Leksyka specjalistyczna w Informacyi matematycznej Wojciecha Bystrzonowskiego z 1749 roku na tle polszczyzny XVIII wieku
Authors: Szczaus Agnieszka 
Published: July 2024

Specialist lexis in the Informacyja matematyczna (Mathematical Information) by Wojciech Bystrzonowski of 1749 against the Polish language of the 18th century
This treatise provides reflections on the specialist lexis extracted from the encyclopaedic text entitled Informacyja matematyczna (1st edition 1743, 2nd edition 1749), prepared and published by Wojciech Bystrzonowski, a Jesuit. This monograph is composed of an introduction, two principal parts and a conclusion. The introduction presents Bystrzonowski&rsquo;s profile and discusses his literary output. The further part of the introduction provides methodological assumptions and outlines the objectives, which are as follows: a) presentation of the words and collocations with a specialist meaning from the Informacyja matematyczna; b) semantic, structural and genetic (comparative) analysis of the excerpted lexis; c) determination of the popularisation degree of that lexis in the Polish language of the first half of the 18th century.
The main part of this treatise is a presentation and analysis of the specialist lexis selected from the Informacyja matematyczna (2186 lexemes). The analysed vocabulary was divided into two basic groups, according to the substantive key being derived just form antiquity. The first group presents the lexis of liberal arts (including arithmetic and geometric, optical, cosmographic, astronomic, chronographic, geographic, medical and musical lexis). The second group presents the lexis of mechanical sciences (including architectural and building, military, commercial and nautical lexis).
Each of the subsections dedicated to he vocabulary of one domain has a tripartite structure: it starts with an introduction where respective communication spheres are being briefly characterised, reasons for the interest of Polish Jesuits in different branches of science are being discussed, and Polish- and Latin texts used by Bystrzonowski are being indicated. The primary part of subsections presents the analysed lexis: a meaning of respective lexemes is being defined, number of their uses is being given, exemplary citations illustrating the use of words are being excerpted, and the fact of their recording in the lexicons registering the Polish language of the first half of the 18th century is being determined. In case of loanwords (or collocations), also etymological information is being given. The recapitulation of subsections, semantic fields built by the analysed vocabulary are being separated, methods for creation of the analysed specialist lexis are being discussed, and reasons for development of redundant names are being explained. Also the vocabulary for which attestations in other Polish written texts of the mid-18th century had not been found was singled out.
In the conclusion of this treatise, a comprehensive review of the methods for creation of the specialist lexis being found in the Informacyja matematyczna was made, separating indigenous vocabulary (1101 lexemes; 50% of the whole material) and loan-words (1078 lexemes; 49% of the whole material).
In the group of indigenous names, syntactic derivatives were indicated (439 lexemes; 20% of this material), as well as morphological derivatives (320 lexemes; 14.5% of this material) and semantic derivative (342 lexemes; 16.0% of this material). In the group of cited borrowed names, cited loan-words were separated (79 lexemes; 3.5% of this material), as well as proper loan-words (675 lexemes; 31% of this material), structural loan-words (290 lexemes; 13% of this material) and semantic loan-words (34 lexemes; 1.5% of this material). It was shown that Latin loan-words (264 lexemes; 39%) and Greek-Latin ones (132 lexemes, 20%) prevailed among foreign names, which is reasoned by the fact that Latin was the language of science. Also German loan-words are fairly numerous (123 lexemes; 18%), whereas Italian (37 lexemes; 5.5%, and French 20 lexemes, 3%, loan-words constitute a clearly smaller group respectively). The influence of other languages on the analysed lexis is small; we have here Czech loan-words (14 lexemes; 2%), Ruthenian loan-words (14 lexemes; 2%), Turkish loanwords (9 lexemes; 1.5%), Hungarian loan-words (4 lexemes; 0.5%) and Chinese loan-words (3 lexemes; 0.5%). In case of 55 names (8%), it was not possible to determine unambiguously which languages they had come to the Polish language from.
Due to the assimilation degree of borrowed names, it is possible to indicate among them, as follows:
a) borrowed specialist vocabulary, non-assimilated and functioning in the Polish language of the mid-18th century as citation,
b) borrowed specialist vocabulary but not fully assimilated, such as the one undergoing only just the adaptation process, which had led, among others, to loosening of the spelling or to occurrence of the morphological by-forms of a word,
c) borrowed specialist vocabulary settled in the Polish language of the 18th century, fully assimilated with respect of inflexion, phonetics and orthography.
The popularisation degree of the specialist vocabulary in the Polish language of the 18th century, attested in the Informacyja matematyczna, differed. It is possible to indicate here, as follows:
a) lexis commonly known in the Polish language of the mid-18th century (both indigenous and borrowed lexis),
b) lexis with a narrow extension, being present only in the specialist texts of the 17th and the 18th century of various knowledge domains,
c) specialist vocabulary which probably appeared in the Informacyja matematyczna for the first time, i.e. the names attested not before texts of the second half of the 18th century or later ones.
A wide array of the problems being discussed in the Informacyja matematyczna had caused Bystrzonowski to be pitted against numerous terminological problems and scarcities of the Polish specialist lexis of that time. The accomplished review of the specialist vocabulary selected from that encyclopaedia allows Bystrzonowski to be regarded as the author who had played a prominent role in the process of preparing the ground for linguistic changes which would take place in the Polish scientific literature of the second half of the 18th century.
Translated by Jerzy Stępień