Native Polish Research Articles

Detection of Experimental Swine Trichinellosis Using Commercial Elisa Test.

The aim of the study carried out on ten young (10-week old) pigs of the native Polish Large White breed experimentally infected with a low dose of 300 invasive muscle larvae (ML) of Trichinella spiralis was intravital detection of trichinellosis using the E-S ELISA test, determination of a variation level of IgG antibodies against excretory-secretory (E-S) antigens of T. spiralis muscle larvae and finally, describing the intensity of T. spiralis larvae infection in selected muscles. The pig sera were collected at 7 and 9 days prior to the experimental infection with T. spiralis and at 9, 14, 20, 23, 25, 27, 30, 33, 37, 41, 46 days post-infection (d.p.i.). The anti-T. spiralis IgG antibodies were detected by a commercial E-S ELISA test (PrioCHECK Trichinella Ab). Average intensity of the T. spiralis infection in the examined muscles of pigs ranged from 1.52 up to 43.09 larvae/g. The studies revealed that the E-S antigen in the ELISA test did not show cross-reaction with the sera of pigs infected with Oesophagostomum spp. The ELISA assay did not recognize trichinellosis in pigs until 27 days after the T. spiralis infection. The anti-T. spiralis IgG antibodies were first detected on day 30 post-infection. A statistically significant increase of IgG antibodies against T. spiralis ML E-S antigens was first observed between days 27-30 (p<0.01) post-infection, and a further significant rise in the antibody level occurred between days 27 and 33 (p<0.01); 30 and 33 (p<0.01); 33 and 37 (p<0.05) following infection.

Jhumpa Lahiri Goes Italian

Jhumpa Lahiri Goes Italian Steven G. Kellman (bio) Any casual runner knows how diabolically difficult it is to traverse 26.2 miles in under five hours. However, in 2011, James Gefke not only completed the 115th Boston Marathon in four hours, 18 minutes, and 29 seconds, he did it while carrying thirty pounds of firefighting gear to honor the memory of a fellow firefighter. Similarly, anyone who has ever tried to write a book might agree with George Orwell's assessment that it is "a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness." Why exacerbate the horror by contending with the additional burden of a foreign language's unfamiliar vocabulary and grammar? Joseph Conrad wrote remarkable fiction not in his native Polish or even his second language, French, but in English, a language he began studying seriously only after settling in England while in his twenties. Conrad likened his literary translingualism to arduous, dangerous labor: "I had to work like a coal-miner in his pit, quarrying all of my English sentences out of a black night." Immigration is a common and compelling motive for switching languages. After news of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre convinced Ha Jin, who was studying in Boston at the time, not to return home to China, it made sense to adopt the language of the country in which he remained. Ten years later, he won the National Book Award for Waiting, a novel he wrote in English. Louis Begley, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Aleksandar Hemon, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Luc Sante are among many other writers who adopted English after moving to the United States. Translingual transplants to France include Romain Gary, Nancy Huston, Milan Kundera, Alain Mabanckou, and Andreï Makine. Turkish immigrants to Germany who have adopted German as their literary medium include Zehra Çirak, Emine Sevgi Őzdamar, and Feridun Zaimoğlu. Many other writers abandoned the language of their homeland without leaving home; Chinua Achebe, Raja Rao, Léopold Senghor, and Wole Soyinka all adopted as literary medium the language of the European imperial power governing their country. The case of Jhumpa Lahiri differs from them all. Noting how the three most celebrated translingual authors—Samuel Beckett, Conrad, and Vladimir Nabokov—all had closer and longer ties to their adopted languages than she has to hers, Italian, Lahiri writes, in Italian: "Mi chiedo se ci siano altri come me"—"I wonder if there are others like me." There are not. Born in London to immigrants from Calcutta, she counts Bengali as her mother tongue, though she admits to an imperfect command of it. When she was two, the family moved [End Page 121] to Rhode Island, where she grew up and where she began to cultivate a talent for writing in English. After receiving a BA in English literature from Barnard College, Lahiri continued to pursue her interest in English through two MA's, an MFA, and a PhD from Boston University. With two commercially successful collections of short fiction—Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and Unaccustomed Earth (2008)—and two novels—The Namesake (2003) and The Lowland (2013)—Lahiri has received some of the most prestigious accolades in the Anglophone literary world—a Pulitzer Prize, a PEN/Hemingway Award, and a National Humanities Medal, among others. She now confesses to an aversion to speaking, reading, or writing English. "English denotes a heavy, burdensome aspect of my past," she writes, in Italian. "I'm tired of it." ("L'inglese significa un aspetto del mio passato pesante, ingombrante. Ne sono stanca.") Her latest book, a short series of reflections on the author's passion for Italian, discards inglese in favor of italiano. Originally published in Milan in 2015 as In Altre Parole, it was published in the United States in 2016 in a dual-language edition titled In Other Words. Lahiri's Italian text appears on the verso page, its English translation on the recto page. In the very brief "Author's Note" that, she points out, constitutes "the first formal prose I have composed in English since my last book, The Lowland, was completed, in 2012," Lahiri explains that she could not bring herself to translate her work...

Effect of ageing on the physicochemical properties of musculus longissimus lumborum of young bulls of five breeds

Recent years have seen increasing interest in the conservation and use of native breeds of livestock raised in traditional farming systems. The experience of many European countries shows that promotion of raw materials and products derived from these breeds through a labelling system has a beneficial effect on the sustainable development of rural areas, contributes to preservation of the cultural heritage of the countryside, and increases the population of the breeds. As yet no beef produced in Poland has been included on the European list of traditional and regional products. For this reason we conducted a study to evaluate selected physicochemical properties of the meat of young bulls of three native breeds, Polish Red, White-Backed and Polish Black-and- White, compared with the meat of young Simmental and Polish Holstein-Friesian bulls, during a 14-day ageing of vacuum-packed meat. The following parameters were measured in m. longissimus lumborum (MLL) taken from half carcasses of 50 young bulls (10 from each breed): pH, electrical conductivity (45 min., 24 h, 2, 7 and 14 days post mortem), colour (according to CIE L*a*b*), shear force and energy. The water-holding capacity of the meat (drip loss, cooking loss and free water by the Grau-Hamm method), TBARS value (on days 2, 7 and 14) and content of haem pigments were determined as well. The physicochemical parameters of the MLL muscle obtained from the native Polish breeds of bulls (Polish Red, White-Backed and Polish Black-and-White) had intermediate values between those of Polish Holstein- Friesian (dairy type) and Simmental (dual-purpose) cattle. No qualitative deviations, such as those associated with DFD syndrome (pH 48 h in the range of 5.51-5.72), were found in any of the samples, which indicates that the raw material is well suited to the production of beef for culinary purposes. The breed of cattle was found to significantly influence the water-holding capacity parameters. The highest (P &lt; 0.001) drip loss was reported on the 14th day post mortem for the MLL of young bulls of the Simmental (6.89%) and Polish Red breeds (6.47%). The highest cooking loss was found on the 7th day post mortem in the MLL of young bulls of the Polish Holstein-Friesian (30.66%) and Simmental breeds (30.92%). Significantly (P &lt; 0.01) the least favourable water-holding capacity (the largest amount of free water) was shown by the muscle of young bulls of the Simmental breed on the 2nd day post mortem (75.31 mg) and the Polish Red breed on the 7th and 14th days post mortem (67.42 mg and 60.36 mg, respectively). On the 2nd and 7th days post mortem, the most tender MLL muscle was found (according to WBSF shear force) in the Polish Holstein-Friesian (76.8 N and 69.3 N) and Polish Black-and-White breeds (89.5 N and 59.1 N). On the last, 14th day of ageing, the instrumental WBSF shear force for the breeds evaluated was definitely more homogeneous and did not differ significantly (shear force in the range of 56.3-65.7 N; P &gt; 0.05). Compared to the muscle of native breeds, that of the Polish Holstein-Friesians showed significantly lower haem pigments (on average 35 ppm less; P &lt; 0.01) and a lower proportion of redness (a*) (P &lt; 0.01) on the 2nd and 7th days post mortem. The MLL muscle of young bulls of the Polish Red breed had the lowest (P &lt; 0.01) percentage content of yellowness (b*) during the whole ageing period. Significantly (P &lt; 0.01) lower oxidative stability (higher TBARS value) was found in the meat from young bulls of the Polish Holstein-Friesian breed (on the 2nd and 7th days post mortem) and the White-Backed breed (on the 14th day) compared to all other breeds analysed. In general, the ageing time had a positive influence on the muscle quality, as the determinants of the visual and sensory attractiveness of the meat, which are also important in the meat industry, remained stable (pH), improved (colour and water-holding capacity G-H) or became more similar among the breeds (tenderness assessed on the basis of shear force, cooking loss)....

Linkage disequilibrium and haplotype block structure in Limousin, Simmental and native Polish Red cattle

The aim of this study was to characterize in detail linkage disequilibrium (LD) decay and haplotype block structures in genomes of commercial Limousin (LM, n=201) and Simmental (SM, n=106) cattle and refer this data to the characteristics found in native unselected Polish Red (PR, n=299) cattle. A panel of 40,158 (LM), 40,117 (SM) and 42,118 (PR) high quality SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) markers from Illumina BovineSNP50 v2 BeadChip were utilized for the LD analysis based on the pairwise r2 statistic of SNPs at a distance up to 5Mb. The lower average r2 of 0.27 was observed in RP cattle at a short distance up to 25kb when compared to two other studied breeds (0.3 in both LM and SM). The minimum average values of r2 (0.01) were observed at the distances of 1500–3000kb in LM and 3000–5000kb in SM. In PR cattle LD persisted similarly as in SM cattle and the minimum average values of r2 (0.02) were observed at a distance of 3000–5000kb. The effects of minor allelic frequency threshold on the extent of LD was also evaluated by applying three different minimum MAF levels (0.05, 0.1 and 0.2). A total of 828 (LM), 667 (SM) and 761 (PR) haplotype block structures spanning 89,781kb (LM), 72,582kb (SM) and 70,647kb (PR) of the genome were detected. In total, 7.92% (LM), 6.43% (SM) and 6.52% (PR) of all SNPs formed blocks with a range of 2–15 SNPs per block in LM and SM breeds and 2–16 SNPs per block in PR cattle. Mean block lengths were slightly lower in RP cattle than in two other breeds and were estimated as 108.4±99kb, 108.8±97kb and 92.8±87 for LM, SM and PR respectively. For all studied breeds chromosome 1 showed the longest haplotype block structures in the genome, having 66 blocks spanning 8120kb in LM, 57 blocks spanning 6754kb in SM and 59 blocks spanning 5920kb in PR. The results showed slightly faster LD decay in Polish Red cattle (especially at short distances) than in two other breeds and shorter haplotype block structures which may result from population demographic history, overall genetic diversity as well as extensive breeding applied in this breed.

Economic efficiency of the production of fatteners fed blue lupine as a replacement for GM soybean meal

The aim of the study was to estimate the basic production parameters and economic efficiency of fattening pigs when GM soybean meal is replaced with increasing proportions of blue lupine, as a native Polish plant source of protein. The experimental material comprised 50 fatteners divided into a control group (C) and four experimental groups (E1, E2, E3 and E4), with 10 pigs per group. Basic fattening parameters, i.e. daily weight gain and feed consumption per kg of body weight gain, were very good: 1201–1272 g and 2.35–2.59 kg/kg, respectively. These parameters were slightly better in group C than in the experimental groups. Comparison of the costs incurred and revenue obtained showed that the production of fatteners was found to be unprofitable, assuming market prices for the feed materials used, including lupine seeds. The financial result was a consequence of market determinants independent of the producer. The use of unprocessed lupine seeds as a replacement for GM soybean meal in fattening pigs proved to be clearly unprofitable.

Norwid, Heine, Gautier i początki modernizmu

Norwid’s affiliations with symbolism and modernism that were obvious to Juliusz Gomulicki have been lately questioned. Instead of exposing the resemblances between his poetry and prose and the literary innovations of his French, early modernist contemporaries, Polish Norwid-specialists have (with a few exceptions) focused on his roots in the native Polish tradition. This paper compares funerary motives in Norwid’s oeuvre (Black Flowers, Chopin’s agony and death) with the treatment of similar motives in the oeuvre of Theophile Gautier (a highly poetical description of Heinrich Heine’s „Matratzengruft”). Not surprisingly, Norwid’s description makes it possible to establish a link with sacred history, while Gautier – who was an excellent poetical craftsman – uses religious images and motives for “ornamental” purposes. Norwid’s “metaphysical” approach to death is reminiscent of Charles Baudelaire’s practice, who juxtaposed worn-out religious imagery with non-religious objects and situations in order to represent a metaphysical worldview a rebours in which God is not present but absent. As a Christian poet, Norwid was, in a certain sense, more anachronistic than Baudelaire, but on the other hand, his literary juxtapositions of sacred and profane motives are even more daring than the French poet’s representations of this conflict between tradition and modernity

Morbus Behçet - a rare disease in Central Europe.

Behçet's disease (BD) is a multiorgan inflammatory disease of complex and not entirely elucidated etiology, which was originally diagnosed in patients with aphthous stomatitis, genital ulcerations and ocular manifestations. The entity is endemic in countries of Eastern and Central Asia, especially Turkey and Iran, but rarely seen in Central Europe. As there are no specific diagnostic laboratory tests or histopathologic findings which confirm the preliminary diagnosis, the final diagnosis should be based on clinical criteria. Frequently a definitive diagnosis is established within several years or months after the first manifestations appear. The increased number of cases, recently described worldwide also in the Polish population, indicates that the disease could spread out of endemic areas. The aim of this manuscript is to present the clinical picture, diagnosis criteria and therapeutic approaches of this “international disease” which currently is observed not only in emigrants from Asia but also in native Polish citizens.

Czy potrzebna nam jeszcze jedna biografia Zygmunta Wojciechowskiego? Pożytek z klasyków

Zygmunt Wojciechowski (1900–1955) was a historian of law at the University of Poznan. A student of one of the greatest Polish historians – Oswald Balzer – he was a medievalist, heavily involved in politics both in the times of Second Republic and the beginning of the Polish People’s Republic. His works comprised of content of cognitive qualities, but was always strongly coloured with politics. He was the creator of the theory of native Polish lands, located between Odra, Warta and Vistula Rivers. He is looking at history through the prism of Polish-German relations and he critically evaluates the history of the state, which moved away from traditional Polish settlement areas and led a disastrous policy of expansion to the East, which brought its fall and partitions. Wojciechowski welcomed the return of Poland to the western lands (recovered) in 1945, as a compensation of wrongs suffered in the struggle against Germany. The literature on works of Wojciechowski is controversial and requires recognition in a new synthetic book, which is the main thesis of this study

The gradient effect of transitional magnitude: A source of the vowel context effect

Previous studies have shown that vocalic transitions play an important role in the identification of the consonantal places (e.g., Whalen 1981/1991, Nowak 2006, Babel & McGuire 2013). While it has been intermittantly reported that the contribution of transitions may depend on vowel contexts, the common methodology, i.e., C-V cross-splicing, is too coarse to precisely identify the nature of this effect. In the present study, vocalic transitions are systematically manipulated and used as a gradient variable by incrementally removing the transitional period of the three vowels /u a e/ following alveolopalatal sibilant /ɕ/ in Polish. In an identification task, native Polish speakers were given a choice between /ɕ/ and /ʂ/ for stimuli with varying levels of palatal transitions. The results showed that participants’ perception is gradient: greater transitions overall elicit more palatal responses in all vowel contexts. More importantly, it has been shown that the apparent vowel effect can be largely reduced to the relative magnitude of transitions that are specific to each vowel. The low and back vowels elicit greater palatal transitions providing more robust transitional cues in perception, while the high and front vowels elicit smaller or nearly zero palatal transitions providing less robust cues to the sibilants’ place.

Gemination Strategies in L1 and English Pronunciation of Polish Learners

Polish is a language where true geminates appear and the occurrence of a double consonant letter in spelling corresponds with double or at least prolonged consonant articulation regardless of the morphological structure of the word. The above principle also concerns most borrowings, such as the English word ‘hobby’, for instance. In English, true geminates do not occur and a morpheme-internal double consonant letter is only a fairly reliable indication of the way the preceding vowel should be pronounced. This discrepancy may lead to negative transfer in Polish learners of English. Our recent research of native Polish speech (Rojczyk and Porzuczek, in press) generally confirmed the results reported by Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996), among others, who found geminates to be 1.5-3 times longer than singletons. In our study we investigate the influence of double consonant letters on L1 and English pronunciation of Polish learners. They read trochaic family names containing intervocalic &lt;nn&gt;. Each name is preceded by a first name suggesting the nationality (Polish, English, German or Italian) of the person mentioned. By placing each tested item in a Polish and an English semantically and rhythmically equivalent sentences (This is .../To jest...), we measure the level of consonant length variation with respect to the language in which the potential geminates appear, the language context and the learning experience of the students. In this way we collect evidence and formulate observations concerning the learners’ awareness of the status of geminates in various languages and the probability of transfer in EFL learning.

Wspomnienia bp. Adama Stanisława Krasińskiego: między rękopisem a publikacją

Biskup diecezji wileńskiej Adam Stanisław Krasiński (1810–1891) dał się poznać nie tylko jako aktywny hierarcha Kościoła katolickiego, ale też jako zaangażowany uczestnik ówczesnego życia kulturalnego i literackiego. Za niedostosowanie się do instrukcji generalnego gubernatora Michaiła Murawjowa nakazującej wydanie okólnika potępiającego powstanie styczniowe Krasiński na początku lata 1863 roku został zesłany do Wiatki (obecnie Kirow). Zwolniony z wygnania został w 1883 roku, ale bez prawa powrotu do swojej diecezji, dlatego osiadł w Krakowie.Krakowski okres życia biskupa z twórczego punktu widzenia było bardzo aktywny. Od młodości interesując się literaturą, przygotował słownik synonimów polskich. W Krakowie zaczął również pisać wspomnienia. Po raz pierwszy pamiętniki biskupa wileńskiego – Wspomnienia – napisane w ojczystym języku polskim ukazały się w 1900 roku w krakowskiej gazecie „Czas”. W tym samym roku 1900 (lub też na początku 1901), wydawnictwo „Czas” opublikowało je jako książkę w nakładzie 150 egzemplarzy. We wspomnieniach są bardzo ciekawe szczegóły z historii zakonu pijarów, o położeniu Kościoła katolickiego na ziemiach dawnej Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów, które zostały zagarnięte przez imperium rosyjskie. Znajdujemy tam także wiadomości o literackich i intelektualnych realiach życia w Wilnie. Dwadzieścia lat wygnania opisał bardzo zwięźle, a życia w Krakowie po powrocie z wygnania nie wspomniał w ogóle.Artykuł pragnie zrekonstruować drogę Wspomnień biskupa wileńskiego od rękopisu do druku na początku wieku XX. Podczas odkrywania okoliczności tworzenia i publikowania Wspomnień ustalono, że w zbiorach Muzeum Narodowego w Krakowie od 1917 roku znajduje się nie rękopis Wspomnień Krasińskiego, lecz wersja redakcyjna złożona z fragmentów autografu. Należy przyjąć, że oryginalne Wspomnienia nie zachowały się. Stanisław Estreicher (1869–1939), profesor na Uniwersytecie Jagiellońskim w Krakowie i współpracownik dziennika „Czas”, zredagował rękopis. Niewątpliwe jest, że część pamiętników Krasińskiego była wśród rękopisów przewiezionych w 1927 roku z Muzeum Polskiego w Rapperswilu do Biblioteki Narodowej w Warszawie. Adnotacja dawnego rękopisu Krasińskich w Rapperswilu pozwala stwierdzić, że jeden z nich był częścią wspomnień biskupa o jego latach spędzonych na wygnaniu. Przygotowujący Wspomnienia Krasińskiego do publikacji w 1900 roku Stanisław Estreicher nic o rękopisie Krasińskiego w Rapperswilu nie wiedział. Kiedy i jak rękopis Krasińskiego dostał się do muzeum w Rapperswilu nie jest oczywiste. Rękopis Wspomnień Krasińskiego został przekazany do Warszawy w 1927 roku do zbiorów Biblioteki Narodowej, gdzie zniszczony został w czasie Powstania Warszawskiego. Nie ma danych, które wskazywałyby, że w przyszłości można by było ów ostatni rękopis (lub jego kopię) gdzieś odnaleźć. Geneza Wspomnień biskupa wileńskiego Adama Stanisława Krasińskiego, historia konserwacji rękopisu oraz jego przygotowania do publikacji kryją więcej niż jedną tylko zagadkę.

O lekcji emigracyjnej polszczyzny przez Michała Chmielowca Sławomirowi Mrożkowi udzielonej (i kilku innych sprawach)

ON THE POLISH LESSON DURING EMIGRATION GRANTED TO SŁAWOMIR MROŻEK BY MICHAŁ CHMIELOWIEC (AND SOME OTHER MATTERS)The article deals with the manqué publishing of Sławomir Mrożek’s letter in the London magazine Wiadomości. Mrożek was reacting to a critique on W. Gombrowicz written byJ. Mackiewicz. Michał Chmielowiec refused to publish the letter, justifying it with a language misunderstanding caused by the differences in emigration and native Polish.

Insights into the genetic history of Green‐legged Partridgelike fowl: mtDNA and genome‐wide SNP analysis

The Green-legged Partridgelike (GP) fowl, an old native Polish breed, is characterised by reseda green-coloured shanks rather than yellow, white, slate or black commonly observed across most domestic breeds of chicken. Here, we investigate the origin, genetic relationships and structure of the GP fowl using mtDNA D-loop sequencing and genome-wide SNP analysis. Genome-wide association analysis between breeds enables us to verify the genetic control of the reseda green shank phenotype, a defining trait for the breed. Two mtDNA D-loop haplogroups and three autosomal genetic backgrounds are revealed. Significant associations of SNPs on chromosomes GGA24 and GGAZ indicate that the reseda green leg phenotype is associated with recessive alleles linked to the W and Id loci. Our results provide new insights into the genetic history of European chicken, indicating an admixd origin of East European traditional breeds of chicken on the continent, as supported by the presence of the reseda green phenotype and the knowledge that the GP fowl as a breed was developed before the advent of commercial stocks.

Chemical composition and amino acid profiles of goose muscles from native Polish breeds

The aim of the study was to compare the chemical and amino acid composition of breast (pectoralis major) and thigh (biceps femoris) muscles in 17-wk-old geese from 2 Polish conservative flocks: Rypińska (Ry, n = 20) and Garbonosa (Ga, n = 20). The geese were fed ad libitum during the experimental period on the same complete feed. Genotypes affected the moisture and fat content of breast and thigh meat. The Ga geese were characterized by higher moisture as well as lower fat lipid content compared with the Ry breast and thigh muscles. The amino acid proportions of meat proteins depended on the goose flock and type of muscles, where significant differences were found. The proteins of Ga breast muscles contained more glutamic acid, glycine, lysine, tryptophan, histidine, and methionine, and less aspartic acid, proline, serine, leucine, valine, phenyloalanine, tyrosine, and threonine than the Ry geese (P ≤ 0.05). The proteins of Ry thigh muscles were characterized by higher content of proline, serine, and essential amino acids (without lysine and methionine) and lower glutamic and asparagine acid, alanine, and glycine compared with the Ga flock. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/World Health Organization (1991) standard, tryptophan was the amino acid limiting the nutritional value of meat proteins of Ry breast muscles (amino acid score for tryptophan = 90%). Except for tryptophan, the meat proteins of the investigated raw materials contained more essential amino acids than the standard. The total content of essential amino acids for all investigated muscles was also higher (52.51 to 55.54%) than the standard (33.90%). It is evident that muscle protein from both flocks of geese have been characterized by high nutritional value. The values of the essential amino acid index of breast muscle proteins were similar in both flocks.

Phonetic Imitation of Vowel Duration in L2 Speech

This paper reports the results of a pilot study concerned with phonetic imitation in the speech of Polish learners of English. The purpose of the study was to investigate whether native speakers of Polish imitate the length of English vowels and to determine whether the extent of phonetic imitation may be influenced by the model talker being a native or a non-native speaker of English. The participants were asked to perform an auditory naming task in which they indentified objects and actions presented on a set of photos twice, with and without the imitation task. The imitation task was further sub-divided depending on the model talker being a native or non-native speaker of English (a native Southern British English speaker and a native Polish speaker fluent in English). As the aim was to investigate the variability in durational characteristics of English vowels, the series of front vowels /æ e ɪ iː/ were analysed in the shortening and lengthening b_t vs. b_d contexts. The results of the study show that the participants imitated the length of the investigated vowels as a result of exposure to the two model talkers. The data suggest that the degree of imitation was mediated both by linguistic and social factors and that the direction of convergence might have been affected by the participants’ attitude toward L2 pronunciation.

Prediction in language comprehension beyond specific words: An ERP study on sentence comprehension in Polish

Recently, several ERP studies have shown that the human language comprehension system anticipates words that are highly likely continuations of a given text. However, it remains an open issue whether the language comprehension system can also make predictions that go beyond a specific word. Here, we address the question of whether readers predict broad semantically defined classes of words. Event-related brain potentials were recorded, while native Polish speakers read short stories for comprehension. The stories were setting up a context that was very strongly biasing towards either an animate or an inanimate direct object noun in the story-final sentence. At the same time, the context was highly predictive for a specific direct object noun or not predictive for a specific direct object noun. The noun that was actually presented either did fit the animacy bias of the context or did not fit. The noun was preceded by an adjective. Polish has four classes of grammatical gender in the singular: feminine, neuter, masculine-animate, and masculine-inanimate. The prenominal adjective agrees with the direct object noun with respect to case and, in the case of masculine-animate and masculine-inanimate nouns, with respect to the in-/animacy of the noun. This allowed us to probe, at the adjective, whether the comprehension system predicts the in-/animacy of the direct object noun. Prediction-inconsistent adjectives elicited a negativity relative to prediction-consistent adjectives. This negativity was of the same size for contexts biasing towards a specific noun and for contexts not biasing towards a specific noun. These findings show that the comprehension system can predict semantically defined classes of words.

Language and belonging in the Polish translation of Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation

This article discusses the translation of Eva Hoffman's immigrant memoir Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language (1989) into Hoffman's native Polish (Zagubione w przekładzie, trans. Michał Ronikier, 1995). Comparing the original to its Polish translation, the article argues that translations of immigrant life stories into their authors' first languages constitute a category deserving of critical engagement within literary and translation studies. Such versions enliven the complex presence of translation in the original texts – they support the theory that immigrant authors engage in translation when they textualize their lives in the language of the new country. More specifically, given the original memoir's heterolingualism and use of translation, the article argues that the Polish version reduces the memoir's linguistic plurality and, as a result, transforms what Hoffman describes as a linguistic journey from Polish to English into a story of shifting national allegiances.

Molecular Analysis of Sorbus Sp. from the Pieniny Mts. and its Relation to other Sorbus Species

The systematic position of Sorbus population occurring in the Pieniny Mts. is controversial. To verify its taxonomic status we studied the ITS sequence of closely related species of the S. aria group: Sorbus sp. from the Pieniny Mts., S. aria from the Tatra Mts., S. graeca from the Balkans, and other well-distinguished native Polish Sorbus species (S. aria, S. aucuparia, S. intermedia and S. torminalis). As a reference we examined Sorbus populations closest to the Pieniny Mts. where S. graeca was reported to occur, in Slovakia. The results indicate that the Sorbus plants found in the Pieniny Mts. differ genetically from those in the Tatra Mts. but are identical to those collected from the Vihorlat Mts. in Slovakia and are closely related to S. graeca from the Balkans.

The phonotactic influence on the perception of a consonant cluster /pt/ by native English and native Polish listeners: A behavioral and event related potential (ERP) study

The effect of exposure to the contextual features of the /pt/ cluster was investigated in native-English and native-Polish listeners using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) methodology. Both groups experience the /pt/ cluster in their languages, but only the Polish group experiences the cluster in the context of word onset examined in the current experiment. The /st/ cluster was used as an experimental control. ERPs were recorded while participants identified the number of syllables in the second word of nonsense word pairs. The results found that only Polish listeners accurately perceived the /pt/ cluster and perception was reflected within a late positive component of the ERP waveform. Furthermore, evidence of discrimination of /pt/ and /pət/ onsets in the neural signal was found even for non-native listeners who could not perceive the difference. These findings suggest that exposure to phoneme sequences in highly specific contexts may be necessary for accurate perception.

Dpph Radical Scavenging Activity and Phenolic Compound Content in Different Leaf Extracts from Selected Blackberry Species

We used DPPH scavenging assays to study the antioxidant activity of three native Polish species of blackberry leaves (Rubus kuleszae Ziel., R. fabrimontanus (Sprib.) Sprib. and R. capitulatus Utsch.). All the studied extracts (methanolic, water, methanolic-water) showed high DPPH free radical scavenging activity (IC50 450.0–186.0 μg/ml). The most effective of the studied species was Rubus kuleszae. Total content of phenolic compounds (70.50–136.04 mg GAE/g) and phenolic acids (14.70–38.26 mg CAE/g) was determined spectrophotometrically. Antioxidant activity correlated positively with total content of phenolic compounds and phenolic acids.