Among the highlights of Professor Janusz Siatkowski’s scholarly activity in the field of Polish and Slavic studies, there are his consistent development of the areal paradigm of linguistic research and his establishing and interpreting correlations between the areal distribution of linguistic phenomena and their chronological features, as well as between language‑internal and extralinguistic factors influencing language evolution processes.
The method of topochronographic analysis, which primarily emerged in Siatkowski’s numerous studies of Slavic dialect lexis, was then adopted and further developed by other linguists. Using exhaustive synchronic and diachronic linguistic data, and also taking into account the specificity of every linguistic item under scrutiny have resulted in the efficiency of his reconstruction and interpretation of structural, areal, and functional changes in linguistic inventories, their variation within individual Slavic languages and the common Slavonic area. Siatkowski’s analysis of a wide range of structural elements of various languages, differing in their genesis and history, testifies to the high informative value of all kinds of linguistic items, something that, while not denying the existence of general regularities of language development, brings into clearer relief their shared as well as exclusive properties. From the viewpoint of their content, Siatkowski’s works are twofold: firstly, they involve detailed analysis of linguistic items, and secondly, they employ a rigorous theoretical and methodological apparatus, which includes a set of relevant analytical procedures and is fit to be applied to other linguistic objects and in other research areas. Many studies in the 2019 volume “Prace Filologiczne” demonstrate the further proliferation and development of his ideas and methods – of what may be termed Siatkowski’s approach. Heuristically, many papers in this volume are valuable for the new material of Slavonic dialects and languages they bring, as well as the way this material is structured and interpreted. The inventories of linguistic items presented in dialect descriptions then turn into a matrix applicable in checking up other Slavonic linguistic areas, finding their common and distinctive elements, and establishing cross‑dialectal and cross‑linguistic isoglosses of various structural levels as well as exclusive features. The authors of the papers arrive at new theoretic generalizations concerning the regularities and scale of structural and functional changes in the common Slavonic dialectal area, effectively elaborating the areal paradigm of language study as an important direction in modern linguistics.

The next (and not yet the last) issue of the second volume Plants of the Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols, published in Lublin under the editorship of prof. E. Bartminsky and S. Niebrzegowska‑Bartminska, contains the topics Shrubs and Little bushes. The ethnolinguistic “portraits” of the plants are given at the broad Slavic and European background. Like the previous issues, it is a significant contribution to the study of Polish and Slavic folk culture. It also provides various material for linguistic studies of Polish and Slavic phytonymy thanks to a rich dialect corpus of plant names and related folklore and ethnographic contexts. Moreover, the Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols provides a new method of ethnolinguistic lexicography, which can be successfully applied to the study of other Slavic and non‐Slavic languages and cultural traditions.

The article deals with the semantic development of Proto‑Slavic * lichъ. This adjective has many disparate meanings in Slavonic languages which have predominantly developed from the Proto‑Slavic meaning ‘odd, uneven’. The concept of ‘oddness, unevenness’ was mostly viewed as something undesirable and harmful which is reflected by meanings like ‘needless, futile, vain, wretched, evil, ominous etc.’. There is, however, also a group of positive meanings in Slavic languages, such as ‘free, daring, high‑spirited, skilful, famous’. The semantic shift to these meanings has not been satisfactorily explained. We suggest a development via the meanings ‘free from sth, singular’ (partially attested in Old Church Slavonic and some other Slavic languages) as one of the possible directions of semantic development of * lichъ from which the aforementioned positive meanings could be explained.

The following paper discusses the anthroponymy of Białystok region in the late 19th and early 20th century with the focus on patronyms ( otchestva) excerpted from the church registers of the Orthodox parish in Łapy dated 1898‑1915. It was established that the majority of the patronyms were derived from the Orthodox (Church‑Slavonic) variants of proper names (e.g., Dionisiyev, Emilіanova), although the study confirms the presence of the cases where non‑canonical variants of baptismal names were used (e.g., Denisov, Emel’yanova). Moreover, the graphic notation of the patronyms reflects the rules enforced in the period prior to the final spelling reform; simultaneously, the observed trends point to the removal of doublets and the deviation from the Church‑Slavonic pattern. Despite the commonality of patronyms in their short forms (e.g., Yakovlev, Kirillov, Ivanova), the full forms of otchestva in the parish registers (e.g. Yakovlevich, Kirillovich, Ivanovna) were detected as well. Their occurrence can be explained by several factors, such as an effort to differentiate between identical surnames, or the social origin of the name owner and his profession. Nonetheless, the discussed dependencies between the short and full forms are not unconditionally consistent.

Evliya Çelebi’s Seyāḥatnāme, i.e. ‘Book of Travels’, contains, among others, a handful of Slavic words that are marked as Ukrainian. As a matter of fact, some of them display mixed features, probably resulting from the contamination of Ukrainian and Russian variants. Such hybrid words (e.g., [9] below) are attested together with purely Ukrainian (e.g., [2]) and purely Russian (e.g., [18]) forms. This situation prompted this author to classify Evliya Çelebi’s lexical materials as surzhyk vocabulary and, thus, antedate the emergence of surzhyk (see section 3).

The article discusses selected dialect lexis from the Polish questionnaires for the German Language Atlas from Masuria, Warmia and the Neighbouring Areas, then in Eastern Prussia. The 19th‑century records are a valuable source for the study of dialect lexis, offering a comparative basis for inquiries into the contemporary state of dialects in the area under study. The text analyses words that, according to the authors, bring interesting data to the collection of dialect lexis or confirm occurrence in the area under study. These are words meaning ‘many’, ‘peasant, man’, ‘those, others’, and ‘to crush, knead, squeeze, press, strangle’. The text is supplemented by a compilation of source material for the appended map, illustrating the equivalents of German Andern.

On December 6, 2022, Professor Hanna Taborska, an outstanding linguist, Slavicist, distinguished researcher of the Kashubian language, doctor honoris causa of the University of Gdańsk, Righteous Among the Nations passed away at the age of 92. She worked continuously for 58 years at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. She is the author of over 500 scientific publications, including fundamental works in the field of Kashubian and Slavic studies.

The contribution presents the main events in the life of Wojciech Chlebda (1950–2022), an eminent linguist, Polish and Slavic philologist, preoccupied throughout his career with the subject status of individuals and communities, as well as with the language‑culture interface. The main areas of his research, including the major tenets of his linguistic proposals, are also characterized, relating to the issues of phrasematics (speaker phraseology), lexicography as an instrument of national self‑identification, linguistic self‑identity, mental geography, and collective linguistic (non‑)memory.

In Memoriam Professor Włodzimierz Pianka, prominent linguist, distinguished scholar in Slavic, Macedonian and Sorbian languages and in onomastics (with particular focus on the Balkan area), expert in Slavic confrontative grammar, professor at the Universities of Warsaw and Vienna, honorary doctor at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The paper outlines and profiles the late Professor’s life and work as well as research interests along with selected publications.

Constructions expressing the separation of a part from the whole which arose independently on the two ends of the Slavic land are presented in the article. The analyzed phenomena, resulting from interference of Slavic and non Slavic languages (Greek and German), are relevant to some South Slavic and Kashubian dialects. The semantic structure of these constructions is proposed and it is shown how their relevant semantic features are expressed in sentences. One of them is the definiteness of the object from which a certain part is detached. It is concluded that Bulgarian and Macedonian on the one hand and Kashubian dialects on the other are characterised by similar level of details expressing the semantic structure of the analyzed sentences despite different grammatical structures of these languages.

In the theory of open systems one mentions equifinality – by drawing from various sources, one may reach the same results. The new linguistic phenomenon, which emerged due to equifinality, upsets the stability of the system, causes various types of re‑evaluation, therefore the same source causes different results. Thus, one may speak about equipotentiality. In her article, the author demonstrates how the adverbia which emerged in the late part of the Proto‑Slavic period influenced the word‑formative system of the Polish language. She focuses on the adverbs with the formants ‑o and ‑e, a class which was thriving already in the earliest period of the written Polish language (more than 500 units in the Old Polish period).
In adjectives, the adverb influenced the gradual decline of intensifying prefixes prze‑ ( przedobry ‘extremely good’) and nad‑ ( nadpełny ‘Latin: superplenus’), and on the basis of the elative na(j)‑ and ‑ szy there emerged the morphosyntactic category of grade. The development of the category of disintensification took a different direction.
Adverbs were one of the reasons which caused the decline of diminutive and augmentative verbs. The traces of these categories are preserved in the following words used in the modern Polish language: głaskać ‘to fondle, to caress, to stroke gently’, nadskakiwać ‘to fawn, to flatter, to toady’. Adverbs also influenced the gradual decline of obsolete iterativa, their properties were assumed by adverbs ( palać – często palić ‘to smoke often’).
Many original adverbs shifted to the class of functional expressions, assuming a metatextual role – of commenting upon one’s own, current utterances. Sometimes they perform the functions of thematic operators ( Intelektualnie Marek ma cechy lidera, emocjonalnie absolutnie nie ‘Mark has the qualities of a leader intellect‑wise, but not at all emotion‑wise); rhematic operators (particles, e.g. Janek podobno wyjechał ‘Janek supposedly went away’), appositions: A pani czytała to? – Naturalnie! ‘And have you read it? – Naturally!’

This paper analyses the question from the Lexical volume 9 – “Man” of the General Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA). It is about the terms for the ‘footprint, track’ (‘stapalka, traga’ in Macedonian) in the Slavic dialects covered by the question L 1575 (‘след стопы’) according to the Questionnaire of OLA. The aim of the analysis is to show the geographical distribution, etymology and semantic motivation for the terms of ‘footprint, track’ in Macedonian dialects (which are based on the material from the OLA) in correlation with the equivalents on the Slavic linguistic territory.

Neuter past tense forms in the first and second person singular like widziałom, widziałoś (as well as neuter indicative future tense forms like będę widziało, będziesz widziało and conditional forms like widziałobym, widziałobyś) occur in all main Slavic languages (so‑called macrolanguages) and in the so‑called Slavic literary microlanguages, but only as potential, rarely occurring albeit regularly derived forms. They were noted mainly in older grammar manuals. Some grammatical paradigms are incomplete because their authors listed only masculine forms. While they took the derivation of feminine forms for granted, it is not certain if they assumed that neuter forms in the first and second person singular existed. Engaging in researching the textual presence of these very rare linguistic forms in individual Slavic languages might be worthwhile. It appears that suitable computer software will allow searching existing textual corpora and provide relevant data on the linguistic forms discussed in this article.

This article deals with the etymology of three Polish words: przyzwoity, wyśmienity and rubaszny. All three should probably be considered native formations. Przyzwoity (in the older version przywoity, also przyzwoisty) in genetic terms should probably be combined with the verb wić: *przy‑wić > * przy‑wój > * prz‑woj‑ity. Wyśmienity – according to A. Brückner's hypothesis – derives from the hypothetical preform of pol. * wyśmień ‘height’. Rubaszny, on the other hand, is also the result of native derivational processes and derives from the Polish adjective gruby in the sense of undelicate, simple, unsophisticated, uncouth, coarse, rude’: * (g)ruby > * (g)rubacha > * (g)rubaszny.

The focus of this article is the origins of (1) reduced vowels in languages of the Balkan Sprachbund, (2) lenition of soft stops, (3) its (pre)nasalization, (4) the change of ‑n‑ into ‑r‑ in the Tosk dialect of Albanian and a similar process in Old Romanian as well as the Istro‑Romanian, Maramuresh and Oltenian dialects of this language, a parallel change of Latin ‑l‑ into ‑r‑ in common Romanian and certain Italian dialects.

The article analyzes the state of lexicographic modeling of modern Slavic morphemics, primarily the Ukrainian language. The development of Ukrainian morphemography over the past 40 years has been traced. Particular attention is paid to the computer morpheme and word‑formative fund of the Ukrainian language, which was created and is being developed by researchers of the Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv. Common parameters of the form and semantics of roots and affixes are highlighted, which can become a basis for comparative studies. It is noted that, in contrast to Ukrainian morphemology, the morphemic dictionaries of other Slavic languages rarely present complex morphemic units: pairs and chains of affixal morphemes, affixal surroundings (lattices) of roots, models of the morphemic structure of words and morphemic nets for constructing words of certain parts of speech. The need to create a common factual basis, a common theoretical and methodological foundation for carrying out comparative studies on morphemics is emphasized. Only under this condition can we expect reliable conclusions about the typology and characterology of Slavic morphemics in general and morphemics of a certain Slavic language in particular. Keywords: morphemics,

The article reports on the Etymological Dictionary of the Old Church Slavonic Language, which was completed at the end of 2022. It is the first extensive scientific etymological vocabulary of Old Church Slavonic, consisting of a total of 21 volumes, of which 19 volumes contain entries (there are 2483 entries on 1164 pages). The last two volumes are registers of all words listed in the dictionary.

The article discusses two books: a fairy tale novel The Stolen City. 1941 (2017) by Yuliya Yakovleva and a graphic novel Survilo (2019) by Olga Lavrent’yeva. These are projects different in terms of genre and form, resulting from the sense of insufficiency of the methods used so far to talk about the blockade of Leningrad, going beyond the official discourse of historical politics. The works were created by the female representatives of the generation, for whom the reference point in writing about the siege is not the reality of their own biographical experience, but historical sources and the accounts of others. This connected the reflection on the content of the books with the issues of the functioning of individual memory, postmemory and collective memory. The basic task is to check how the authors “tell the siege”, what presentation strategy they choose, what goals it helps to achieve.

The article is dedicated to Ihor Kostetskyi, the organizer and general secretary (1957‑1979) of the Ukrainian Shakespeare Society. The article presents the history of the foundation of the Ukrainian Shakespeare Society. Special attention is paid to the organizational, publishing, and translation activities of Ihor Kostetskyi. The article analyzes archival materials proving Kostetskyi’s active participation in the Ukrainian Shakespeare Society. The article describes the main directions of the society’s activities and notes the need for further study into the history of the Ukrainian Shakespeare Society.

The article covers the functioning of medical vocabulary in the poem Aeneid by Ivan Kotlyarevskyi. Lexical‑semantic groups within the medical vocabulary were analyzed. Medical vocabulary performs a nominative function and forms a medical discourse in the artistic text. The medical lexemes of the Aeneid are representatives of the phenomena of the medical culture of that time. Medicine in the text is implemented through a significant arsenal of lexemes, which are related to folk and the new scientific medicine of the 18th century and at the same time represent the level of medical development. The evolution of medical practices and professions in Ukraine can be traced through the prism of medical images and the corresponding names of medical professions. The text of the Aeneid contains rich linguistic material for the study of the development of medical terminology in the Ukrainian language, therefore it bodes well to introduce the poem into the field of terminological research. The work’s medical issues give credence to an interdisciplinary approach and a multi‑vector study of Ivan Kotlyarevsky’s Aeneid.

The article offers a survey of works of Ukrainian linguists in the field of Church Slavonic, in particular its Ukrainian recension. While applying the historiographic approach, the author focuses on various publications and the study of the language of some records and their authors, and the reconstruction of orthoepy. The article also discusses some controversial questions of the interrelation between the Ukrainian (southern) and the Great Russian (northern) redaction of the Church Slavonic language from the second half of the 17th century onward. The author also highlights changes in the methodological principles and argues that, despite the use of sociolinguistic and cognitive methods along with the traditional structural and functional approach, the current discourse in Ukrainian linguistics appears to be incomplete.

The study focuses on the reflection of Jewish‑Slavic relations in the work of Alexander Pavlovіch (Oleksandr Pavlovych, 1819‑1900). The author in question was a Greek Catholic priest – a representative of the Eastern Religious Rite (Byzantine) during the 19th century. In the context of his poems, the figures of Jewish innkeepers appear to be overly burdened with stereotypes. We briefly present the history of the Jews in Eastern Slovakia, where Pavlovich lived. The aim of such poems, which were written mostly by the clergy during the mentioned period, was not to stir up passion. The task of didactic works was to educate people and warn them against the harmful effects of alcohol. Pavlovich belonged to the group of writers that raised awareness of alcoholism. Despite being canonized, it is necessary to critically revise the approach of the poet’s treatment of the Jewish theme over a longer period.

The present study attempts to present the Russian traveler’s view of Constantinople, based on Andrey Muravyov’s Journey to the Holy Places in 1830 and Letters from the East. When the writer first saw the former capital of Byzantium, he was enchanted by the panorama of the city he could admire from the sea. However, when he stepped ashore, he experienced disappointment with Istanbul’s realities. According to the writer’s idea of Tsargrad as the New Jerusalem, for him its holy center was the Hagia Sophia. In Muravyov’s descriptions, the orthodox cathedral is a kind of an “in‑between” place, a borderland sphere where two orders, Christian and Islamic, intermingle. He saw the church as a Christian object, although it had been converted into a mosque. The paper uses the xenological reflections of the German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels to demonstrate that although Tsargrad in Muravyov’s work is a place that is “foreign”, since it is located outside its own area, belonging to another state, it is at the same time a space that is “one’s own” for religious reasons.