PORADNIK JĘZYKOWY

ISSUE 1 / 2012

JUBILEES

  • The photo of Prof. Stanisław Dubisz with an inscription
  • Ewelina Kwapień : Prof. dr hab. Stanisław Dubisz – forty years of academic work at the University of Warsaw

ARTICLES AND DISSERTATIONS

  • Jolanta Chojak : On distinguishing and rewarding
    The author presents a syntactic and semantic analysis of the predicate [ktoś – someone] wyróżnił – distinguished [kogoś/coś – someone/something] [czymś – with something] [za coś – for something] and poses a question about semantic relations between this predicate and the verb [ktoś – someone] nagrodził – rewarded [kogoś/coś – someone/something] [czymś – with something] [za coś – for something]. The point of departure here is the description of both the units proposed in Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego ed. by S. Dubisz (2003), where they are considered synonymous. The data derived from observations of the manners in which the individual positions opened by the two verbs are filled in provided grounds for questioning this thesis and stating that even where the verbs wyróżnić and nagrodzić are used interchangeably, such an exchange always involves a subtle but perceptible difference of meanings: they are employed to describe the same situation but each of them extracts different aspects from it.
  • Wanda Decyk-Zięba : On names and people – an onomastic study (on the example of Wilczogęby village in the gmina of Sadowne)
    The object of the discussion is anthroponymy and toponymy of Wilczogęby village (gmina of Sadowne, poviat of Węgrów). The village was founded at the beginning of the 16th c. The historical materials included in the book by Tomasz Szczechura Dzieje wsi Wilczogęby od czasów najdawniejszych do roku 1973 [The history of Wilczogęby village from the earliest times to the year 1973] (Warsaw 2004) constitute the basis for this study which explains the origin of the name of the village (as well as of neighbouring villages), parts of the village, fields, meadows and pastures, and also the surnames of its residents in the 17th century, in the years 1822, 1846, 1864, after the World War II and currently. It also demonstrates the relationship between proper names and the history of the village and its inhabitants.
  • Zbigniew Greń : Religious vocabulary in the sub-dialects of Cieszyn Silesia
    The paper presents religious lexis in the sub-dialects of Cieszyn Silesia. Objective approach was employed in the analysis, the aim of which was to identify the differentiation of this field into constituent subfields. As a result of the analysis a map of a field of lexemes related to the religious sphere was obtained. It was also concluded that the religious diversity of this area is to a scarce extent reflected in the traditional Cieszyn lexis and this is true only with respect to Catholicism and Protestantism.
  • Halina Karaś : Nineteen-century sub-dialectal glossaries as an object of linguistic research
    The aim of the paper is to present 19th-century sub-dialectal glossaries as sources of various linguistic researches. They reflect the state of knowledge on Polish folk sub-dialects and on their diversity those days, as well as illustrate the evolution of the theory of lexicographic description of sub-dialectal vocabulary. They recollect the authors of the glossaries – those distinguished, well-known and those forgotten. The certify the existence of numerous interesting words and their meanings (archaisms as well as word formation and semantic innovations), they include a useful material for examining sub-dialectal synonymy. They provide a valuable source for comparative studies, the former and present state, for analysing the changes which have occurred over time and for reconstructing the state of not only the sub-dialectal vocabulary of that time, but also – to a certain extent – phonetics and inflection. They may be also used to observe the 19th-century general language. The glossaries which constitute a record of sub-dialects existing on the borderline of languages serve also for examining language contacts. The majority of the 19th-century collections of folk vocabulary are also helpful when conducting ethnographic research since they account for multiple components of folk culture.
  • Alina Kępińska : Names of nations and other ethnic groups in Pan Balcer w Brazylii by Maria Konopnicka

    The aim of the paper is to present and classify various names of nations and ethnic groups mentioned in Pan Balcer w Brazylii by Maria Konopnicka. The poem includes interesting variant forms, such as Portugał, Portuges and Portugalczyk (for a Portugese) or Prusak and Prus (for a Prussian). Synonymous names referring either to a member of a given nation or to another homogeneous group of people are also to be found in Konopnicka’s poem. This is best exemplified by names denoting Germans, such as: Niemiec, Niemczysko, Szwab, Szwabisko, Prusak or pluder. Various derivatives of the noun Murzyn (a black person), such as: Murzyńczuk, Murzynisko or the mass noun Murzyństwo can serve as other examples. Besides the names of nations, the paper also examines the names of inhabitants of certain regions of Poland. The ones that are brought to attention are derivational doublets, such as: Podlasiak and Podlasianin or Kurp and Kurpiak, metonymic ones, such as Polska and Podlasie (used with reference to inhabitants) as well as prepositional phrases indicating the place of origin by a given river, e.g.: od Warty or od Bugu and od Buga (with a variant genitive ending) or a given location, i.e.: od Sokołowa, z Łęki or z Łęgi.

    The names of inhabitants coined from the names of locations, such as Łomżyńce, Łahiszyńce or Płocczany refer not only to their inhabitants but also to those living in the neighbouring areas. All the names are provided with relevant contexts, which enables to determine their emotional or stylistic value. Moreover, longer quotations reveal the attitude of emigrants towards themselves and strangers.

  • Józef Porayski-Pomsta : Gallicisms as the derivational basis for Polish words
    The paper Gallicisms as the derivational basis for Polish words analyses selected Gallicisms, i.e. words borrowed to Polish from French, in terms of their capacity to constitute a derivational basis for Polish words. It was stated that these words – mainly those belonging to the common inflection and colloquial registers – constitute a good basis for word-formation. Simple derivatives: suffixal, prefixal and interfixal are formed on this basis. Attention was also given to the simultaneous borrowing of words from the French language or word forms with a common root (lexical morpheme) from French and other languages (mainly Latin and German), which causes a variety of difficulties in performing a synchronic analysis. Therefore, the author of this paper believes that in this case a synchronic analysis needs to be supplemented with a diachronic analysis.
  • Elżbieta Sękowska : A gloss to Polska leksyka polityczno-społeczna na przełomie XX i XXI wieku [The Polish political and social lexis at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries]
    The aim of the paper is to present the changes in the description of the language of politics and in the object of this description itself as compared to the study Polska leksyka polityczno-społeczna na przełomie XX i XXI wieku [The Polish political and social lexis at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries] published in 2007. The number of nominative neologisms formed in recent years have been scarce if compared to the early period of the Polish transformation; metaphorisation processes and expressive neologisms describing the people related to politics, in turn, have still been alive. The lexical layer of political utterances changes with the situational context: national and international ones.
  • Elżbieta Wierzbicka-Piotrowska : The influence of context on the meaning of certain indefinite pronouns

    The paper contains a semantic and pragmatic analysis of nominal phrases with an indefinite pronoun functioning as the superior constituent or the subordinate constituent, which are ambiguous in certain contexts. This is related to the identifiedness or non-identifiedness of the set to which the referent of the phrase belongs and the location it occupies in this set – it is either a component of the entire set or a component of its subset.

    For instance, the phrase gdzieś na ulicy [somewhere on the street] refers either to a non-identified location belonging to an identified set of places, which is a street known to interlocutors in the city where they are at the moment, or to a place characterised as situated on a street of an undefined city, that is belonging to an non-identified set of streets. A different type of ambiguity is characteristic for the phrase jakieś owoce [some fruit(s)], the referent of which is either a component of an identified set of fruit, e.g. in the sentence Daj mi jakieś owoce z tych, które kupiliśmy dzisiaj [Give me some fruit(s) from among those we have bought today], or it belongs to a subset of a non-identified set of fruit in the situation referring to a species of fruits, e.g. in the sentence addressed at a seller Czy mógłby mi pan sprzedać jakieś owoce [Could you sell me some fruits].

    The ambiguity described in the paper disappears when pragmatic factors, such as context and situation of speaking, are taken into account, which was proved after analysing numerous uses of the Polish pronouns gdzieś [somewhere], kiedyś [sometime] and jakoś [somehow].

  • Zofia Zaron : Prawdziwy przyjaciel [a true friend] – semantic and related reflections
    The topic of this paper is reflecting on what is important in the relation of friendship, and particularly investigating (a) what characteristics of this relation determine the status of X as our friend confirmed by the statement To mój przyjaciel [This is my friend], (b) seeking the explanation of what function is played by the lexeme prawdziwy [true] in the collocation prawdziwy przyjaciel [true friend] in Polish and what its status is. What is curious is that this is a serial connection (cf. prawdziwy geniusz/patriota/artysta/fachowiec…) [true genius/patriot/artist/professional…] and that it may not occur in these connections under stress (unless a corrective one, cf. Dobrze słyszałeś. Powiedziałam, że on jest !prawdziwym przyjacielem [You heard it. I said that he was a !true friend]).