Polish
Katarzyna DZIUBALSKA-KOŁACZYK
and
Bogdan WALCZAK (1)
1. The identity
1.1. The name
In the 10th century, individual West Slavic languages were differentiated from the western group, Polish among others. The name of the language comes from the name of a tribe of Polans (Polanie) who inhabited the midlands of the river Warta around Gniezno and Poznań, and whose tribal state later became the germ of the Polish state. Etymologically, Polanie means ‘ the inhabitants of fields’. The Latin sources provide also other forms of the word: Polanii, Polonii, Poloni
(at the turn of the 10th and 11th century king Bolesław Chrobry was referred to as
dux Poloniorum in The Life of St. Adalbert ‘ Żywot św. Wojciecha’)
(cf. Klemensiewicz : 1961-1972).
1.2. The family affiliation
1.2.1. Origin
The Polish language is most closely related to the extinct Polabian-Pomeranian dialects (whose only live representative is Kashubian) and together with them is classified by Slavicists into the West Lechitic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is less closely related to the remaining West Slavic languages, i. e. Slovak, Czech and High-and Low Sorbian, and still less closely to the East and
(1) Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (School of English at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań) is Professor of English linguistics and Head of the School. She has published extensively on phonology and phonetics, first and second language acquisition and morphology, in all the areas emphasizing the contrastive aspect (especially with Polish, but also other languages, e. g. German, Italian). She has taught Polish linguistics at the University of Vienna. She is a member of 15 Polish and international organizations, the editor of PSiCL (Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics),
the organizer of the annual international PLM (Poznań Linguistic Meeting). In 2007 she was elected a member of the Linguistics Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2011 she was nominated member of the Minister of Science and Higher Education advisory council for the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities. Bogdan Walczak (Department of Polish at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań) is Professor of Polish historical linguistics, author of the Outline History of the Polish Language
[ Zarys dziejów języka polskiego] (11995, 21999, 32005 ; an English and Bulgarian translation in preparation). He has ca 750 publications, including 11 books (authored, co-authored and edited). In 2000 he was elected member of the Linguistics Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is editor in chief of the annual journal Slavia Occidentalis, and member of the editorial board of another annual journal Fundamenta Europaea.
