Polish Corpus Research Articles

Semantic shifts of 'coming out' and 'come out of the closet'

Juxtaposing lexicographic data with authentic corpora-excerpted contexts, this article investigates the semantic variance of coming out and come out of the closet in English and Polish. It discovers the linguistic sources of the LGBTQ+-related sense of coming out in English and focuses on the semantic shift from its sociolectal LGBTQ+-related usage towards nonsociolectal pragmatically marked uses, which result in extended collocability (e.g. Eng. coming out as an atheist; Pol. ateistyczny coming-out). The study contrasts English and Polish corpus data to see whether the nonsociolectal usage of Polish coming out can be argued to be contact-induced – that is, modelled on English. Language contact research shows that contact-induced innovations undergo semantic change through conscious and creative exploitation by recipient language speakers to realise their pragmatic needs. The cognitive-onomasiological theoretical framework, coupled with a usage-based methodology, allows investigation of how native and contact-induced phenomena are used by native and recipient language speakers.

Between Genitive and Accusative Uses. On the Impact of Negation on Nominal Phrases Introduced by jako in Contemporary Polish

The paper discusses research results based on data excerpted from the National Corpus of Polish. The analysis concerns the impact of negation on the grammar case used in nominal phrases introduced by jako. The purpose of our study was to establish the proportion of genitive and accusative uses in these contexts. We have also analysed the possible impact of the grammatical status of jako on the grammar case. We established that, in contemporary Polish, most nominal phrases introduced by jako contain genitive forms. Accusative forms, although rarer, may not be considered marginal, as they tend to appear in up to 34% of the contexts. We have also shown that there is a correlation between the grammatical status of jako and the way negation impacts these phrases. In structures where jako is considered part of the verb (e.g. Sportowiec nie traktuje trzeciego miejsca jako porażkę), accusative structures tend to appear more often than in those containing jako interpreted as independent lexical units (e.g. Nie znaliśmy tej dziewczyny jako studentki).

Seasonal Trends in Suicide Attempts-Keywords Related Searches: A Google Trends Analysis.

Suicide is a significant public health concern globally, with its varying rates influenced by numerous factors, including seasonal changes. Online search behaviors, particularly searches related to suicide and mental health, have been proposed as real-time indicators of suicidal ideation in populations. In this study, a cross-sectional time series analysis was conducted, utilizing data on suicide attempts from the Polish Police Headquarters and online search behavior from Google Trends over a decade. Suicide attempt data were analyzed alongside the frequency of Google searches for suicide-related keywords derived from the Polish Corpus of Suicide Notes. A total of 66 keywords were selected for analysis to identify seasonal trends and patterns in search behavior. The study employed linear regression, Seasonal Mann-Kendall tests, and TBATS models to analyze the data. Suicide rates show seasonal patterns, peaking in warmer months. However, keyword searches did not strongly correlate with peak suicide months. This study enhances our understanding of suicide-related search trends and their potential connection to suicide rates. It suggests avenues for more effective prevention efforts and the potential for future algorithms to predict suicide rates and identify at-risk groups.

The usage of the adjective słodki (sweet) in word combinations of historical and contemporary Polish

This article aims to confirm that modifications in meanings of words are associated with their collocations. This is based on an analysis performed on the collocations of the adjective ‘słodki’ [sweet]. The language material for the research was collected using historical and contemporary Polish language corpora: Korpus Dawnych Polskich Tekstów Dramatycznych (1772–1939) [The Corpus of Polish Drama Texts], PELCRA search engine for Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego[The National Corpus of Polish], and the Monco PL searching tool for websites. Analysing authentic examples of word combinations reveals the relationship between the adjective’s specific meaning and its collocates. The analysis also demonstrates that the collocation of ‘słodki’ has been changing over the eras of language use.

Sposoby przedstawiania relacji człowiek-zwierzę w tekstach z XX i XXI wieku

The aim of the article is to reveal how the human-animal relationship is reflected in real linguistic utterances made in Polish. 2,813 sentences from the National Corpus of Polish, in which the words człowiek / ludzie (person / people) and zwierzę (animal) co-occur, were analysed. On the basis of direct contexts, a dozen groups of sentences were distinguished, reflecting different ways of perceiving the relationship in question: from equating the two, through varying degrees of indicating the similarities and differences between humans and animals, to a clear emphasis on distinction between them. It was found that speakers most often indicate humans and animals as playing different roles — performers vs. recipients — in various activities and experiences. Speakers also often emphasise the strong similarities between humans and animals, particularly often referring jointly to both human and animal in their utterances, but as separate objects. Sentences equating humans with animals account for only about 8% of the analysed set.

From the Peripheries to the Centre via Asia: The Notion of European Identity in Polish and Serbian Travel Writings About Asia (1850s–1920s)

The paper focuses on various dimensions of European identity in Polish and Serbian travel writings about Asia in the period from the 1850s to the 1920s, examining several case studies that show how travellers often identified themselves as Europeans, but sometimes discussed various aspects of European identity and had many issues with this self-description. The analysis is based on a large corpus of Polish and Serbian travelogues, but works by Gustaw Olechowski, Karol Lanckoroński, Pavel Petrović, Jerzy Bandrowski, Milan Jovanović, Eugeniusz Romer, Jadwiga Marcinowska and Jelena Dimitrijević are scrutinised in detail. The following issues are discussed: assuming European identity, European identity and planetary consciousness, overcoming Orientalism, the periphery complex, reversed Orientalism and Occidentalism, patriotism, and identification with Asians.

On a rare, yet interesting, usage of the Polish adjective ludzki compared to the English equivalent human

The lexemes ludzki and human are treated (e.g. in didactics and translation studies) as equivalents, which is refl ected in the dictionary descriptions of the meanings of these words. At the same time, the analysis of the contexts where the expression ludzki człowiek is used leads to other conclusions: not all contents of the Polish adjective are present in its English equivalent. Ludzki is also ‘one who suspends the operation of principles for the sake of another human being’. This component of a more general meaning (‘consistent with the human nature, conceived as good; hence: characterised by favourable disposition, understanding for other people; humane, merciful, gentle, kind’, SJPDor) seems to be absent from English (adjectives human and humane).This article applies the methodology based on the pragmatic analysis of the communication situation and consideration for the context of the utterance/statement (after Grzegorczykowa 1990). The language material used was derived from the following corpora: NKJP (National Corpus of Polish), BNC (British National Corpus), and COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English).

Levels of Schematicity in Metaphorical Animal Nicknames: The Case Study of Koczkodan Nickname in Polish

The aim of this paper is to recognise the contemporary meaning of the nickname koczkodan in Polish [English: hag, frump; literally: a vervet monkey], based on extracts of real discurse taken from the Polish Corpus. This meaning has been obtained by examining the metaphors underlying the nickname, which are motivated by various contextual factors, e.g. the speaker’s gender and discourse registers in which the phrase is pronounced. Accordingly, the working CMT-CMA hybrid model is applied for the purpose of the study, which derives both from the extended view of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and from the discursive and critical view of metaphor within Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA). The results obtained in the study reveal that the meaning of the koczkodan nickname is based on six metaphorical dynamic structures organised hierarchically, from the most schematic image schema that emerges at the very moment when the speaker needs to use the nickname, through more detailed metaphors at the levels of domains and frames, until the level of mental spaces is reached. This level is of great importance for the new meaning of the koczkodan nickname, as the integration of two incompatible input spaces (animal and human characteristics) are blended to form one single space. This results in the generation of a novel meaning of koczkodan in Polish, which makes reference not only to one’s physical ugliness but also to one’s evil character traits.

From Bound to Free: On the Degrammaticalization of the Polish Intensifying Prefix prze-

ABSTRACTBased on empirical material derived from the National Corpus of Polish and supplemental web-based sources, this paper provides an account of a recent change affecting the Polish intensifying prefix prze-, namely the emergence of its autonomous uses. It is argued that the development at issue exemplifies a rare linguistic process known as degrammaticalization, which incorporates phenomena running counter to a prototypical grammaticalization scenario. Firstly, the investigated Polish element seems to have undergone phonetic strengthening, as suggested by its relatively common separate spelling and occasional capitalization in non-edited, spontaneous written data. Secondly, the emancipated form has increased its morphosyntactic flexibility, as reflected by its appearance in reduplicative constructions, co-occurrence with verb phrases, independent occurrence in predicative settings, and the possibility of extraposition. And thirdly, it has been affected by semantic enrichment, i.e., it has additionally acquired an evaluative (positive) sense. The analyzed change is further claimed to be fueled by paradigmatic analogy to the frequent, well-established neoclassical elements super(-) and mega(-), which function as prefixal intensifiers as well as free intensifying and evaluative items, coupled with the general tendency for language change to involve renewal, whereby older expressive forms become superseded by novel, more vigorous expressions with the same meaning contents.

Polish natural language inference and factivity: An expert-based dataset and benchmarks

AbstractDespite recent breakthroughs in Machine Learning for Natural Language Processing, the Natural Language Inference (NLI) problems still constitute a challenge. To this purpose, we contribute a new dataset that focuses exclusively on the factivity phenomenon; however, our task remains the same as other NLI tasks, that is prediction of entailment, contradiction, or neutral (ECN). In this paper, we describe the LingFeatured NLI corpus and present the results of analyses designed to characterize the factivity/non-factivity opposition in natural language. The dataset contains entirely natural language utterances in Polish and gathers 2432 verb-complement pairs and 309 unique verbs. The dataset is based on the National Corpus of Polish (NKJP) and is a representative subcorpus in regard to syntactic construction [V][że][cc]. We also present an extended version of the set (3035 sentences) consisting more sentences with internal negations. We prepared deep learning benchmarks for both sets. We found that transformer BERT-based models working on sentences obtained relatively good results ( $\approx 89\%$ F1 score on base dataset). Even though better results were achieved using linguistic features ( $\approx 91\%$ F1 score on base dataset), this model requires more human labor (humans in the loop) because features were prepared manually by expert linguists. BERT-based models consuming only the input sentences show that they capture most of the complexity of NLI/factivity. Complex cases in the phenomenon—for example, cases with entitlement (E) and non-factive verbs—still remain an open issue for further research.

Evolution of Polish Lexis in the Decade Following the Introduction of the National Corpus of Polish: A Keyword Analysis

The paper reports on the results of an examination of changes in Polish lexis over the past decade. Two different, multi-million corpora spanning the years 2011–2022 were contrasted with a subset of the balanced National Corpus of Polish, which covers the period until 2010. To this end, keyword analysis was employed, and words that are particularly characteristic of the more recent set of texts, compared to the older corpus, were automatically extracted. This allowed us to identify the most salient lexical trends which differentiate the language of the last decade from the one recorded in the National Corpus of Polish, and which point to significant extralinguistic socio-cultural, economic, and political shifts across time. Keywords: corpus linguistics – National Corpus of Polish – language change – diachronic research – keyword analysis.

Understanding of Dementia in the Polish Language: A Frame Semantic Approach.

With the increasing incidences of dementia in aging societies, attention should be paid to the social context in which people with dementia live. One of its aspects is language transmitting beliefs, perceptions, and behavioral patterns. An analysis of understanding the diagnostic label of dementia may reveal the role of semantics in the process of social cognition of this disease. The overall aim of this study was to investigate the understanding of the word dementia (otępienie) in the Polish language. Frame semantics approach was applied. The structure of semantic information was uncovered with the concept of frame utilizing The National Corpus of Polish (the biggest corpus of contemporary Polish language of 1,500 million words). Additional data was collected from Polish speaking adults in Poland. The analyses allowed to identify the otępienie frame for Polish and verify how its elements are filled in by the general population, indicating the selectivity of colloquial knowledge about dementia. Dementia deviates from the prototypical disease. Need to care for the person with dementia outweighs treatment options. The cognitive symptoms and characteristics of the subject are salient. The perceptions of people with dementia embedded in semantics of the diagnostic label might create a basis for prejudicial attitudes among lay part of the society. Findings give foundation to further studies on relationship between semantics and social cognition of dementia which has a real impact on the social and clinical situation of people with dementia and may facilitate formulation of tailored messages aimed at building dementia-friendly society.

Porównanie frazeologiczne łykać coś jak (młody) pelikan – komentarz frazeograficzny

The article in its entirely is a phraseography commentary on the neo-phraseologism łykać // łyknąć coś jak (młody) pelikan [literal translation = to swallow something like a (young) pelican]. The author makes a formal and functional description of this element of colloquial Polish which migrates to the sphere of contacts supported by general Polish. The source base are network resources, including specialist collections – corpora (e.g. the SketchEngine platform, Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego [the National Corpus of Polish]).

Wizerunek Japończyków w polskich tygodnikach: analiza tekstów z Narodowego Korpusu Języka Polskiego

This article investigates texts from Polish weeklies found in the National Corpus of Polish that contain the word Japończyk ‘a Japanese’ in all possible grammatical cases. The analysis shows that it is possible to distinguish nine thematic categories of texts on the basis the following relevant facets: traits of character; physical features; associated motifs; exoticism; image of a leader on the international arena; artistic sensitivity; diplomatic relations; historical and war context; and social issues. Some texts portray the Japanese people positively, others negatively (for example, positively in texts related to politeness, negatively in those related to social issues). However, most of the texts describe the Japanese people in a neutral way. Additionally, the analysis shows that the term “pro-Japanese” (projapoński), used to describe Poland in the Japanese press, may be incorrectly interpreted by the public.

English loan translations in Polish in the area of computers: Syntactic aspects

Abstract The paper aims to discuss selected syntactic aspects of English loan translations in Polish in the sphere of computers and the Internet. The study is based on the corpus of informal Polish, collected and analyzed by the author of the study. All the texts have been read in their entirety by the author, and possible loan translations have been noted. Then, with the help of specific criteria, a group of English loan translations have been gathered. Altogether, 467 types of loan translation have been found (6,206 tokens). They are grouped according to specific syntactic properties, such as the observance of (or deviation from) the syntax of their English models. The study shows that most of the calques do not retain the original English arrangement but rather adapt it morphosyntactically to the recipient language, i.e. Polish. Calques that maintain the English order, and sometimes display an untypical pattern in Polish, are clearly in the minority. Additionally, theoretical problems connected with the syntactic classification of calques are also discussed at some length.

The tropics and the East-Central European gaze; The natural world of Southeast Asia in Polish and Serbian travel writings

The article analyses representations of the natural world in Indonesia and mainland Southeast Asia in a corpus of Polish and Serbian travel writings for the period between the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) and the outbreak of the First World War (1914). The research is based on travel writings by twenty Polish and Serbian authors, who visited Southeast Asia during the period 1869-1914. Scrutinizing a corpus of such narratives should contribute to the study of perceptions of Southeast Asia, especially among travellers from very diverse backgrounds. The theoretical and conceptual framework of the article draws on works by other scholars who have analysed travel writings, imaginative geography, representations of Southeast Asia, and tropicality. The study focuses on four areas: 1) images of the luxuriant tropics, 2) images of the perilous tropics, 3) exploitation of its natural resources, and 4) nature and identity.

A general corpus as a model of a natural language: corpora of phonic languages and the Corpus of Polish Sign Language

The aim of this paper is to discuss the major differences and similarities between the Corpus of Polish Sign Language (KPJM), which has been developed for a decade by the team of the Section for Sign Linguistics, Faculty of Polish Studies, University of Warsaw, and corpora of phonic languages (and in particular the National Corpus of Polish (NKJP)). The KPJM is a general corpus with an ambition to represent the whole language, used by the Polish Deaf. Unlike the corpora of phonic languages, which are collections of existing texts, the material of the KPJM was generated purposefully by recording and annotating an extensive set of videos. The paper shows that the sign language corpus should be viewed as analogous to spoken language corpora rather than to written language corpora. The KPJM can be perceived as a model of Polish Sign Language.

Wpływ pandemii na polską, bułgarską i czeską leksykologię w roku 2020 i na początku 2021

Przedmiotem uwagi są szybko następujące podczas pandemii konsekwencje językowe – leksykalne (nowe słowa, zwielokrotniona częstotliwość użycia istniejących słów) i komunikacyjne, stanowiące dla językoznawców ciekawą podstawę do badań współczesnych języków, z których trzy: polski, bułgarski, czeski stały się fundamentem analizy i badań frekwencyjnych. Mimo że omawiane procesy językowe mają charakter globalny, to tendencje leksykalne w poszczególnych językach, jak i funkcje mowy realizowane są w różny sposób, z heterogenicznym natężeniem, dlatego warto przyjrzeć im się bliżej. Prezentowany w artykule materiał został wyekscerpowany z dostępnych w sieci i na bieżąco notujących jednostki języka źródeł. Były nimi korpusy językowe: Narodowy korpus języka polskiego, Bułgarski narodowy korpus, Czeski narodowy korpus, autorski Polsko-bułgarsko-rosyjski korpus równoległy, którego autorka artykułu jest współautorką, i przeglądarki typu: frazeo.pl czy slowanaczasie.pl oraz słowniki elektroniczne, na przykład miejski.pl. Pomocne stały się polskie, bułgarskie i czeskie programy publicystyczne i informacyjne, a także najmłodsza, choć nieliczna, literatura naukowa.

Thank you, sorry and please: English politeness markers in Polish

The aim of this study is to analyse the use of the English politeness markers thankyou,sorryand pleasein Polish. My initial hypothesis was that the politeness markers have already been incorporated into the mental lexicon of Polish speakers, and are thus understood and accepted by them, but they do not have the prospect of replacing their Polish equivalents because they lack the necessary pragmatic force. Previ-ous studies (Terkourafi 2011; Peterson & Vaattovaara 2014) show that pragmatic borrowings are unlikely to do so. However, this corpus study finds a context in which a borrowing is used increasingly, namely sorryin the collocation with ale (ʻbutʼ). It seems to have started replacing its Polish equivalents in this context, as it constitutes 25% of all collocations of apologetic behaviour with alein the National Corpus of Polish. However, the majority of the occurrences of the analysed politeness markers in the corpus are restricted to Internet-mediated communication.

“FROM UKRAINE I COME HERE...”: UKRAINIAN CHARACTERS ON THE POLISH STAGE IN LVIV (1842–1900)

The article comprehensively presents information about theatrical representations of Ukrainians on the Polish stage in Lviv from 1842 to 1900. It is noted that throughout the 19th century, Ukrainian characters predominated in various genres of performances on the Polish stage in Lviv, with Romanticism serving as the backdrop for the portrayal of Cossacks, hetmans, insurgents, peasants, and villagers. The study meticulously analyzes the corpus of Polish plays in Lviv featuring Ukrainian characters and categorizes them into four groups based on representational strategies: Arcadian, infernal (Haidamak), historical-heroic (Cossack), and domestic-folkloric (peasant). The contribution of the Polish stage in Lviv to the development of Ukrainian discourse in national culture is outlined. A list of the acting ensemble of the Polish theater in Lviv at that time is provided. Emphasis is placed on the significance of the Count Skarbek Theater in shaping the stage representations of Ukrainian characters from 1842 to 1900. The reaction of the Polish audience, which sought to see them as “brothers on the border”, romantic free-spirited heroes, warriors, exotic ethnic neighbors, faithful, clever servants, and the Ukrainian audience when there was no Ukrainian professional theater in Galicia yet, is traced. Attention is focused on the dramaturgy based on events from the shared Polish-Ukrainian past. It is demonstrated that the represented images of Ukrainians were characterized by enthusiasm, love, a sense of danger, and hope for a shared future. The influence of the Polish theater on the formation of Ukrainian professional theater in 19th-century Galicia is highlighted.