This article discusses Slavic names for ‘finger joints’ and the ‘wrist’. The analysis is presented in a parallel fashion. First it discusses the names that are used to refer to both of the joints, and then it analyzes the names that exclusively refer to ‘finger joints’ or to the ‘wrist’. The article is accompanied by maps presenting the territorial ranges of the respective names. The maps use the same graphic display so as to facilitate comparison of the territorial ranges. The existence of the common names for these body organs stems from the fact that both of them can be characterized by “bending” and “merging” of their parts. The names of these parts have often become the names of the joints themselves. This fact is attributed to various environmental perceptions of body parts and their functions by human beings. The article introduces some modifications to the interpretation of the material presented in the ninth volume of The Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA).
The words for the thigh have a complex distribution in Slavic. Thus, the word * lęžьka is found mainly in Russia and in the eastern parts of Belarus and Ukraine. The word *stegno is found in a few large and several smaller clusters in the Czech Republic, parts of Slovakia, in a large part of Ukraine and Belarus, in northern Russia, in some areas in Slovenia, Montenegro, and it is scattered in numerous other places. These words make extensive transitional belts along the border between Belorussia and Russia as well as between Ukraine and Russia. In Poland both the variants *udon and * udъ m are used. In a vast area in Northern Russia the term * χolъka is used. The Turkish borrowings *butъ and *butina occur in a large area in South Slavic. Along the border between Poland and the Czech Republic we find compact, although relatively small areas in which the forms *kyta i *kyto are found, whereas the areas next to the border between Poland and Slovakia use compound forms such as * grubO t ě lo , *noga v ъ grubizně, etc. Moreover, in large areas in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia we find Lithuanian borrowings. Many of the words for the thigh also refer to other parts of the body, such as the hip (the meanings “hip” and “thigh” are provided by many dictionaries alongside), the hip bone, the kidney, the calf, the shin, the foot or parts of the foot. Many of these words have been recorded in The General Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA) only in very rare instances, at times only at one point. However, most of them have been referred to in comparative documents other than the OLA.
Pavol Żigo’s work, which opens the development of morphological maps in the OLA team, is worthy of the highest praise. It offers an interpretation of selected maps concerning declination of nouns, accompanied by detailed theoretical considerations of the process of changes in the declination system in Slavic languages. Drawing on extensive dialectal records, the Atlas offers an excellent overview of the complex development of declination of nouns in Slavic languages. This publication may serve as a model for further studies in this field.
The last decades have witnessed extensive team research projects that lasted for many years and have resulted in an impressive archive of Slavic language data. These data, which have been presented in various forms (dialect atlases and dic-tionaries , historical language dictionaries, dialect monographs and historical and linguistic studies of individual relics) describe the Polish language area as well as the Slavic dialects spoken within the Polish borders.
The ever-growing lexical material that has been collected fostered comparative and etymological analyses. It also has enabled researchers to continue the inves-tigation of the linguistic history of the Slavs as well as their mutual contacts and linguistic interactions.
Dialectological work on Slavic took the form of international cooperation from early on, and this has resulted in the publication of The Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA), The Carpathian Linguistic Atlas, and many other works in the areas of word formation and onomastics. Moreover, slavicists also investigate a new linguistic symbiosis that arises due to political processes and resettlement. This article is accompanied by an extensive bibliography of selected publications that were written during this period.
The article attempts to differentiate, on the basis of selected words recorded in the Polish-East Slavic borderland, whether we are dealing with language loans or old references. The analysis takes into account e.g. ethymological, morphological and geographical criteria. The study focuses on the following words: cot ‘an even number’, czapigi, czepigi ‘plough handle’, had ‘an abominable animal’ and hydzić się ‘loathe’, ‘abhor’, ‘denigrate’, kosiec ‘scyther’, liszka ‘an odd number’, liszny/liszni ‘superfluous’, ‘supernumerary’, przewiąsło ‘a straw belt to tie sheaths siewiec ‘sower’, śloza ‘tear’, żeniec ‘harvester’, żenich, żeniuch ‘bridegroom’, ‘fiancé’, żnieja ‘female harvester’. Recognition as borrowings may be based on those word forms where phonetic elements characteristic of other languages, unknown in Polish, occur. Analysis of certain words has revealed the occurrence of Proto-Slavic and all- -Slavic words, preserved in the Polish language as relics, in peripheral areas. In some cases, it is difficult to make clear-cut decisions, because, for example, the stem of the word is a continuation of the Proto-Slavic forms, to be found in the Polish language, while the derivatives are borrowings.
To study language contact in the Polish-East Slavic borderland, we employ extensive subdialect records from atlases, dictionaries, monographic studies, and various file collections. Significantly, however, all of the above lack historical information about the words they contain. Such data can be obtained by using local names and by taking into account all pan-Slavic references. Such comparisons justify the conclusion that historically many of the presented names extended far further westward than is indicated by typically used materials, mainly from the 20th century, though much less frequently from the second half of the 19th century. This sheds new light on the problem of whether the names in question are loan words, naturally older than had previously been thought, or rather relics of former regional convergence, covering the broad Polish-Russian language borderland, and constituting the Mazovian-Russian community.
The text discusses words occurring in the Polish-East Slavic borderlands and prevalent in eastern Polish dialects. Differntiation between old references and loans in this area is not always easy. The material presented here is very diverse. In the case of certain words, identifying them as East Slavic loans with an indisputable source is possible, while in the case of others it is difficult to identify the direct source of the loan. Among the words recorded in the East Slavic borderlands we can find those whose range in Polish dialects seems to indicate the possibility of Ruthenian influence; however, their Polish phonetic form implies their native origin and one should speak about an old reference in this respect. We also encounter Pan-Slavic words, where a doubt arises as to whether they are loans or old references in Polish in the East Slavic area and Eastern Poland.
The article deals with the question of linguistic interference among Slavic languages at the example of Choroszczynka, a bilingual village in Biała Podlaska County, Lublin Voivodeship. The presentation of two complete questionnaires for the Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA), Polish and Ukrainian, not only makes it possible to capture grammatical and lexical peculiarities of both sets assigned to individual dialects, but also reveals carelessness of the fi eldworkers who collected the data. This, in turn, contributed to such an interpretation of dialectal data presented in OLA maps which does not refl ect linguistic reality.