Polish Historical Grammar

obligatory courses

Introduction to Diachronic Linguistics 3003-11A2JD

The course: Introduction to Diachronic Linguistics has to be completed. It is required that the student should simultaneously attend a practice class in Polish Historical Grammar, because the skills gained during lectures on inflection and classes on phonetics are complementary.

A student:

1. applies the philological method, the method of internal reconstruction and comparative historical method.

2. describes the most important phenomena in the Protoslavic language and reconstructs the Protoslavic forms.

3. knows the periodization of the history of the Polish language.

Classroom

The course aims at mastering the student’s skills of interpretating processes and language changes occuring in the Polish language, with a special focus on phonetics and inflection. The course aspires at enabling the students to conduct indiviual reconstructions of chosen forms, and at introducing the participants to the basic terminology of Polish historical grammar.

The practice class is devoted to acquainting the students with the evolution of Polish phonetics by means of discussing the following issues:

1. The most important phonetic changes in the Polish language. Polish vocalic system (development basis, changes in Polish).

2. Polish apophony (the core of the process, chronology, consequences, exceptions). Polish apophony vs. Protoslavic and Proto-Indo-European ablaut.

3. Evolution of the yers: position of yers, vocalizing of the strong yers and disappearance of the weak ones, compensatory lengthening, chronology and consequences of the said processes.

4. Vocalization of the sonants.

5. Evolution of nasal vowels.

6. Development of Polish vocalic quantity (origin of Polish long vowels, disappearance of quantity and emergence of acute vowels, evolution of new vowels in Polish).

7. Accent change in Polish.

8. Polish consonant system (development basis, changes in Polish). Proto-Slavic palatalizations (a review).

9. Polish palatalizations

10. Consonant depalatalization.

11. New Polish consonant phonemes, i.a. the origin of /f/, the evolution of /r'/.

12. Development of consonant groups.

The lecture is devoted to acquainting the students with the evolution of Polish inflection by means of discussing the following issues:

1. The most important changes in Polish inflection – main tendencies in the development of Polish inflection. Introduction to nominal and verbal inflection.

2. Nominal inflection. Development basis of noun declension in the Old Polish period. Basic inflectional categories: case, gender, number and their evolution in Polish.

3. Masculine declension. Rules for repartition of singular and plural endings. Emergence of soft-thematic and hard-thematic inflection. Semantisation of noun inflection, inflectional relics, morphologisation and demorphologisation of gender.

4. Neuter declension, rules for ending repartiton. The origin of declension of nouns of the type: cielę, cielęcia, imię, imienia, niebo, niebiosa, relics of the old declension.

5. Feminine declension. The origin of vowel and consonant inflection, shifts between the vowel and the consonant type, cross-gender declension shifts (of the type: żołędź, goleń).

6. Mixed nominal inflection. Main tendencies in the development of Polish nominal inflection. Disappearance of the double number, relics of the dual forms. Summary.

7. Inflection of pronouns in the history of the Polish language.

8. Inflection of adjectives in the history of the Polish language Simple and complex adjectival inflection – the relics of nominal inflection.

9. Development of numeral inflection in the history of the Polish language.

10. Verbal inflection – an introduction. Basic verbal categories. Development basis of Polish conjugation. Main tendencies in Polish verbal inflection.

11. Past tenses in the history of the Polish language; simple tenses (imperfectum, aorist) and complex (past and past perfect). Evolution of the past tense.

12. Evolution of participles – pre-Polish period heritage and changes in the history of Polish.

13. Development of the imperative mood in Polish.

14. Archaisms and neologisms in inflection. Summary.

Obligatory:

Krystyna Długosz-Kurczabowa, Stanisław Dubisz, Gramatyka historyczna języka polskiego, Warszawa 1998 i wyd. nast.

Krystyna Długosz-Kurczabowa, Stanisław Dubisz, Gramatyka historyczna języka polskiego w testach, ćwiczeniach i tematach egzaminacyjnych, Gdańsk 1999.

Gramatyka historyczna języka polskiego. Materiały do ćwiczeń, wybór H. Karaś, Warszawa 1994.

Zenon Klemensiewicz, Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński, Stanisław Urbańczyk, Gramatyka historyczna języka polskiego, Warszawa 1955.

Nauka o języku polskim dla polonistów, red. S. Dubisz, Warszawa 1991 lub wyd. nast.

Stanisław Rospond, Gramatyka historyczna języka polskiego, Warszawa 1973 lub wyd. nast.

Ewa Siatkowska, Rodzina języków zachodniosłowiańskich, Warszawa 1992.

Janusz Strutyński, Elementy gramatyki historycznej języka polskiego, Kraków 1991 lub wyd. nast.

Encyklopedia języka polskiego, red. S. Urbańczyk, Warszawa 1991.

Teksty staropolskie. Analizy i interpretacje, red. W. Decyk-Zięba i S. Dubisz, Warszawa 2003.

Additional:

Stanisław Dubisz, Rozwój polskiego systemu fonologicznego, [w:] Studia z historii języka polskiego, red. W. Kupiszewski, Warszawa 1994, s. 9-19.

Alina Kępińska, Kształtowanie się polskiej kategorii męsko- i niemęskoosobowości. Język wobec płci, Warszawa 2006.

Halina Koneczna, Charakterystyka fonetyczna języka polskiego na tle języków słowiańskich, Warszawa 1965.

Władysława Książek-Bryłowa, Warianty fleksyjne w historii języka polskiego [w:] T. Skubalanka, W. Książek-Bryłowa, Wariantywność polskiej fleksji, Wrocław 1992.

Leszek Moszyński, Wstęp do filologii słowiańskiej, Warszawa 1984.

Ewa Ostrowska, Z dziejów języka polskiego i jego piękna, Kraków 1978.

Krystyna Pisarkowa, Historia składni języka polskiego, Wrocław 1984.

Mirosława Siuciak, Kształtowanie się kategorii gramatycznej liczebnika w języku polski, Katowice 2008.

Izabela Stąpor, Kształtowanie się normy dotyczącej fleksji liczebników polskich od XVI do XIX wieku, Warszawa 2008.

Wiesław Tomasz Sefańczyk, Kategoria rodzaju i przypadk polskiego rzeczownika. Próba synchronicznej analizy morfologicznej, Kraków 2007.

Zdzisław Stieber, Historyczna i współczesna fonologia języka polskiego, Warszawa 1966.

Janusz Strutyński, Elementy gramatyki historycznej języka polskiego, Kraków 1991 lub wyd. nast.

Stanisław Urbańczyk, Szkice z dziejów języka polskiego, Warszawa 1968.

Stanisław Urbańczyk, Prace z dziejów języka polskiego, Wrocław 1979.

Wiesław Wydra, Wojciech Ryszard Rzepka, Chrestomatia staropolska. Teksty do 1543 roku, Wrocław 1984 i wyd. nast.

A student:

KNOWLEDGE:

1. defines the most important phenomena concerning the changes of Polish language system.

2. names the phonetic changes that has occurred in Polish.

3. recognizes the most important phenomena as exemplified by chosen expressions.

ABILITIES

1. reconstructs word forms exemplifying the studied changes.

2. relates language facts one to another.

3. gives a relative and absolute chronology of the studied language facts.

4. explains the reasons of phonetic and inflectional phenomena in the historical perspective.

5. relates the historical phonetic phenomena with the current Polish spelling.

ATTITUDES

1. appreciates the beauty of the mother tongue.

Final evaluation on the basis of:

1. attendance and active participation.

2. written test concerning the knowledge and skills gathered throughout the course (both lecture and practice class).

Zero for the exam can join the students who obtained credit from the course and assessment of at least 4.5 out of practice, a written examination in the session.