish in the interwar period.
This paper argues that it is necessary to extend the
source base used in the research on the history of
language focusing on the interwar period by e.g.
autobiographical texts. Diaries of some representatives of
the political elite of that time (Julian Nowak, Jan Jacyna
and Maciej Rataj), subjected to study-related excerption,
proved to be a valuable source enabling the layer of
unofficial vocabulary of the political life in the reborn
Polish state to be revealed. The analysis covered the lexis
describing the organisation and functioning in the new
reality of the legislature and executive. The collected
material is evidence of the modern character of this
nomenclature, which has been continued in the
contemporary political discourse. According to the author,
it is an argument confirming the thesis on the
groundbreaking nature of the changes in the lexical
resource of the Polish language after the country regained
its independence, which also encourages the
acknowledgement that the interwar period was the
beginning of the new era in periodising the history of
Polish.
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Radosław Pawelec : How to name you will only know the one who has lost you – a thing on niepodległość (independence).
Until the end of the 18th century, the word niepodległy
(independent) was rarely used in Polish and had a slightly
different meaning than it has today. The semantic change
occurs after the loss of independence, which is also the
period when the noun niepodległość (independence), which
refers to the political independence of a state, comes into
use. Old and new semantic elements are present in both
words over successive decades of the 19th century as the
development process of a new meaning is quick: it takes
one generation. Axiological phenomena are equally
dynamic; in the romanticists’ world of values independence
is ranked very high. Its devaluation, which can be noticed
in some utterances and statements from the past three
decades, is a slow process and it does not seen to influence
the semantics of the word or its functioning in the
language.
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Beata Raszewska-Żurek : Obyczaj (a custom) in the Old and Middle Polish period. An attempt to reconstruct the old undrestanding of values.
This paper is dedicated to analysing valuation
methods associated with the social concept OBYCZAJ
(CUSTOM) in the Old and Middle Polish periods. The records
where the main exponent of the concept, the lexeme
obyczaj, is valuated in terms of morality. Such a valuation
is manifested in various manners: the occurrence of the
lexeme obyczaj in contexts shared with the names of other
values, the existence of derivatives that are positively
marked in terms of axiology and an antonym together with
negatively marked derivatives, and finally, attachment of
evaluative epithets to obyczaj. The initial three valuation
manners show that obyczaj was perceived as a name of a
value, yet the abundance of negatively market epithets
(along with many positive ones) undermines such a
conclusion. It seems that obyczaj was presented in Old and
Medium Polish texts as a model value on the one hand,
and as its realisation in practical behaviours, in which
case it was characterised by axiological ambivalence, on
the other hand. Old social concepts were particularly
susceptible to evaluation in ethical terms and were often
considered as values albeit at times unobvious ones.
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Stanisław Dubisz : On table manners.
The festive custom and culinary vocabulary are two
components of the Polish culture which have undergone
intensive transformations. Originally, in the Old Polish
period, the lexical field of this vocabulary covered between
one and two hundred units, in the Middle Polish period – a
few hundred units, and nowadays – a few thousand units.
At the same time, both lexis and customs have been
subject to continuous internationalisation processes,
which have intensified in particular over the past two
hundred years. At present, native words constitute ca. 30%
of the lexis falling into this field, and borrowings – ca. 50%.
The vocabulary common to various variants of Polish
(including ones with the Proto-Slavic and Old Polish origin)
is strongly present in native lexis.
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Paulina Michalska-Górecka : Names of followers of Islam in the 16th-century Polish.
The aim of this paper is to discuss the names given to
followers of Islam against the names given to followers of
sects and other religions in the 16th century in the context
of their origin and textual extension. Its material basis is
Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku (Dictionary of the 16thcentury
Polish), both the elaborated volumes of the lexicon
and the material from the index. There are 16 names
referring to followers of Islam recorded there: alkoranista,
beserman, bezermaniec, białogłowiec, bisurmaniec,
bisurmanin, bursoman, mahomet, mahometan,
mahometczyk, mahometysta, missurmanin, musulman,
nowoobrzezaniec, turczyn, turek. The number arises, on
the one hand, from the political and religious situation of
that time and hence, from the topicality of the issue, and
on the other hand, from the phonic acquisition of foreign
lexemes, which usually came to Polish indirectly, through
medium languages. The analysis of the material shows
that the names were coined according to four patterns,
which are analogous to those applied when creating other
denominations. Their fates in the Polish language varied:
some turned out to be ephemera coined by a given author,
and the use of others went beyond the 16th century.
