Proper names derived from the nexus of the ancient Graeco-Roman tradition, namely of Greek andLatin languages, are due to cultural and identity-related reasons a vital component of the contemporaryPolish language namespace. These onyms mostly belong to such varieties of Polish as academic,literary/bookish, and are mostly written. In onomastics they are considered transmitters of moderndaypopular culture among whose products features the crime novel aimed at the mass reader. Thepresent exploration or first approximation, with its qualitative rather thsn quantitative (statistical)character, sets out to try to present, arrange, classify, and describe the ways in which a recipient isonymically referred to the cultures of antiquity within Marek Krajewski’s eight crime stories, payingparticular attention to their functional aspect and onymic status. The research should form partof cultural onomastics and literary onomastics as well as other linguistic disciplines such as lexicologyand phraseology/phrasematics. The excerpts of the novels contain: (a) onyms of ancient originused in their primary sense to identify and differentiate the referents associated with the culture ofclassical antiquity (e.g. the personal names of the men of culture of Antiquity and of philosophy);(b) proper names based on onyms or appellatives deriving from classical languages and antiquity;(c) ancient eponymisms, or common names taken at their root from ancient nomina propria, appellativederivatives stemming from Greek or Latin onyms among them; and (d) eponymous phrasemesincorporating either onyms of ancient pedigree or the appellatives and derivatives they gave rise to.The linguistic tapestry thus reviewed is a testimony to antiquity’s impact on Polish, whose facetsclearly reflects its multicultural and intertextual nature. At the same time, it displays how antiquityis received in Polish culture as an ongoing process but here of the popular sort.
PL
Nazwy własne wywodzące się z kręgu starożytnej tradycji grecko-rzymskiej, z greki i łaciny, ze względów kulturowo-tożsamościowych stanowią bardzo istotny składnik współczesnego onomastykonu języka polskiego. Onimy te przynależą głównie do takich odmian polszczyzny, jak naukowa i literacka/książkowa, głównie w ich postaci pisanej. W onomastyce uznaje się je za nośniki pamięci kulturowej w skali globalnej (makro) i określa się je nazwami topicznymi. Owo onomastyczne dziedzictwo może również stanowić istotny składnik współczesnej kultury popularnej, której wytworem jest także powieść kryminalna, adresowana do masowego odbiorcy. Celem niniejszego oglądu, mającego charakter rozpoznania jakościowego, a nie ilościowego (statystycznego), jest próba przedstawienia, uporządkowania, klasyfikacji i opisu obecnych w siedmiu kryminałach Marka Krajewskiego językowo-literackich sposobów onimicznego odsyłania odbiorcy do kultury antycznej, ze zwróceniem uwagi na ich aspekt funkcjonalny i onimiczny status. Prezentowane badania należy włączyć w obszar onomastyki kulturowej oraz onomastyki literackiej, a także innych działów lingwistyki, takich jak leksykologia i frazeologia/frazematyka. W ekscerpowanych powieściach można znaleźć: (a) onimy o antycznej proweniencji używane w prymarnym odniesieniu, w celu identyfikacji i dyferencjacji desygnatów kojarzonych z kulturą antyku klasycznego (np. nazwy osobowe twórców i filozofów antycznych); (b) nazwy własne, których podstawą stały się wywodzące się z języków klasycznych i z antyku onimy lub formy apelatywne; (c) eponimizmy antyczne, czyli nazwy pospolite, u których podstaw leżą antyczne nomina propria; w tym również apelatywne formy derywowane pochodzące od greckich bądź łacińskich onimów; a także (d) frazeologizmy eponimiczne zawierające w swym składzie bądź onimy o proweniencji antycznej, bądź powstałe od nich formy apelatywne czy derywowane. Poddana oglądowi materia językowa jest świadectwem wpływów antyku klasycznego na polszczyznę, której jakość jest wyraźnym odbiciem wielokulturowości i intertekstualności. Jednocześnie pokazuje wciąż trwającą recepcję antyku w kulturze polskiej, tutaj popularnej.
This paper is a linguistic attempt at outlining the area of the Polish phraseology of the ancient provenance. It presents the meanings, abundance and diversity of Anticisms, that is language units which are evidence of the influence of the ancient Greek and Roman culture on Polish. Apart from the idioms which are really ancient, that is language units whose bond with antiquity is real and sensed (e.g. pyrrusowe zwycięstwo (Pyrrhic victory) or puszka Pandory (Pandora’s box)), established formally and through cultural motivation, there is a significant group of commonly known petrified collocations which could be called ancient only genetically or (non-)ancient (e.g. marnować czas (to waste time) or o wilku mowa (to speak of the devil)). Therefore, the expression everyday (non-)ancient idioms covers the Anticisms which: (1) are commonly known and used at present, stylistically neutral, colloquial, less frequently formal, (2) have a neutral and universal motivation related to the observation of the reality, (3) have an identifiable ancient source, yet their bond with the source is not sensed by language users and the ancient textual and cultural context of the idioms is not usually necessary to understand their figurative meanings.
The subject to be presented and described in the present paper are word combinations with mythological (Graeco-Roman) origins occurring in eight crime novels penned by Marek Krajewski, taking the shape of: (i) better or less known phrasemes, or conventional petrified multiword units reproduced in a communicative act to express particular intentions and intensions; (ii) phrasematic innovations, or phrasemes modified formally and/or semantically and used against the grain of the phraseological norm; or (iii) literary nonce phrasemes, that is multiword units created ad hoc for the purposes of style and world depiction, containing eponyms and eponymisms of mythological origin which exist in Polish. The proposed examination of conventional (the titular convention), innovative, and nonce (the titular invention) units used in the excerpted crime novels is of a qualitative and functional nature, since its focus is on an attempt to point out and discuss the functions which the selected examples serve in the literary messaging. Polyword mythology-based expressions fulfil numerous and various (often at the same time) functions in M. Krajewski’s crime novels, incl. cultural-identitarian, content-focused, expressive, evaluative, aesthetic and others.
The article falls within the chrematonomastic research strand in which a proper name is understood to be a utilitarian message with a pragmatic potential, one that ensues from both statutory requirements and marketing rules. The focus is on the topic of auspicious economic entity names and especially their constituents – lexical units that are supposed to make the name and entity stand out in the market, yet should not be misleading as to what the company’s scope of activity is. The names of firms and premises with the mythological firmonym Hades from various sectors (147 items) from all over Poland, sourced from Panorama Firm, a large business directory, were examined. Quantitatively, the collated material shows that most marketing chrematonyms with this component can be found in the funeral sector, as accounted for by the funeral and thanatological connotations the mythological lexeme evokes by way of its cultural meaning. Much more seldom, name coiners from various sectors (incl. textile, hotel, building, transport, automobile companies) employ the word as well, rendering firmonym-using identification possibly difficult, misleading or nigh on impossible.
Samuel Bogumił Linde’s Słownik języka polskiego comprises not only a rich set of mythology-based lexical expressions (as headwords or sub-entries in sections on derivatives), but also an account of their then-current colourful linguistic and poetic context, by which the following is meant: adjectives (mostly given in a sub-entry and exhibiting the form of compounds called compound epithets) and noun equivalents of mythological expressions (present adjacently in lexicographical notation). This context has been analyzed from various perspectives: semantic and lexical, morphological and structural, stylistic and varietal, textual and source-focused, lexicographical. Some language units included in the context, often marked by Linde with two superscript asterisks, are called peculiar here as they are provocative in form and meaning (morphological neologisms, borrowings, morphological calques and stylized semantic neologisms).
The article discusses a subset of Polish phraseology constituted by mythology-based phrases; special attention is given to the analysis of these in fourteen lexicographic works (including bilingual dictionaries, dictionaries of quotations and a combination of encyclopedia and dictionary). The research area (a definition of the term ‘mythology-based phrase’) is delineated and then the diagrams presenting the contribution of various sources to the collection of units under consideration are produced. The group of expressions forming the canon of Polish mythology-based phraseology is selected and characterized on the basis of their frequency in excerpted reference works. Finally, with reference to the studies confirming that Polish lexicographic works contain incomplete lists of such expressions and revealing downward trends in the number of items listed, an attempt at describing the situation is made.
Celem niniejszego opracowania jest próba pokazania stylistycznego i odmianowego zasięgu mitologizmów (o grecko-rzymskiej proweniencji), do których można zaliczyć motywowane mitologicznie jednostki języka o różnym statusie formalnym (jedno- i wielowyrazowe) i semantycznym (o znaczeniu prymarnym i wtórnym). Jednostki te ze względu na swe konwencjonalne źródło przynależą przede wszystkim do książkowej odmiany polszczyzny. Dodatkowo, stały się one także podstawą wielu terminów naukowych. W nieznacznym stopniu zasilają też inne, warunkowane współczesnymi zmianami kulturowo-cywilizacyjnymi i komunikacyjnymi gatunki mowy, style i odmiany polszczyzny, realizujące się choćby w języku dziennikarzy, czynnych internautów, osób publicznych, producentów czy właścicieli obiektów usługowo-handlowych. Mitologizmy używane są zatem w tekstach o różnej stylistyce. Pełnią w nich funkcje nie tylko denotacyjno-konotacyjne, lecz także m.in. aksjologiczne i ekspresywne.
EN
The purpose of this article is to outline the stylistic and varietal extent of mythology-based expressions (of Graeco-Roman provenance), which include mythologically motivated linguistic units with varying formal (single words and polywords) and semantic (primary and secondary meanings) status. Due to their conventional origin, these units primarily belong to the literary variety of Polish. Additionally, they form the basis of numerous academic terms. To a much lesser degree, they also serve as fodder for other speech genres, styles and varieties of Polish that are conditioned by present-day cultural, civilizational and communicative changes, realized, for instance, in the language of journalists, internet users, public figures, manufacturers or owners of commercial and service facilities. The expressions in question are used in texts that differ stylistically, where they perform not only denotative-connotative but also axiological and expressive functions.
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