Abstract
The subject of the article is related to the author’s work on the international project “Polish Dialects in Lithuania” (“Gwary polskie na Litwie”, 2016–2018). The purpose of this paper was to identify and study lexical archaisms in the dialect material selected by the project group. In the article the concept of ‘archaism’ is interpreted widely: both archaic and obsolete words are considered. In total, it was identified about 200 lexical units classified as obsolete or archaic: proper lexical archaisms constitute approximately 50% of the material (arenda, bachur, czernica etc.), semantic archaisms constitute about 35% (baczyć, cacka, czeladź etc.), and about 15% of the material are lexical word-building archaisms (kradkiem, lenować się, nadgrobek etc.). By comparing the studied material with the data of the historical sources, it was possible to realize that a number of lexemes qualified in some scientific papers as regionalisms borrowed from the Eastern Slavic languages should be recognized as archaisms, once known to the common Polish language. Тhe results allow us to confirm the undoubtedly significant role of the Belarusian and Russian languages in supporting the functioning of lexical archaisms in Polish dialects in Lithuania. About half of the identified lexical archaisms are also known to a number of dialects in Poland.
Highlights
The project was devoted to the processing and analyzing the richest dialect material collected during the numerous expeditions organized by Vilnius University in 1995–2014
The Po lish language is represented by a number of territorial and functional dialects: in the field of culture and education the cultural dialect is prevailing; in everyday communication, especially in rural areas in the northern part of Vilnius County, in the southern part of Širvintos district and in the south-east of Lithuania, the so-called Northern Kresy (Borderland) dialect is widely spread
SGP an old meaning is preserved in some dialects in Poland; cf. modern baczyć ‘to look at something’ that is described as a book style in the contemporary dictionaries; to oppose Kurzowa’s opinion [1993, 478], it should rather be classified as a semantic archaism, in Kresy region it probably remains under the influence of Belar. bačyc’ ‘to see’. dokazać ‘to prove, to convince’: cf. the contemporary meaning ‘to achieve the intended goal, to attain something’; L agrees on the meaning ‘to prove’ by providing the examples from the 16th–18th cent.; acc
Summary
SESł it has been mentioned in the Old Polish since the 14th cent.; SW and SJPDor mark it as an obsolete and dialectal word; cf Belar. Zatyłek ‘back of the head’: this meaning is noted in L; besides zatyłek, Arct provides the form zatył ‘back side of something’; SWil, SW and SJPDor consider it obsolete; in Polish dialects it is known as ‘back stiffened part of the shoe’; cf Russ.
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