PORADNIK JĘZYKOWY

ISSUE 4 / 2017

ARTICLES AND DISSERTATIONS

  • Katarzyna Sobolewska : Dialectologists’ transcripts as a historical source

    The author of this texts proposes a new application of dialectologists’ transcripts – as a source of authentic autobiographical accounts useful in the research on oral history. She presents and discusses a transcript of an interview given to linguists and students of dialectology by Maria Sztrecel, a resident of Kwik, a village in the Masuria region, near the town of Pisz, in 1951. What emerged from the informant’s replies to the questions included in the dialectal questionnaire was a local, emotional and unofficial version of history told in the purest dialect.

    As a result of the post-war change of borders, the community and culture of the inhabitants of the Masuria and Warmia regions were doomed to annihilation. The dialectologists’ transcripts collected at that time could help in the research conducted by historians, ethnographers and culture experts on the pace, course and costs of the process.

  • Irena Bogocz : West Cieszyn Silesia dialectal vocabulary – an attempt to grasp the topic
    This paper discusses specifically the language situation in the Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia, where a few language codes are used in communication: the traditional West Cieszyn dialect, Czech – both colloquial and standard, and – among members of the Polish national minority – "scholastic" literary Polish. While describing the situation where such codes can overlap and mix, the author makes an attempt at a presentation of the universal processes shaping trans-dialectal variants which occur also in other multi-ethnic and multi-lingual regions. This concerns speaking “po našymu” (“our own language”), which can be affected by other language codes (a dialect, majority language, minority language) at any level of the linguistic system (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicology/phraseology). The author focuses on the lexical layer and discusses the question of what a dialect vocabulary actually is, which of its parts are usually included in dialect dictionaries (lexicons), how dialect users actually speak when they do not use the “pure” dialect, etc. The author presents her theses on the basis of a language material contained in two – partly similar and partly different – dialect dictionaries.
  • Elżbieta Michow : On the excessive popularity of the commemorative model in popular etymologies of place names
    This paper concerns a noticeable and intensifying tendency for excessive popularisation of the semantic commemorative model in popular etymologies of place names. It discusses popular etymologies of a few toponyms and the motivations popularised in the region (inconsistent with the findings of onomastics): Wąchock : wywąchały (smelled out); Kielce : kieł (a canine); Opoczno : Opocz (Opocza), no, no!; Gniezno : gniazdo (a nest); Bydgoszcz : Byd (to wake up), Gost (to stay up); Żywiec : Żyw (alive), on the example of selected culture-based texts. The proposed thesis provides that the primary and principal cause of the heyday and popularisation of commemorative semantics of toponyms is a coincidence of contemporary factors such as: development of regionalism as a social and cultural movement, care for the cultural values of the homeland, regional education development and model, implementation of regional EU projects, implementation of local marketing and promotion strategies pursued for business, in particular tourist, purposes, and the regional megalomania related to the creation of the cultural and literary Origin Myth of the primitive settlement and its inhabitants. Etymological and onomastic methodologies, which allow for the specificity of the toponymic material and popular thinking, were applied to the analysis of the popular toponyms.
  • Ewa Rogowska : On the topographic motivation in folk etymologies of Polish toponyms
    This paper contains an analysis of selected folk etymologies of Polish place names, which – based on the semantic interpretation of their folk etymology – can be classified as topographic names, and describes the mechanism of making such reinterpretations. The paper distinguishes a few types of such toponyms: 1) original possessive, family or patronymic names formed based on anthroponyms corresponding to the name of an animal, plant or another element of the landscape, referring directly to the motivational basis of such an anthroponym, 2) other names classified by folk etymologists as topographic ones due to their pronunciation similar to that of words associated explicitly with the world of nature, 3) names classified by folk etymologists as topographic ones despite their alleged basic word belonging to the group of words which do not usually constitute bases of place names.
  • Anna Kłaczyńska : Anthroponym-based derivatives with the English origin
    The contemporary Polish language is under increasingly stronger influences of the English language. This process can be noticed primarily in the growing number of lexical borrowings. Some Anglicisms owe their origin to those who had enormous impact on the development of science, culture, art, social life, e.g. darwinizm (Darvinism) < Ch.R. Darwin, thatcheryzm/taczeryzm (Thatcherism) < M. Thatcher, baskerville (Baskerville) < J. Baskerville. Their names, through the process of appelativisation, as well as borrowing and derivational processes, have become symbols of their achievements. Hence, there are words coming from English anthroponymic names in today’s Polish. This paper presents a collection and specificity of this type of lexemes codified in the largest dictionary of foreign words – Wielki słownik wyrazów obcych PWN (PWN great dictionary of foreign words) (2005), edited by M. Bańko, with the etymology, semantics, adaptation and word-formation processes in Polish taken into account. It also presents the phenomenon of the interference of English in a positive light as it establishes the relation of the word not only with its meaning but also with its origin in the consciousness of the language user.

POLISH GRAMMAR

  • Małgorzata B. Majewska : Części mowy odmieniające się przez przypadki (Parts of speech infl ecting for cases) by Feliks Żochowski

REVIEWS

  • Ewa Wasilewska : Dorota Połowniak-Wawrzonek, Metafory językowe nawiązujące do czynności przyjmowania pokarmów (Linguistic metaphors referring to food intake), Kraków 2015
  • Beata Olędzka : Karolina Ekes, Niezbędnik współczesnej Kleopatry. Greckie i łacińskie korzenie terminologii medycznej nie tylko dla kosmetologów (A toolkit of the contemporary Cleopatra. Greek and Latin roots of the medical terminology not only for cosmetologists), Warszawa 2016

EXPLANATIONS OF WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS

  • Mateusz Adamczyk : The lexeme płeć (sex, gender) in the old and contemporary Polish language

WORDS AND PHRASES