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The author assumes that etymological analyses are “ethnolinguistically relevant” because by reconstructing the motivation of names, etymology allows one to reach the methods of linguistic conceptualization of phenomena and objects. He discusses the words świat ‘world’, kwiat ‘flower’, and gwiazda ‘star’ (endorsing Brückner’s and Sławski’s thesis that they all belong to a single etymological nest),...
The article discusses the influence of ecclesiastical language on standard Polish. It first presents the the faults of this variety, and then some examples of the ecclesiastical vocabulary. The author examines in particular one verb that is typical of contemporary ecclesiastical language, ubogacać (się) / ubogacić (się) ‘to enrich (oneself)’. She analyses its historical and present day meaning, its...
The article investigates the relationship between two directions in modern linguistics, the structural and the functional. The author critically appreciates the commonly held opinion about the opposition of these linguistic paradigms, and shows that structuralism largely bases on a functional analysis. Structuralism was a continuation of the functional approach, which diffused across the humanities...
So far, emblems have been considered a consistent and speech-independent gesture code. This paper attempts to track the function that they play in a natural dialogue. The footage we used to study emblematic gestures, contained such TV programmes where participants can be observed in the situation of unrehearsed dialogue, as it is then that the function of their emblematic gestures is enriched with...
Nicholas Marr and his theory, mostly called the Japhetic theory or just Marrism, are not popular and well-known to modern students of linguistics. The aim of the present study is, then, to offer a concise presentation including both data about the Marrism and this author’s own interpretation of some common (albeit to a considerable extent incorrect) statements.
Starting with B. Groicki’s Słowa prawne w rzeczy sobie podobne (1567), the paper presents the history of legal terms relating to the court procedure: apelacyja ‘appeal’, mocyja ‘judge reprimand’, odesłanie ‘referral’, dawność ‘non-claim’, zasiedzenie ‘usucaption’. Appeal was first practiced in Poland under the Magdeburg Rights, and only since the first quarter of the 16th century also in the and law...
More than two million people emigrated from Poland after the accession to the European Union. Most of them were young, and future parents. In the coming years, Polish diaspora will grow by several thousand children born outside of their parents’ homeland. These children will, and already do, face the necessity of reconciling the awareness of their Polish roots with the need to find their place inside...
The paper discusses the individuality of the phrases niemniej, niemniej jednak, niemniej przeto, and tym niemniej (‘nonetheless’ &c.). It is suggested that niemniej jednak and niemniej przeto are compounds, because the elements niemniej, jednak, and przeto represent in them different groups of inference particles. The phrases niemniej and tym niemniej are considered to be semantically close but,...
The subject of this cultural-linguistic overview are more than ten epitaph plaques preserved till this day on the walls of Cracow churches. Erected far from the actual burial place, so-called groby dusz ‘soul graves’ were primarily meant to assist the soul of the deceased on its way to salvation. The set of monuments discussed in the paper is distinguished by the strictly defined construction scheme...
Adverbial participles are often mentioned as one of the defining features of the Polish Biblical style. This is certainly an accurate view with regard to the older translations of the Bible, but it requires to be verified with regard to modern attempts. The paper analyses the frequency and the typical use of adverbial participles in seven modern Polish translations of the Bible, and tests whether...
The paper presents some considerations on the lexical development of Polish. It concentrates on the issues of word-formative enlargement of vocabulary. Against the background of analogy, compensation, and extra- and intralinguistic borrowing, it discusses the possible continuants of feminine names (adjectives and diminutives), and of masculine names of professions that were traditionally reserved...
The paper discusses combinations of words which, due to their ambivalent grammatical status, are suspended on the borderline between lexis and syntax. The considerations aim to expose the ineffectiveness of the identification procedures of lexical units in the process of unambiguous interpretation of such objects as ktoś jest pod presją czasu ‘someone is under time pressure’ or rozebrać na czynniki...
The paper attempts to synthesize and revise the views on wishing and congratulating as specific speech acts which are represented in Polish by the performative verbs życzę, życzymy ‘I/we wish’, winszuję, winszujemy ‘I/we congratulate’, by optative formulas based on aspect operators (niech, oby, aby, żeby ‘let’, ‘so that’ &c.), and sometimes also by imperative sentences. It examines the conditions...
The paper discusses the problem of identification of a special type of modern Polish verbs that do not inflect for person. In the literature, they are known as czasowniki niewłaściwe, literally ‘improper verbs’, but the descriptions of their various interpretations lead to the conclusion that they can be no longer equated with verbs uninflected for person. The author proposes that the criterion of...
The article discusses several methodological problems contained in Saussure’s works. General linguistics, a new discipline postulated by the author, was to be founded on linguistic details and at the same time focus on the fundamental and universal mechanisms of speech. Saussure did not consider general linguistics a part of natural sciences or of historical studies; he indicated logic as the discipline...
The article discusses the problem of a specific kind of linguistic constructions which exist in the political language, and which will be referred to as ‘linguistic political symbols’. The group contains quotes from the political language that are used in everyday language, names of political or historical events, political invectives, and others. Linguistic political symbols have vague semantics,...
The paper argues with W. Cockiewicz’s article Jak uporządkować terminologiczny chaos w glottodydaktyce i po co? (2013; ‘How to put order into the terminological chaos in language pedagogy and what should one want to do this for?’). The author begins with a critical overview of Cockiewicz’s treatment of the terms język rodzimy and język ojczysty (‘native’ and ‘foreign language’), and then appeals to...
The present paper is the effect of field work on Polish-Spanish bilingualism in Polish diaspora in Argentina, conducted in years 2009–2011 in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Córdoba, and Misiones. It portrays four models of bilingualism which define the modern Polish diaspora in Argentina, each illustrated with linguistic biographies of selected respondents. The change of the research perspective...
In this paper, the author focuses primarily on several new functional styles, and such productive word-formative processes as compounding and affixation in modern Slavic languages. Minor processes like blending, clipping, and back formation are left aside. Based on large corpora and smaller hand-collected samples of electronic texts, the data has been drawn from advertising, daily press and the communicational...
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