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Stanisław Dubisz : Latin Influence on Polish
Latin is the language of the longest influence on Polish (11 centuries). For all that time, Latin was the language of the intellectual elite. The earliest Latin borrowings came in the Pre-Polish period. In the Old Polish period, indirect borrowings were predominant (through Czech and/or German), while, in the Middle Polish period, Latin influences appear on every level of the language system. Then there was a kind of language polyphony in public communication, associated with the processes of Latin and Italian borrowings' acquisition. In the history of Polish, Latin has satisfied the need to name new designates, the need of verbal expression, as well as the need to produce speech in sophisticated style and identity with sophisticated, i.e. Mediterranean culture.
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Bogusław Nowowiejski : German Impact on Polish in the Vocabulary Area
In many-century Polish-German linguistic contacts based on economy, politics and culture, German impact on standard Polish and its dialects was always greater than Polish impact on German, and it resulted in numerous borrowings, mainly formal-semantic, but also word formation and semantic ones. Thousands of German borrowings in standard Polish are an outcome of Christianity acquisition, medieval settlement based on the German law, the times of partition and German occupation. Many more words of German origin can be found in Polish dialects and jargons. Modern borrowings are usually historical or quotations in nature.
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Halina Karaś : Russian Dictionary Borrowings in Standard Polish - the Past and the Present
The subject of the description in the article is three levels of Russian dictionary borrowings: the oldest dating back to the pre-partition times, old ones from the partition times and later ones from Polish communist times. There is a presentation of types of the borrowings, chronology, reasons and ways of borrowing them, their quantity and quality characteristics, their word-formation and phrasal activeness, style, expressive quality and the degree of integration with the Polish lexical capacity. Depending on the research perspective - contemporary or historical, the general evaluation of Russian influence on Polish lexis is different. To a researcher of contemporary standard Polish, Russian influence in the lexical area is scarce (the 7th position as far as quantity is concerned in USJP in the lexical borrowings hierarchy). In the diachronic perspective, the latest Russian influence may be considered as significant as short-term. In general, Russian influence may be estimated as medium, taking into account its variety, its capacity in the past, featuring in different variations of Polish (territorial and social) as well as their short-term existence and a small extend of its integration with Polish.
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Elżbieta Sękowska : English Influence on Standard Polish Vocabulary
The article provides an outline of the main problems associated with the description of English influences on Polish. These are: typology of the borrowings, their chronology, semantic capacity, as well as their quantity, based on lexicographic sources and linguistic analyses.
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Józef Porayski-Pomsta : Lexical Borrowings from French in Contemporary Polish. Structural - Semantic Characteristics
The article offers a presentation of the capacity of lexical borrowings from French mentioned in Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego PWN (PWN Universal Polish Dictionary) edited by Stanisław Dubisz as well as their assimilation in Polish language system. Based on the quantity, morphological and semantic analyses of the borrowings, the author assumes the following:
- Vocabulary of French origin has a wide representation in contemporary standard Polish. It manifests in numerous entries and in various meanings of the lexis.
- A prevailing number of the borrowings have a form which is well adapted to Polish. Non-assimilated forms are mainly quotations and come from books.
- Assimilation of lexis in the Polish language system occurs by phonological and morphological means.
- Word formation formants are crucial among French borrowings.
- The research of foreign borrowings, based on standard Polish dictionaries, should be spread on specialist dictionaries and corpus studies. It might result in a wider view of the capacity and functions of this kind of vocabulary in Polish.
