This paper presents difficulties in adapting Ancient Greek borrowings in Polish and the problem with declension of some Hellenic loanwords in Polish. The Attic-Ionic lexeme δῆμος (Mycenaean da-mo [da:mos], Doric and Aeolic δᾶμος) m. ‘a country-district, country, land; the people of a country, the commons’, pl. ‘townships’, was adopted in the 19th or the 20th century into the Polish language in two forms: demos and dem. The former appellative is usually treated as an indeclinable noun and sometimes as a declinable noun (e.g. nom. sing. demos, gen. sing. demosu). The most popular form used in Polish is dem. Unfortunately, the declension of dem is not fi rmly established in the Polish dictionaries. Some of them recommend the declensional forms: dem, gen. sing. dema. However, a different declension (gen. sing. demu) can be found in numerous scientific and popular works devoted to Ancient Greece, as well as in Polish translations of the Hellenic literature. The author suggests the preservation of the traditional declensional paradigm: nom. sing. dem, gen. sing. demu.
This paper touches upon the reflections on Polish as expressed by Canadian students learning the language in the university setting. The opinions excerpted from the students’ essays regard the power and prestige of as well as stereotypes about the language. They differ by the origin of the respondents: Polish, Slavic (non-Polish) and foreign. The findings may constitute implications for building strategies for the promotion of Polish abroad and projections of the ethnolinguistic vitality of Polish in Canada.
This paper discusses a bilingual French-Polish thematic dictionary titled Nomenclature ou Recueil de mots des plus usites & très nécessaires à savoir (Nomenclature or collection of the most common and useful words) by F.D. Duchênebillot, which was fi rst published in 1699 in Warsaw as one of several parts of the manual titled Nouvelle méthode très facile pour apprendre à lire, écrire et parler français (A new way to learn how to read, write and speak French easily and quickly) (both titles are provided also in Polish). This first dictionary juxtaposing French and Polish without intermediation of other languages (e.g. Latin) in the history of European lexicography is a significant although still a little-known evidence of old Polish-French linguistic and cultural relationships. It was reissued as many as twelve times over the 18th century, which proves its high popularity among the then-recipients in Poland. The described nomenclator was examined in the paper in light of two research methodologies: metalexicography, based on which the macro- and microstructure of the dictionary was analysed, and history of language, which served as a perspective for looking chiefly into borrowings from French in the Polish language of those times. This study contains the first analysis of this work in the relevant literature (it was merely mentioned before).
This paper proposes an interpretation of synonymic chains in old legal texts as exponents of rhetoric and erudition competences rather than aspiration for precision, which deviates from the prevailing approaches. The author argues that the difficulty with specifying the pragmatic function of the added synonym, e.g. in binomials such as wyleganiec albo bękart (a bastard), kradziona albo złupiona (rzecz) (stolen (thing)), or pomocy albo ratunku (help), etc., in a satisfying manner encourages the association of their origin with the rhetoric education of that period and their interpretation as a stylistic mannerism. The arguments in favour of the formulated thesis include also: a high evaluation of the stylistic value of synonyms in Antique and Renaissance rhetoric (e.g. Erasmus of Rotterdam) and the presence of binomials in old writings (until the end of the 18th century) regardless of the stylistic variant or genre. The presented interpretation of synonymic chains enables their overall evaluation with no differentiation of the functions of individual usages and in particular assignment of the opposite stylistic values to them, for instance sublimity and colloquialism, artistic and functional values.
The first part of this paper characterises advisory in the media and the specificity of the relationship between the adviser and the advisee is explained in a further section. Following a brief definition of the advisory article, which allows for the asymmetrical sender-recipient relationship, the paper discusses all components of the described press genre (initiation components, the main text, additional components) in esoteric magazines such as „Wróżka” (“Fortune Teller”), „Gwiazdy mówią” (“Stars speek”), and „Uzdrawiacz” (“Healer”). The characteristics of the genre were supported with specific examples from the abovementioned periodicals.
