The article is devoted to a preliminary, exploring analysis of the geographical names from the area of the Commonwealth of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania functioning in the French language in the third quarter of the 18th century and registered in the famous Encyclopaedia of Diderot and d'Alembert (Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 1751-1772). The material comes from the monograph by Maciej Forycki Chronografia Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej in Encyclopaedia of Diderot and d'Alembert, Poznan 2010.
The subject of this article is the interpretation of de Saussure's terms "langue" and "parole". Ferdinand de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics", as well as some relevant fragments of the General Linguistics history compendia, lead the author of the paper to conclude that, while referring Saussure's "langue" to the language system does not raise serious objections, it is impossible to relate Saussure's identification of "parole" to the modern concept of "text". In the opinion of the author, the most appropriate translation of the term "parole" would be "use of language" and then from this term it is possible to derive the term of "text".
Taking a synthetic approach, the author of the paper presents the explanations of the etymology of the geographical name Gniezno, which is present in historical literature and linguistic works, and has been the object of interest since Middle Ages for chroniclers, and later for historiographers and linguists. Moreover, the author discusses the form of this toponym, explains the changes it underwent, and presents hypotheses concerning its motivation.
The aim or the article is to show the selected tendencies in the development of the linguistic map of the world, undergoing constant change, the result of which is some languages spreading further, while others are not being used anymore (are dying out). In a broader perspective, two opposing processes can be seen in this change – spreading and diminishing (expansion and recession) of the entire language families.
The present author relates information on Głogów and its cognates (of which the most important is the former place-name of Głogowa Górna or Mała, Sienkiewicz’s Głogowa¸ nowadays Głogówek), present in toponymic lexicographic sources (onomastic dictionaries). Cultural connotations of Głogów are also restored as a symbol of the heroic defence of the town, and Sienkiewicz’s Głogowa, generally mistook for Głogów as a temporary capital of the Republic of Poland (the place where her lawful authorities resided) in exile.
W pracy autor kreŚli zarys dziejów trzech nazw: akademia, uniwersytet i wszechnica w języku polskim. Obok informacji stricte językowych, zaczerpniętych przede wszystkim ze stosownych zródeł leksykograficznych, podaje też przy poszczególnych nazwach informacje historyczno-kulturalne. Kończy passusem o terminologicznych znaczeniach wyrazów akademia i uniwersytet w ustawie o organizacji szkolnictwa wyższego w Polsce.
EN
The author outlines histories of three names of educational establishments: akademia, uniwersytet, wszechnica in the Polish language. Apart from strictly linguistic information obtained from relevant lexicographic sources, the individual names are accompanied by information on historical and cultural contexts. The paper is rounded off with a passage on the terminological connotations of the words akademia and uniwersytet as reflected in the Law on Organisation of Higher Education in Poland.
Autor, przywołując dane sprzed kilkunastu lat (nowszych brak), ukazuje polszczyznę, wbrew rozpowszechnionym stereotypom, jako jeden z największych języków świata: zajmuje ona na liście języków ułożonej malejąco ze względu na wielkość populacji użytkowników miejsce pod koniec drugiej lub – co bardziej prawdopodobne – na początku trzeciej dziesiątki (Alfred. F. Majewicz przekonująco dowodzi, że nie jest możliwe dokładniejsze usytuowanie polszczyzny na tej liście).
EN
The author, referring to data from over ten years ago (owing to a lack of more recent data), presents the Polish language as – contrary to a common stereotype – one of the most largely spoken languages in the world. On the list of the world’s largest languages in descending order, Polish is ranked at the end of the top twenty, or, more likely, just outside the top twenty (Alfred F. Majewicz convincingly argues that a more accurate placing of Polish is impossible).
The paper describes a very significant role of Bible translation in the development of the Slavic national languages. The author focuses on the Polish language which in its literary form was shaped in the Middle Ages but its full functional efficiency was reached in the 16th century. Among the medieval relics, the translation of psalms and other Bible passages played a great cultural role. However, the complete Polish translations of the Holy Bible appeared in the 16th century (Biblia Budnego, Leopolity, Wujka). Those renditions enriched the Polish language with a number of new words. Moreover, they provoked a scientific reflection on the Slavic languages. As a result, the author proposes a thesis asserting that the act of Bible philological translations contributed to further linguistic research.
Marzanna Uździcka, Studium kształtowania się kompetencji językowej agronoma. Analiza genologiczna, pragmatyczna i leksykalna „Wykładów” Władysława Majewskiego z lat 1848-1850, Zielona Góra 2010, ss. 419.
I have identified at least three chronological layers of Germanisms in Poznań urban sub-dialects. The first one encompasses what is left in the Poznań sub-dialect from Polish literary language, or Polish (Wielkopolska) folk sub-dialects dating back to pre-Polish times. The second layer includes archaisms in Polish literary language. The third layer comprises words borrowed by the Poznań sub-dialect from German in the 19th and the early 20th centuries (the Partitions of Poland). Theoretically, another, even younger layer should be expected: the aftermath of the war period (1939-1945). However, further research is required in this respect.
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Autor wyróżnia w gwarze miejskiej Poznania przynajmniej trzy warstwy chronologiczne germanizmów. Pierwsza obejmuje to, co z polskiego języka literackiego bądź z polskich (wielkopolskich) gwar ludowych pozostało w gwarze poznańskiej, a co swoim wiekiem sięga czasów przedpolskich. Druga warstwa, to archaizmy polskiego języka literackiego. Trzecia warstwa to wyrazy, które przenikały do gwary miejskiej Poznania z języka niemieckiego w XIX i na początku XX wieku (okres zaborów). Teoretycznie można by się spodziewać jeszcze jednej, najpóźniejszej warstwy – spadku po latach 1939–1945. Potrzebne są jednak w tym zakresie dalsze badania.
Language differentiation is an unquestionable fact, nonetheless its magnitude is not. The causes of the divergence are twofold: the first rests in our paucity of knowledge about the large number of languages; the other derives from the fact that there are no clear-cut linguistic criteria to differentiate between an individual language and a dialect of a language. Out of controversies within the status of such and similar tools of social communication rose the popularity of the concept and term of ethnolect. That languages are differentiated across the world can be approached from two points of view: a practical and communicative one (that can be the position held by communication engineering) and an anthropocultural one.
Sur le territoire de la Pologne on trouve des noms géographiques d’origine roumaine, latine, italienne et française. Seulement les noms roumains (paraissant uniquement dans les Carpathes) sont assez nombreux, relativement anciens (pour la plupart ils ont pris naissance avant le XVIIe siècle), et le processus de leur naissance était tout à fait spontané. Par contre, les noms latins, italiens et français sont très rares, en général relativement récents (pour la plupart ils ont pris naissance après le XVIe siècle), et ils ont paru en suite d’une décision arbitraire d’un individu ou d’un groupe social restreint. Les influences romanes sur l’onomastique polonaise diffèrent donc entièrement de celles qui touchent le vocabulaire commun du polonais: ici, on le sait bien, les influences du latin, de l’italien et du français étaient très fortes tandis que celles du roumain étaint complètement insignifiantes.
The article’s author argues in favor of his thesis that just as the literary language is on the one hand a mirror, while on the other hand material and an instrument of the community of users’ spiritual culture, so is the regional language (dialect, subdialect) a mirror, material and an instrument of the regional culture (represented by folklor in language). In case of the ethnic and linguistic borderland’s multilingualism, all the ethnolects amount to its cultural heritage.
The author of the article proves the existence of a strict connection between the broadly understood humanities and the areas of linguistic research that refer back to the cultural, communication, and in part also the structuralist paradigms. In order to substantiate his thesis, the author provides examples of such connections, with particular emphasis on the character and outcomes of research conducted by Krakow-based linguists.