Polish Words Research Articles

Jidysz – angielski – polski. Problemy przekładu i pamięci

The article presents selected translations of Yiddish literature into English, focusing on the influence of translator’s choices on forming the topography and realities of life in Poland before the Second World War. Elements related to material culture and multilingual quality of represented world are often eliminated or simplified. One of the main problems for translators, who usually do not know Polish, are Polish words and expressions, which are frequent in Yiddish literature written by authors of Polish extraction. Additional problems occur when Polish is used as intermediary between Yiddish and Polish. A reader who knows Eastern European realities receives an image of reality, which has been purposefully modified to facilitate reception in America, so that represented reality turns out to be more alien and exotic than in direct translation from Yiddish into Polish. This phenomenon occurs not only in fiction, but also in documentary texts, e.g. in the memorial books, which have been popular in Poland recently, and which are often translated from English intermediary texts. All this leads to important discrepancies and tensions between reality as it is imagined, remembered, and documented. Examples presented in the article come from texts by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shalom Asch, and the Zgierz memorial book.

Методика и критерии идентификации полонизмов литовского языка

The methodology and criteria of identification of Polish loanwords in Lithuanian
 The article examines the methodology and criteria of identification of Polish loan words in Lithuanian. Also etymology, peculiar developments, and trends in the infiltration of these borrowings are discussed. The following conclusions are proposed based on our analysis: 1) Polonisms in Lithuanian can be divided into three groups, based on the principles of (α) establishing the primary source of the variants of the Lithuanian word (through areal distribution), and (β) the words’ phonetic, morphological and semantic identity (correlated with the modulation of α). Also taken into account are peculiarities in the usage of the primary forms (not necessarily in the inherited layer) on the West Slavic ground, and their secondary variants in the East Slavic languages (based on the influence of factors α and β). The resulting three groups are: I. mo n o g e n i c (i.e. homogenous, not represented in the vocabulary of the East Slavic languages (based on factor α)), II. i n d e t e r m i n a t e (due to the presence of variants of loanwords from Polish in East Slavic vocabulary (factor α) in different time periods), III. a l t e r n a t i v e (III.1. forms belonging to the inherited layer, characteristic of Polish and one of the East Slavic languages (with regard to factor α); III.2. doublet variants of foreign origin, derived from a different primary source; III.3. Semipolonisms). 2) The kg digraph is one of the crucial characteristics that allows Polish loanwords in Lithuanian to be divided into the monogenic, indeterminate, and alternative. It is attested in the structure of Old Belorussian lexemes, and it reflects the phonetic feature of the Belorussian explosive velar consonant г /g/ in loanwords and in words of the inherited layer, in combinations with other consonants: зг, дзг, and джг. 3) Spirantization of the West Slavic sonant *ȓ (> ř /ź/ or /ś/), when the temporal factor is taken into account (the process operated till the 17th c.), is a feature of paramount importance as it allows Lithuanian words to be identified and attributed to either Polish or Belorussian. 4) The phenomenon of vocalization of the Polish lateral sonant ł (the shift to /ṷ/), also known as vavation, is reflected in those loanwords in Lithuanian which belong to a later period, in dialectal forms, and also in Belorussian lexemes, and it regulates the division of borrowings into Polonisms and Belorussianisms. 5) When attributing loanwords based on differences in vowels, it is their place in the system that should be considered, not their pronunciation. 6) The etymological status of the borrowing is determined by a match between the semantic value of the word in Lithuanian, and the original form in the West and/or East Slavic languages. 7) The fact that the Polish etymon is itself of East Slavic origin, has no influence on the establishing of the status of Polonism for a borrowing into Lithuanian (so-called secondary Polonisms).

Jednostki obce w słowniku języka polskiego na przykładzie Słownika elektronicznego jednostek frazeologicznych (SEJF)

Foreign elements in the Polish lexicon, using the example of Słownik elektroniczny jednostek frazeologicznych (SEJF) ‘Electronic Dictionary of Multi-Word Units’
 The paper discusses the presence of foreign phraseological units and of their grammatical features in phraseological dictionaries of general Polish. The author adduces lexicographical descriptions of specific phrasemes from Polish and foreign words dictionaries, and compares them with corpus data. Based on these analyses, she proposes a set of detailed solutions which were implemented in Słownik elektroniczny jednostek frazeologicznych (SEJF) ‘Electronic Dictionary of Multi-Word Units’ that she is preparing. SEJF is going to be the first electronic grammatical dictionary of Polish idiomatic phrases to provide paradigms for the described units. The paper closes with a list of one hundred analysed phrasemes, each with the assigned lexeme class and, in the case of nouns, also the gender value.

Litvaks in South Africa: How to Photograph Nelson Mandela?

Lithuanian Jews in South Africa have maintained strong ties with their historical homeland and consciously preserved their cultural identity. They are actively interested in their origins and roots. In this article, I will present part of my PhD research, which focuses on Litvak photographers in South Africa. First, I will briefly introduce the Jewish community and its role in the antiapartheid struggle. I will then define social documentary pho tography, as well as present a short biography of one of the Litvak photographers, Eli Weinberg from Libau. Last, I will discuss my case study of a Nelson Mandela photograph taken by Eli Weinberg, and discuss how this artwork was constructed. Also, I will raise a few other more personal concerns of research method, such as how to avoid the “danger of a single story” (Adichie 2009). Quick Note on the Term Litvak Litvaks are Jews from the territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania—present-day Lithuania; parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and Latvia; and the northeastern Suwalki region of Poland. Litvaks, as a territorial and linguistic subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews, are carriers of the northeastern, or Lithuanian, dialect of Yiddish. The Yiddish adjective Litvish means “Lithuanian,” and the noun for “Lithuanian Jew” is Litvak. The term Litvak comes from Litwak, the Polish word for “a man from Lithuania”; however, this usage was discontinued in the nineteenth century, and was revived in 1880 in the narrower sense of “a Lithuanian Jew.” The term is sometimes used to refer to all Orthodox Jews who follow a “Lithuanian” (Ashkenazic and non-Hasidic, following the teaching of the Vilna Gaon) style of life and learning, regardless of their location and community of origin. The area where Lithuanian Jews live is often called Lita. I would like to stress that the geography of Jewish origin plays a key role in my research and is not a question of religion.

Recognition of signed expressions using visually-oriented subunits obtained by an immune-based optimisation

This paper considers automatic visual recognition of signed expressions. The proposed method is based on modelling gestures with subunits, which is similar to modelling speech by means of phonemes. To define the subunits a data-driven procedure is applied. The procedure consists in partitioning time series, extracted from video, into subsequences which form homogeneous groups. The cut points are determined by an immune optimisation procedure based on quality assessment of the resulting clusters. In this paper the problem is formulated, its solution method is proposed and experimentally verified on a database of 101 Polish words and 35 sentences used at the doctor’s and in the post office. The results show that our subunit-based classifier outperforms its whole-word-based counterpart, which is particularly evident when new expressions are recognised on the basis of a small number of examples.

Uwagi o jarmułce

Notes on Polish jarmułka ‘Jewish skullcap’
 Polish jarmułka ‘Jewish skullcap’ is generally considered to be an old Turkish loanword. In Bohdan A. Struminsky’s 1987 article this etymology is contested and replaced with a Latin one. However, Struminsky failed to present convincing arguments against the Turkish origin of the Polish word and his Latin explanation does not seem absolutely perfect either. This article critically examines Struminsky’s study and provides specific arguments against the Turkish trail. The etymology and the evolution of both the guise and the meanings of Polish jarmułka appear to be more complicated than previously thought; thus, the present article should be looked on as picking up an interrupted discussion and, in addition, an invitation to reexamination of the Latin etymology and the semantic aspects of all explanations suggested so far.

From Szlachta Culture to the 21st Century, Between East and West. New Essays on Joseph Conrad’s Polishness ed. by Wiesław Krajka (review)

Reviewed by: From Szlachta Culture to the 21st Century, Between East and West. New Essays on Joseph Conrad’s Polishnessed. by Wiesław Krajka Rebecca Borden (bio) Wiesław Krajka. From SzlachtaCulture to the 21st Century, Between East and West. New Essays on Joseph Conrad’s Polishness. Lublin: Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, 2013; Boulder, CO: Eastern European Monographs, 2013; New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. $75.00 (hardcover) This volume of essays is the twenty-second and final volume in the series Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives, edited by Wiesław Krajka, a collaboration between Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Press and Eastern European Monographs. The articles were presented in earlier versions at the Fifth International Joseph Conrad Conference at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland in 2011. The collection is organized into two parts. Part I, “From SzlachtaCulture to the 21st Century,” examines issues of Polish history, culture, and literature. Part II, “Between East and West,” enlarges the frame of inquiry to include the reception history of Conrad in Russia, the Ukraine, and Germany. One theme connecting the essays in this volume is a reexamination of the boundaries and components of “Polish” identity, [End Page 88]expanding this term to look more closely at geographic areas and human communities that were historically “Polish” but have since been reclassified into other nations and national literary traditions. This collection also connects the reception history of Conrad across countries that share a 20th century literary landscape dominated by Soviet-influenced readings of Conrad and a 21st century literary landscape where Conrad’s reception is still emerging from this Soviet past. Part I is anchored by G.W. Stephen Brodsky’s essay “The Dispossessed: Joseph Conrad as Borderland Writer.” This essay sets up the volume’s discussion of the term szlachta, defining Conrad in terms of his relationship to the borderland szlachcicculture that was Conrad’s familial legacy as a member of the minor Polish nobility Conrad’s Polonism, as well has his relationship to exile and marginality, is specific to szlachcicfrom the Eastern borderland. The szlachtaclass, once held together through their status as landowners, had in many cases become literally dispossessed of land and only a mythical, ancestral claim to aristocratic origins held them together as a group. Brodsky poses that Conrad’s constant concern over who qualifies as ’one of us’ is worth reevaluating in light of Conrad’s early exposure to the szlachcicfear of both territorial and self-definitional dispossession. Brodsky provides a detailed history of several generations of Conrad’s paternal relations in the Nałęcz-Korzeniowski line. He then examines Conrad’s fictional affinity for “all sorts of romantic working gentry equivalent in some way to the szlachta” (46). In A Personal Record, Conrad connects himself to the racially and culturally separate Castilian nobility embodied by Don Quixote. In his fiction, Conrad creates a number of other “fictional Quixotes,” characters whose reduced, marginal status connects them to szlachcicinsecurities. Joanna Skolik’s essay “Conrad’s Mythical World of the Borderland” provides a nuanced definition of the Polish word kresy, which translates imperfectly to “borderland” in English. She examines the “myth” of the Borderland in Polish culture and Conrad’s relationship to this mythologized space. Kresyis both the Polish colloquial designation for the border area and a term referring to an outpost of Western civilization where Eastern and Western influences mix together. While there is a strong political and cultural connection between the Republic and the Borderland, there is also a sense of regional otherness about the space and its inhabitants. Conrad, born into this liminal space, is a Borderland native and, thus, “heir to Borderland literature and its mythical stylization” (152). In “Prince Roman,” Conrad writes an “anti-fairy tale” set in this Borderland space that demonstrates the qualities of “genuine aristocracy,” a term he also examines in A Personal Record; a commitment to noblesse oblige, personal excellence, and patriotic service (161, 162). Skolik argues that Conrad [End Page 89]grounds “Prince Roman” in Polish romantic ideals while also referencing conceptions of knighthood, chivalry, and honor found in the Mediterranean epic tradition reaching back to Homer. In...

Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland by Brian Porter-Szűcs (review)

Reviewed by: Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland by Brian Porter-Szűcs Nathaniel D. Wood Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland. By Brian Porter-Szűcs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 496 pp. $55.00 (cloth). With the exception of Italy, perhaps no other nation-state is more closely connected with Roman Catholicism today than Poland, and [End Page 468] with reason: 98 percent of all children born there are baptized into the faith and at least 90 percent of all adult Poles self-identify as Catholic (p. 4). The late Pope John Paul II, as is well known, hailed from Poland, where he served as archbishop of Cracow before taking upon the leadership of the entire Church in 1978. And yet the association of “Pole” with “Catholic” is not limited merely to these largely unassailable facts; rather, as Brian Porter-Szűcs points out in his masterful study Faith and Fatherland, “it is supported by a deeply ingrained but highly selective telling of national history,” a history that makes it difficult to account for the religious diversity of the former incarnations of the Polish state (including before World War II, when only two-thirds of the population was Catholic), to acknowledge the Protestant Reformation there, or to admit that clergy began to connect faith and fatherland only at the beginning of the twentieth century (p. 5). If Church leaders have sought to remove the Church and the nation from historical time, asserting the constancy (and hegemony) of Polish Catholicism, Porter-Szűcs methodically and emphatically reinserts the specificity and exigency of history back into the narrative, showing how the contours of Polish Catholic thought on matters such as sin, modernity, the nation, the Jews, and the Virgin Mary have morphed over the last two centuries. As he observes, “Profound transformations often involve a seemingly subtle shift in the bounds of the permissible, a normalization of what had been unspeakable or a quiet repudiation of what was once commonplace” (p. 141). This book offers an excellent example of the power of intellectual history to explicate the complex and shifting relationship between two worldviews, the Catholic and the national, while problematizing their simple conflation. In ten chapters Porter-Szűcs explores key themes in Polish Catholic rhetoric as its adherents struggled to make Catholicism modern. The overarching theme, unsurprisingly, is the encroachment of nationalism into Catholic thought, manifest most importantly and disturbingly in a worldview that blamed Masons, Jews, and Bolsheviks for the perceived challenges of modernity to faith and family. Porter-Szűcs notes the logical inconsistency of a doctrine premised upon love for one’s neighbors combined with the hatred of national exclusivity and anti-Semitism—a subject he explored from the secular side in his first book, When Nationalism Began to Hate (Oxford University Press, 2001)—while showing precisely how such configurations came about. Each chapter—“The Church,” “Sin,” “Modernity,” “The Person and Society,” “Politics,” “The Nation Penitent,” “Ecclesia Militans,” “The Jew,” “Polak-Katolik,” and “Mary, Militant and Maternal”—begins [End Page 469] with nineteenth- or early twentieth-century discourse among Polish Catholic clergy on the given topic, before following its development to the present. Deeply knowledgeable about Catholic theology, both within Poland and in its larger global context, and highly sensitive to the semantics of key Polish words and phrases, Porter-Szűcs offers trenchant analysis of sermons, clerical debates, and public discussions published in sources ranging from official encyclicals to secret police records or Internet chatroom posts. Overall, one notes a shift in Polish Catholic thought from emphasis on personal sin to national righteousness, from injunctions to “love thy neighbor” to exclusivist and anti-Semitic vitriol, from acceptance of hierarchical social and political arrangements to support for democracy and human rights. The chapters that focus more on the 1970s and 1980s (when the Catholic Church was at its apogee in Poland) reveal greater emphasis on love and the worth of the individual, which incidentally could be used as a weapon against the Communist authorities, while the conclusion reveals a duality or even plurality in Polish Catholic thought today, ranging from a vocal minority’s contemporary reformulation of the anti-Semitic, antimodern conspiracy...

Jak wyglądały późnośredniowieczne kuchnie?

The Polish word „kuchnia” (kitchen, cooker, cuisine, cooking in English) has at least a few colloquial meanings. Most frequently it is associated with a collec­tion of recipes. Another meaning of the word is a device for cooking, e.g. a gas or an electric cooker or until recently a coal-burning stove. It is also a room, where food is prepared. The word sounds similar in most of the European languages. It might have originated from the German etymon „küch” which means cooking. In many languages the room for food preparation and device for cooking have the same source word. Therefore it is worth considering why there are so few expressions with reference to this important sphere of our life. Historical sources containing information that would render it possible to reconstruct kitchens are scarce and relatively late. It may be suspected that for contemporary people an issue of such a self-evident nature was not worth noting. The paper treats both on written and iconographic sources. On their basis it can be assumed that kitchen as a room functioned only in large castles and monasteries, where meals were prepared for a large number of people. In other residences or even at knights’ manor houses or wealthy bourgeois houses, food was cooked in living (day) rooms, whereas initial preparation might have taken place in front of the building. The development of constructions used for cooking is another issue discussed in this paper. Iconographic sources reveal that meals were most often cooked in open hearths that were initially built on the ground level and subsequently they were placed higher. Another essential concern was smoke removal from above the hearth. Based on iconography it can be claimed that most frequently there was a hood protruding from a wall, the purpose of which was mainly protection against sparks. Not always do we know whether this hood was connected with chimney ducts. Today such a construction is called a fire place and it is used mainly for heating. It seems that placing a hearth in the so-called „wide chimney” was an essential stage in the development of a kitchen as a separate room. As a consequence the entire room „in the chimney” became a kitchen and this may give an answer to the question why there is a lack of extensive vocabulary with reference to the kitchen. Another problem mentioned in the paper are difficulties that archeologists face when they attempt to reconstruct equipment used for cooking on the basis of archeological records obtained during excavations.

Vowel hiatus at Polish word boundaries – Phonetic realization and phonological implications

This paper presents an acoustic phonetic study of Polish V#V sequences designed to shed light on the phonological representation of glottal marking. Independent phonological evidence from Polish suggests that initial vowels contain an empty onset that may be realized as glottal marking. The results of the experiment suggest that glottal marking in Polish is quite robust, and may be realized by increases in spectral balance. In the Onset Prominence environment, the empty onset is derived from phonetic principles, realized as specification for the Vocalic Onset layer of structure. VO parameter settings capture important ambiguities in speech perception and allow for a unified analysis of glottal marking, distributional restrictions on Polish vowels, and ambiguities underlying palatalization processes

Wymowa tutej, dzisiej

In some Polish words, the final ‑aj is pronounced as [ej], e. g. daj > dej, dzisiaj > dzisiej, tutaj > tutej, wczoraj > wczorej, bodaj > bodej. This pronunciation is considered to be of dialectal or regional origin. The present author claims that the development ‑aj > ‑ej is not a regular sound change, but is to be accounted for by what he calls irregular sound change due to frequency.

Neurocognitive dimensions of lexical complexity in Polish

Neuroimaging studies of English suggest that speech comprehension engages two interdependent systems: a bilateral fronto-temporal network responsible for general perceptual and cognitive processing, and a specialised left-lateralised network supporting specifically linguistic processing. Using fMRI we test this hypothesis in Polish, a Slavic language with rich and diverse morphology. We manipulated general perceptual complexity (presence or absence of an onset-embedded stem, e.g. kotlet ‘cutlet’ vs. kot ‘cat’) and specifically linguistic complexity (presence of an inflectional affix, e.g. dom ‘house, Nom’ vs. dom-u ‘house, Gen’). Non-linguistic complexity activated a bilateral network, as in English, but we found no differences between inflected and uninflected nouns. Instead, all types of words activated left inferior frontal areas, suggesting that all Polish words can be considered linguistically ‘complex’ in processing terms. The results support a dual network hypothesis, but highlight differences between languages like English and Polish, and underline the importance of cross-linguistic comparisons.

Stress “deafness” in a Language with Fixed Word Stress: An ERP Study on Polish

The aim of the present contribution was to examine the factors influencing the prosodic processing in a language with predictable word stress. For Polish, a language with fixed penultimate stress but several well-defined exceptions, difficulties in the processing and representation of prosodic information have been reported (e.g., Peperkamp and Dupoux, 2002). The present study utilized event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the factors influencing prosodic processing in Polish. These factors are (i) the predictability of stress and (ii) the prosodic structure in terms of metrical feet. Polish native speakers were presented with correctly and incorrectly stressed Polish words and instructed to judge the correctness of the perceived stress patterns. For some stress violations, an early negativity was found which was interpreted as a reflection of an error-detection mechanism. In addition, exceptional stress patterns (=antepenultimate stress) and post-lexical (=initial) stress evoked a task-related positivity effect (P300) whose amplitude and latency is correlated with the degree of anomaly and deviation from an expectation. In contrast, violations involving the default (=penultimate stress) did not produce such an effect. This asymmetrical result is interpreted to reflect that Polish native speakers are less sensitive to the default pattern than to the exceptional or post-lexical patterns. Behavioral results are orthogonal to the electrophysiological results showing that Polish speakers had difficulties to reject any kind of stress violation. Thus, on a meta-linguistic level Polish speakers appeared to be stress-“deaf” for any kind of stress manipulation, whereas the neural reactions differentiate between the default and lexicalized patterns.

Jeszcze o słownictwie kresowym (próba porównania idiolektów szlacheckich i chłopskich na Podolu)

The article deals with the vocabulary of three idiolects of descendants of Polish petty nobility in Ukrainian Podolia. The vocabulary is divided into three groups: native Polish words, lexical doublets, borrowings, and is compared with the vocabulary of peasants. The first group represents native Polish words used by respondents from the petty nobility, equivalents of which are borrowings in the dialects of peasants or words common to dialectal or archaic Polish and Eastern Slavic languages. The second group considers lexical doublets, i.e. native Polish words used parallel to their borrowed equivalents, the frequency and context of their usage. The third group deals with some borrowings from Ukrainian and Russian which are common both to the vocabulary of petty nobility and peasants. The study shows that in many cases word (pair of words) needs to be analyzed separately considering different factors, such as context, frequency of use, style of speech, etc. However, Polish of petty nobility in the sphere of vocabulary seems to be more conservative than Polish of peasants.

Z historii wymowy wyrazu hala ‘pastwisko górskie’

Polish word hala “mountain pasture” is generally derived from the Slovak hol’a, and this borrowing, combined with the introduction of pseudo-correct a, was supposed to be credited to Romantic literature, and precisely was the result of etymological experiments of Seweryn Goszczynski. The present paper demonstrates that the word hala, written exclusively with a and often with ll, is a quite frequent phenomenon in the texts of Ksiega panstwa zywieckiego (“The Book of the Żywiec State”) from the year 1681. The pronunciation hala instead of hola may have been used at that time by literate inhabitants of the Beskidy Mountains, familiar with the standard of the literary language, although rather poorly, thus inclined to adjust to the tendency of hypercorrectness. The German typographic influence cannot be excluded.

O pająku, duszy i łacińskiej konstrukcji accusativus cum infinitivo, czyli jak zrozumieć jeden z wersetów Psałterza floriańskiego

The author of the article, through the analysis of one of the verses from Psałterz floriański (“Florian Psalter”), is trying to understand where the difficulties in understanding this old Polish text arise. Is it exclusively the fault of a medieval translator and the Polish written language that had not been completely formed by then or rather is it a contemporary reader that is to blame? Taking into account at least a number of aspects connected with the work of a medieval translator and copyist , such as: the lack of a consistent Latin base text—the canonical version, widely known, that is to appear no sooner than in the print era; insufficient knowledge of Psałterz floriański by heart; different structures of the Latin language which the translator tried to express by choosing Polish words that would not violate the structure of the translation base—all these factors make the author of the article defend the medieval writer whose work requires in-depth and repetitive reading before it starts revealing its secrets to the modern reader.

Językoznawstwo kognitywne i korpusowe w badaniach nad przekładem języka prawnego na przykładzie Kodeksu Spółek Handlowych i Kodeksu Pracy

The present paper is concerned with the problem of translating legal language. Three units, excerpted from the Polish Commercial Companies Code and Labour Code, are analysed: (1) employment relationship/relation (pol. stosunek pracy), (2), delete/repealed/ abrogated (pol. skreślone), (3) criminal/penal provisions (pol. przepisy karne). The methodology employed in the analysis draws on cognitive linguistics (exploring the conceptual meanings of the items examined) and corpus linguistics (quantitative analysis). Additionally, dictionary definitions and extracts from English acts are also taken into account while determining English equivalents of Polish words. The analysis presented in this paper demostrates that legal terminology found in the translations of Polish codes into English is inconsistent. Consequently, the units analysed in this paper are not examples of legal terms; rather they should be assigned the status of what J. Lukszyn and W. Zmarzer call ‘quasi-terms’ (cf. 2001).

The archaeology of early medieval Poland: discoveries--hypotheses--interpretations

Introduction .. xi List of Figures .. xv 1. Archaeology of Early Medieval Poland: beginnings of interest, birth and development .. 1 2. Sources and methods .. 29 3. How did the Slavs get to Polish lands? .. 55 4. Mysteries of the pre-state period .. 75 5. Holy mountains .. 107 6. Pagan cemetery or holy grove? .. 133 7. Monumental mounds in Little Poland .. 143 8. Traces of the earliest script in Poland? .. 167 9. How Poland came into being? .. 175 10. Towns still under investigation .. 223 11. Other central places .. 307 12. Rural landscapes .. 333 13. The earliest monastic complexes .. 351 14. The puzzle of the century: pottery marks 383 15. Locals and migrants .. 395 Appendix 1 Some Notes on the Translation of Andrzej Buko's 'The Archaeology of Early Medieval Poland' (Paul Barford) .. 431 Appendix 2 A brief guide to the pronunciation of Polish words (compiled by Paul Barford) .. 439 Bibliography .. 441 Index

Representational Handling of Poznań-Cracow Voicing in Government Phonology

Representational Handling of Poznań-Cracow Voicing in Government Phonology This article discusses the problem of accounting for Poznań-Cracow voicing in Government Phonology. It is concluded that in order for the process to be handled representationally, Polish words beginning with non-obstruents would need to carry the element {L} as part of the melody at the leftmost skeletal slot. It is explained that although such a move would make a representational analysis of Poznań-Cracow Voicing straightforward, the presence of the element {L} on non-obstruents is against the tenets of the phonological model. The article is organised as follows. Section 1 presents a selection of voice phenomena in Polish. Section 2 introduces the basic concepts of Government Phonology relevant to the analysis. Section 3 summarises Gussmann's (2007) analysis of voice phenomena in Polish. Section 4 discusses the differences between Warsaw Polish and Poznań-Cracow Polish in terms of voice assimilation. Section 5 briefly summarises two earlier analyses of voice phenomena in Polish that account for Poznań-Cracow Voicing, namely Gussmann's (1992) SPE -type analysis of Segment-To-Consonant Spreading, and Rubach's (1996) Lexical Phonology (LP) analysis of Cracow Spread. Section 6 presents theoretical considerations of why these two analyses cannot be mechanically translated into GP theoretical machinery. The section also points to the limitations of Voice Adjustment with respect to Poznań-Cracow Voicing. Section 7 introduces the flawed idea of enriching the left edge of words with the element {L}, and provides an attempt at a representational analysis of Poznań-Cracow Voicing using the enriched representation. Section 8 discusses the limitations of the analysis, and proposes an alternative approach to the issue. Section 9 summarises the most important conclusions. 1

Towards semi-automatic extraction of lexical semantics relations for Polish

A recently started project on building the Polish wordnet (called plWordNet) is the background to the presented work. The goals of the project and the linguistic structure of plWordNet are described. The assumptions of the planned semi-automatic method of extending the initial core wordnet to its full size are presented. A multi-criteria algorithm of extraction of lexical semantic relations is presented. Several problems with application of the known methods of relation extraction to Polish – an inflectional and free word order language, are discussed. Experiments with the application of LSA to Polish news corpus and the extraction of noun similarity on the basis of co-occurrence of nouns and adjectives are presented. The experiments verify the assumed solutions to the problems of large number of Polish word forms, and the lack of sequential structure in Polish.