Browsing by Author "Gąsiorowski, Piotr"
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Item A Shibboleth upon their Tongues: Early English /r/ revisited(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2006) Gąsiorowski, PiotrThis article discusses the pronunciation of the rhotic phoneme /r/ in early English. The traditional belief that the dominant pronunciation in Old and Middle English was [r] (an apical trill) is still supported by some authors, but there is growing consensus that there was a fairly wide range of /r/ realisations already in early Germanic, and that the pronunciation of /r/ in Old English was about as variable as it is in present-day English. The article defends this view and goes a step further, suggesting that the modern distribution of variant rhotic pronunciations in British English reflects to some extent the distribution of very similar sounds in Old English.Item A Shibboleth upon Their Tongues: Early English /r/ Revisited(2006) Gąsiorowski, PiotrThis article discusses the pronunciation of the rhotic phoneme /r/ in early English. The traditional belief that the dominant pronunciation in Old and Middle English was [r] (an apical trill) is still supported by some authors, but there is growing consensus that there was a fairly wide range of /r/ realisations already in early Germanic, and that the pronunciation of /r/ in Old English was about as variable as it is in present-day English. The article defends this view and goes a step further, suggesting that the modern distribution of variant rhotic pronunciations in British English reflects to some extent the distribution of very similar sounds in Old English.Item Cherchez la femme: Two Germanic suffixes, one etymology(De Gruyter, 2017-11-10) Gąsiorowski, PiotrThe origin of the Germanic suffixes forming occupational titles and agent nouns – masculine *-ārijaz (the ancestor of Modern English -er) and its feminine counterpart reflected in Old English as -estre and in Modern as -ster – is an old problem in Germanic historical morphology. The masculine “agentive” suffix, which occurs in all the subgroups of Germanic, is generally presumed to be of Latin origin, though it occurs mostly with native derivational bases even in the earliest attested Germanic languages; the latter is believed to be native, but has no accepted etymology, and its limited range of occurrence in Germanic remains unexplained. It will be argued that the two suffixes are etymologically connected in a hitherto unsuspected way, that the traditional opinion about the origin of *-ārijaz should be revised, and that both suffixes have interesting Indo-European cognates outside Germanic.Item Gruit Grus: The Indo-European Names of the Crane(2012-04-02T12:09:01Z) Gąsiorowski, PiotrThe purpose of this article is to show that the variety and irregularity of the Indo-European 'crane' words is apparent rather than actual, and that their derivational history is in fact quite simple. In brief, they can be reduced to only a couple of related PIE lexemes, rather than a whole constellation of 'dialectal' forms.Item Heavy consonants and compensatory lengthening(Adam Mickiewicz University, 1993) Gąsiorowski, PiotrItem MESOPOTAMIA, ANATOLIA AND THE CIRCUMPONTIC REGION IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE(Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza (Poznań). Instytut Prahistorii, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza (Poznań). Instytut Wschodni, 2002) Tyborowski, Witold; Gąsiorowski, PiotrFluted maces (Kannelierte Streitkolben) have not been an object of a monographic study so far. The reasons for this deficiency was the paucity of assemblage finds (mainly grave ones) and the fact that they occurred in the borderland between the East and West of Europe. Both reasons made it difficult to identify them chronologically and keep a full record of finds. The present monograph sums up almost 25 years of studies that at the outset were limited to Poland and only gradually were expanded to include the whole continent. This was made possible owing to the goodwill of many people and institutions from the Danube area, the Balkans and the Russian Plain. The present volume of Baltic-Pontic Studies consists of two parts devoted, respectively, to the current state of knowledge on the position of the mace in the Near East and North Pontic civilizations, and the forms, chronology, origins, functions and socio-organizational significance of one of its types, namely the fluted mace. As in previous volumes in this series, our intention is to inspire team, interdisciplinary studies involving scholars from different centres and countries. Only such a wide-range co-operation will bring about new developments in the areas discussed in this volume.Item The embarrassment of riches: 'Head' words in the Indo-European languages(De Gruyter Open, 2017) Gąsiorowski, PiotrThe notion of HEAD is reflected in the basic lexicon of all known languages; the identification of the head as a distinct and vitally important body part, labelled with a simplex word, seems to be a cross-cultural universal. Thanks to their high frequency of use and their “basic concept” status, words meaning ‘head’ tend to be diachronically stable and therefore important for comparative reconstruction. Their expected retention rate - as estimated on the basis of data from several uncontroversial language families - is on a par with words meaning ‘heart’ or ‘foot’. On the other hand, culture-specific factors may lead to the proliferation of secondary meanings, the rise of stylistically marked nearsynonyms, and consequently to locally accelerated lexical evolution. This seems to have happened repeatedly in the Indo-European family, in which not only the oldest reconstructible ‘head’ word, *ḱreh₂- but also secondary, branch-specific terms have often been subject to lexical replacement. This unusual variability of words for HEAD in Indo- European contrasts with the remarkable conservatism of words for several other bodypart concepts, such as EYE, EAR, TOOTH and HEART. In this paper, we shall attempt to identify recurrent patterns of semantic change in the emergence of new synonyms and the polysemic development of inherited ‘head’ words. Insights derived from recent studies of “embodiment” will be used to explain the observed tendencies.Item The Etymology of Old English *docga(de Gruyter, 2006) Gąsiorowski, PiotrThis article explores the origin of English dog (OE *docga), generally regarded as a word of unknown origin. It is argued, on the basis of its morphology, that the word is a hypocoristic derivative of , an Old English colour adjective. The article suggests that the relation between OE and ‘frog’ is not an isolated irregularity but an example of a derivational process represented also by and possibly by other such pairs in Old English (e.g. ).Item The evolution of English dental fricatives: variation and change(2014-06-27) Jekiel, Mateusz; Gąsiorowski, PiotrItem The Germanic reflexes of PIE *-sr- in the context of Verner’s Law(2012-02-06T12:19:24Z) Gąsiorowski, PiotrThe paper reconsiders the fate of medial *-sr- in Germanic, especially in the context of Verner's Law. It is argued that the epenthesis of *-t- took place later than the voicing of *-s- by Verner's Law and did not apply to the Vernerian variant *-zr-. Instead, I propose that the pre-rhotic *z was lost, resulting, when possible, in a compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel. Several novel etymologies are offered to support this proposal, and some of its ramifications are explored, including the derivation of the word for 'spring' in Latin and Germanic and the structure of the Germanic words for the four cardinal points.Item The history of [ɔ:]: Is there regular orthographically conditioned sound change?(Adam Mickiewicz University, 1999) Gąsiorowski, PiotrItem The meaning of life: PIE. *gʷih₃w-(2007) Gąsiorowski, PiotrThis article tries to explain the anomalous properties of the Proto-Indo-European verb *gʷíh₃we/o- 'live', its relation to the adjective *gʷih₃wó- 'living' and further etymological connections. One of the ideas resulting from the discussion is a new etymology of *gʷow- 'cow, head of cattle'.