Piast the Polish king: an etymological perspective

2022

The aim of the article is to describe and analyse the tasks and perspectives within contemporary etymological research in Poland. The article begins with a brief outline of the first Slavic etymological dictionaries. Next, contemporary etymological dictiona ries in Poland and the contemporary methodology of etymological research are briefly discussed. Then the author refers to the digital breakthrough in etymological research and describes the present-day model of linguistic education in Poland. A sharp decline in the number of specialists in etymology is argued to be a result of the withdrawal of historical-linguistic and historical-comparative subjects in university curricula and the author suggests various ways of encouraging students to study etymology. The article finishes with a discussion of the challenges facing etymologists, including research into the roots of ancient, dialectal, colloquial, and sociolectal vocabulary, as well as the origins of the vocabulary of endangered languages, followed by suggestions for how these can be overcome in the future. Keywords etymology, etymological dictionaries, dialectal and historical vocabulary in etymology Jadwiga Waniakowa Artykuł kończy się omówieniem wyzwań stojących przed etymologami, w tym badań nad pochodzeniem słownictwa dawnego, gwarowego, potocznego i środowiskowego oraz etymologią słownictwa języków zagrożonych, a także sugestiami, jak można tym wyzwaniom sprostać w przyszłości. Słowa kluczowe etymologia, słowniki etymologiczne, gwarowe i historyczne słownictwo w etymologii

Lexikos, 2017

The article offers an insight into etymological information provided in the Polish Academy of Sciences Great Dictionary of Polish (Pol. Wielki słownik języka polskiego PAN, WSJP PAN). The dictionary and the rules of producing the entries are briefly presented. These rules influence the way of working on etymology within the project. The main part of the article is devoted to the presentation of the field relating to origin and the etymological information which is given in one-word entries. The principles of elaborating upon this information in the dictionary are presented in detail and illustrated with examples. Moreover, some problems, like the question of borrowings, calques and semantic motivation, are discussed in the paper as well.

Rulership in Medieval East Central Europe, red. D. Zupka, G. Vercamer, Brill – Leiden, 2022

In Old Prussian there is one famous form, namely, poklausīmanas "heard, answered". The reason for its renown is that it is regarded by some to be a present passive participle, and, by the same token, directly continue the Proto-Indo-European medio-passive participle in *-mh1no- as reflected e.g. in Vedic -māna- and Greek -μενο-. However, such a supposition is problematic in a few regards. Firstly, Baltic, like Slavic, knows only present passive participle in -m-, which makes the Old Prussian form, at the very least, enigmatic. Secondly, if OPr. -manas truly reflects the ancestral PIE morpheme, it sheds doubts on the validity of the hitherto reconstructed Proto-Balto-Slavic participial suffix *-ma as reflecting PIE *-mh1no-. In the present paper it is argued that Old Prussian poklausīmanas indeed is a present passive participle and that the suffix -mana- does in fact derive from an earlier *-mna- which, in turn, continues PIE *-mh1no-. As for the shape of the Old Prussian suffix, it is proposed that -mana- contains a secondary anaptyctic vowel as suggested by other evidence. Furthermore, some light is shed on the possibility of reconstructing the Proto-Balto-Slavic participial suffix not as *-ma- but rather as *-mna-, which would be more consistent with the shape of the reconstructed PIE suffix from which it derives.

Ezikov Svyat volume 19 issue 1, 2021

The research object of the present text is Polish, Slovakian, and Czech personal names derived from a name which is Latin by origin and denotes a plant. The main aim is to present their full list as well as their initial meaning. Specialized anthroponymic dictionaries are used as the main source of information for excerpting the researched anthroponyms. All of them contain information not only about the different name forms, but also about their etymology, origin, and canonization. The researched anthroponyms are divided into three major groups according to: 1) the meaning of the appellative (i. e. a thematic classification); 2) the type of the basic word (i. e. if the researched anthroponym is derived directly from an appellative or via another anthroponym (in this case a Roman gentile name or a Neolatin name)); 3) their canonization. All personal names included in this research are a part of the modern Polish, Slovakian, and Czech anthroponymicons, even though they represent a sma...

2010

(forthc.)

ABSTRACT: The entry <Waspéisede> ‘hinter sich gehen’ (‘go backwards’) in Hennig’s Polabian lexicon clearly contains the same root as /paizdă/ ‘buttocks, arse’ (*pizda), but the traditional interpretations as either a substantive /våspaizdĕ/ (*vъs-pizd-ьje) ‘back part, area near the buttocks’ or as a verbal form /våspaizdĕ/ (<< *vъs-pizd-i(tь)) ‘goes backwards’ run into serious problems. In this contribution, it is proposed that the entry should instead be read /våspaizd/, with a rare instance of a double silent <e> in the spelling, as in <Risekenóna> /rüzgnonă/ ‘swollen’ (*orzgъnanoje). The word can then be analyzed as an adverbial form amounting to pre-Polabian *vъs-pizd-ь ‘backwards’. It is identical in structure with Common Slavic *vъs-pęt-ь ‘id.’ and was probably its direct replacement by way of root update (perhaps under the influence of MLG tōrügge).

An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe, 2015

2017

The research object of the present text is 3 Polish, 11 Slovakian, and 6 Czech male anthroponyms, derived from 22 Roman mythological names. The main aims are to present the list of the analyzed anthroponyms and to speak on their meanings. The&lt;br&gt; researched anthroponyms are divided into two major groups according to: 1) the type of the basic word, used during the process of name derivation, as a part of speech; 2) the type formed from a Roman mythological name, i. e. if the West-Slavonic anthroponym is derived from its form of Nom. sg. or from its root. Additional extralinguistic classification is made according to the canonization of the researched names, i. e. if it is a name of a saint, and, if the saint is canonized only by the Orthodox Church, by the Catholic one, or by both of them.