PORADNIK JĘZYKOWY

ISSUE 5 / 2012

ARTICLES AND DISSERTATIONS

  • Halina Karaś : On the need to research the academic life at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Jan Karłowicz (1836–1903) as a driving force of „the intellectual movement” of that time.

    The aim of the paper is to signal the need to carry out more thorough research on the academic life at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and to present Jan Karłowicz as a driving force of the academic and cultural life at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He was a researcher of Polish and Lithuanian folklore, an organiser of linguistic and ethnographic field research as well as extensive lexicographic studies, the founder and editor of the ethnographic magazine Wisła, the publisher of the „Library of Wisła”, a co-founder and member of the „Prace Filologiczne” editorial board. The academic legacy of Jan Karłowicz has not been thoroughly discussed yet. So far, only selected aspects of his activities have been described (especially some of his lexicographic and ethnographic studies). However, his other works, especially the ones on etymology, on the Lithuanian language, which were written in Polish, have been merely indicated in the academic literature and have not been presented so far.

    The basis for the research can be the archive sources preserved in Poland and in Lithuania, especially the correspondence, notes relating to Karłowicz’s extensive activities, his academic research published during his life and after his death and his activities as an organiser, journalist (research on magazines, especially on Wisła which he founded, on „Prace Filologiczne”, which he co-founded, and on other magazines in which he published his papers, summaries and reviews), and other sources which give witness to his activities from the given period.

  • Krystyna Rutkowska : Jan Karłowicz’s contributions to the Lithuanian language and folklore

    Jan Karłowicz, a famous Polish scholar, who worked and conducted his research during the second half of the 19th century, is not well-known to the present generation of researchers. No one, until now, has seriously examined his research in the Lithuanian language and folklore. He was born in Lithuania and was closely tied with his homeland for almost half a century. The cultural heritage of the Great Duchy of Lithuania is dominant in his numerous writings. J. Karłowicz was one of the first researchers who paid attention to the very complicated social, linguistic and cultural situation in Lithuania. He investigated it using the latest scientific methods and applying the vast knowledge which he acquired at foreign universities. He is also considered to be one of the first Polish scholars who started investigating Lithuanian dialectology, etymology and onomastics as well as the Lithuanian language. His bibliography consists of about 1,000 publications, more than 300 of which cover linguistics.

    The main objective of this paper is to present J. Karłowicz’s achievements in researching the Lithuanian language and folklore, to analyse his works on the Lithuanian language, and to show his connections with Lithuanian researchers of Lithuanian culture and members of the national revival. Using mostly data from archives, the author describes his correspondence with Lithuanian academics and discusses his unpublished manuscripts.

  • Marek Gawełko : On the position of the Polish adjective in a sentence from the Indo-European perspective

    In typological research the differences between languages may be a manifestation of the same tendency at various stages of its development. This explains why in the Polish language nearly every adjective can occur before and after a noun, whereas in the French language numerous adjectives occur exclusively in postposition.

    Latin, Polish and French demonstrate the same tendency in the development of the position of an adjective in a sentence but they are at diverse stages of this development. This tendency is a special case of a more general tendency related to the Indo-European languages passing from the anticipatory to the progressive word order (in the latter subordinate expressions are in postposition to the superordinate expression). The tendency related to the position of an adjective in the nominative group leads to the following three stages: 1) AN (adiectivum, nomen) in the proto-language and old languages, 2) transitional stage: AN for the adjectives of quality and the dominant NA for adjectives of relation (Latin and Polish, with the latter progressing further and more consistently), 3) NA for nearly all adjectives of relation and most adjectives of quality (French). Restricting the differences to stylistic and semantic criteria determined in synchrony does not suffice as an explanation of these phenomena.

  • Kinga Tutak : Metatext in Skarb karmelitański of 1676
    Metatext – as a textological category – has been present in the literature on linguistics since the 1970s. It occurs in the research on spoken and written utterances, particularly those representing the academic variant, in the studies of contemporary texts. The analysis of a print from the second half of the 17th century, the so-called Skarb karmelitański, proves that in old texts the metatextual plane also had a significant function to perform as a place of fulfilling the sending and receiving strategy. This strategy should have resulted in such a reception of the text by the recipient (specified and potential) that corresponded to the assumptions and intentions of the sender. The elements related to the physical form of the text in its written variant, i.e. graphic and typological measures, such as changing the typeface and font-size as well as spelling, are primarily characterised in the paper.
  • Izabela Kępka : A linguistic image of a priest in the prophecy of Rev. Hieronim Kajsiewicz Cr (1812–1871)
    The aim of this paper is to present the linguistic image of a priest in the prophecy of Rev. H. Kajsiewicz, an insurgent in the November Uprising, and after being ordained – a preacher of the Great Emigration.
    In order to reconstruct the image of a priest created by the Romantic speaker, the assumptions of the linguistic description of the image of the world were applied – the method of profiling consisting in separating, „highlighting” certain elements of the base structure, called a profile, proposed among others by Jadwiga Puzynina.
    The conceptualisation of a priest in Rev. Kajsiewicz’s prophecy is always religious in nature. A priest is a man whose fundamental relationship is that with God. A priest is profiled as God’s servant and at the same time as a dispenser of graces – people’s servant. What is also important in Rev. Kajsiewicz sermons is the profile of a priest – a patriot and martyr who shows the right paths to the nation. The martyrdom of Catholic priests makes them resemble the suffering Christ. The priest-martyr, similar to Christ, is predestined to lead the enslaved nation to the real liberation, which has its source in God.
    Another profile in Rev. Kajsiewicz’s prophecy is the priest-sinner, for whom the care for comfort and honours become the cause of his spiritual decline. Hence, the Rev. Kajsiewicz’s priest-sinner profile. Their sluggishness and insufficient zeal in performing spiritual tasks lead them from the sacrum dimension to the profanum level.
  • Beata Kuryłowicz : An artistic text: a conceptual model, word semantics, cultural background (on the example of a semantic description of the word stokrotka in poetic texts from the period of Young Poland

    The aim of the present sketch is to demonstrate the role of an artistic text in reconstructing the conceptual model of a word. A poetic text, which is based on the general language on the one hand, and which is perceived as an exceptional artistic creation, on the other, constitutes a valuable research material used for a semantic description of words, particularly those unestablished in the general language. An example of such a lexical unit is stokrotka [daisy]. Code facts and lexicographic definitions provide the information on the mental image of the flower in Polish at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

    The presented analyses prove that artistic texts are extremely helpful when attempting to reach the characteristics belonging to the semantic core of the word stokrotka (‛has white flowers’, ‛is small’, ‛has tiny petals’, ‛has many petals’ and ‛blossoms in spring’), and contribute to revealing the entire spectrum of connotations with varying degree of establishment and detail. All the semantic components revealed in the process of analysis are internally ordered and find motivation within the semantic structure.

    Elements such as textual recurrence and supra-individual nature of context, as well as cultural facts, which are argumentation for linguistic characteristics and support the reasonability of the suggested interpretations, also fulfil a significant function in determining linguistic relevance.

OLD AND CONTEMPORARY DICTIONARIES

REPORTS, NOTICES, POLEMICS

  • The position of Rada Języka Polskiego [Council for the Polish Language] by the Presidium of the Polish Academy of Sciences on the status of the Polish language in academic publications
  • The resolution of the Zarząd Główny Towarzystwa Kultury Języka [Management Board of the Society for Polish Grammar and Style] on protecting the Polish academic language
  • The report of the chairman of Towarzystwo Kultury Języka [Society for Polish Grammar and Style] for the year 2011
  • Agnieszka Kołodziej : The report from the international conference Славістика ХХІ століття: традиції та перспективи розвитку, Lviv 26–28 October 2011

REVIEWS

  • Elżbieta Sękowska : „Oblicza Komunikacji” 3/2010, Tabloidyzacja języka i kultury, red. Irena Kamińska-Szmaj, Tomasz Piekot, Marcin Poprawa,Wrocław 2010

EXPLANATIONS OF WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS