This article is a contribution to the study of the history of the lexis of the Proto- -Slavic language. The etymological analysis of anatomical lexis presented in this article allows us to establish several chronological layers of the lexis: lexemes inherited from the Indo-European proto-language, lexemes from the Baltic and Slavic language communities, lexemes created from Indo-European bases, and lexemes created from Proto-Slavic bases, which are late innovations of the Proto- -Slavic language. Each stage of the history of the Proto-Slavic lexis is documented with appropriate material. In this way this study advances research on the development of Proto-Slavic historical lexicology.

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 review is devoted to the monograph of the Slovak professor P. Žigo Evolution of Noun Declension in the Slavic Languages. The author appreciates the monograph and considers it as theoretical breakthrough in historical and areal linguistics, as it offers new methodology of the way we read and interpret the linguistic maps of Slavic Linguistic Atlas. The Monograph based on the unique materials of the Slavic Linguistic Atlas, free from previous atomicity and arbitrariness in linguistic research, largely clarifi es the complex picture of connections and relations of the Slavic languages, which have changed often in their long history.

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 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.

The author presents basic lines of semantic derivation from Proto-Slavic root *ži-/*živ- in Polish. Working on her theme she discovers an interesting old Slavic isogloss: while in West-Slavic languages the names for concepts ‘life/live’ and ‘animal’ have different etymology, in South- and East-Slavic, with the exception of the Ukrainian language – they have common origin.

The article presents another volume “Slavic Linguistic Atlas”, “Personal Characteristics”. The majority of works on this topic have often been atomic – both in the reflection of some aspects and in terms of linguistic geography. In contrast to them the Atlas materials allow to expand its research and to come into cultural dialectology which aims at the reconstruction of the Slavic “living antiquity”. The author pays attention to the fact that the Atlas maps reflect lexical synonymy in various ways: some of them show unity in comprehension of these or those nominated features whereas others demonstrate the high grade of variability. As a result the semantic density of maps is different. Using the criteria of word number per meaning item, the author reveals the areas of “high language voltage” and proves that they have come from different cultural development of the concrete meanings in different Slavic dialects. The author thinks that the difference in map lexical density proves different cultural socialization of human being in different Slavic dialects which has leaded to their differentiation. Thus the maps of “Slavic Linguistic Atlas” along with dialect differentiation illustrate cultural differentiation of the Slavic dialects.

The officials behind the Soviet onomasticon development campaign chose desktop calendars, a publicly available and widely circulated printed medium, to serve as a vehicle for the propagation of the new revolutionary anthroponomy. The paper looks into the masculine names recommended for general use by Universal Desktop Calendars issued by the State Publishing House in 1924–29. Mimicking the Russian Orthodox Church Calendars, its editors proposed their readers from up to six (in 1924–1926) to three (in 1927–1929) masculine names for each day. Based on a comprehensive analysis of the total body of the existing calendar material, the paper proceeds to classify the proper names by their actual source, including: Orthodox Church calendars, Catholic canons, antique mythology, later world literature and folklore sources, celebrated names of the past, toponyms, the Slavic name corpus, and, of course, ideologized sovietisms. The general picture of the sovietisized name list is accompanied with a description of its five-year dynamics refl ecting annually introduced modifications.

A subject of the paper Substantive Declension in Slavic Linguistic Atlas is based on an extensive field research of the Dialects of all Slavic languages. The territory of the research is delimited by the international Slavistic project Slavic Linguistic Atlas the database of which is formed by answers to 3400 questions within 853 localities of the overall Slavic territory. However, not all the forms of all the substantive paradigms are presented, but only the selected representative phenomena testifying to the natural constitutive processes of the national languages in connection with the phonetic changes proving the specifi c character of the linguistic development under the infl uence of a genetically homogeneous or heterogeneous environment and testifying to linguistic changes as results of intercultural, interlingual and probably also inter-confessional infl uences. The final part of the publication is oriented upon the constitutive processes of substantive declination in the Slavic macro-areas (South-Slavic, West-Slavic, and East-Slavic – and within them also in the particular Slavic languages) from the point of view of “otherness” and “foreignness”, i.e. from the point of view of the original and non-original grammatical endings in the particular declension types. The genuine basis of the transgression from the original domestic elements to the new ones gets manifested not only within the adaptation processes of the lexical level, but its basis is hidden in the long-term stabilization processes, in systemic changes by which the inner structure of the language, the area of the distribution of changes, and their impact upon the typological substance of the language are modified. By its interpretative character, the paper The Interpretation of Substantive Declension in Slavic Languages aims at integrating the genetic, areal as well as typological aspects of the investigated domain.

The article offers an insight into the Slavonic contemporary etymological research and its new possibilities. Modern etymology has witnessed a seachange that can be referred to as a digital breakthrough. Thanks to the Internet and electronic media the etymologists today have easier access to historicallinguistic, dialectal and onomastic sources as well as to etymological dictionaries. They also better access to many monographs and studies. Moreover, today the etymologist has no problems making use of analogous materials published in foreign languages, the obtaining of which in the past had posed a major problem. This will clearly accelerate progress in etymological research, thereby opening up new vistas for etymology. We can research effectively the origins of dialectal and colloquial words as well as words no longer in use, a task which had earlier been very difficult.

In this article, the author analyzes the terms for ‘woodpecker’ in the dialects of the Slavic languages, using the materials of the General Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA). The analysis contains two parts: the fi rst refers to the geographical distribution of the terms for ‘woodpecker’ in the Slavic-speaking area according to the stations covered by the OLA – about 850 settlements in the Slavic-speaking territory; the second part includes etymological and semantic analysis of the individual terms. From the analysis, it can be concluded that there is a great lexical diversity of these terms in the dialects of the Slavic languages, although the term dětьlъ is dominant in the Slavic-speaking area. Lexical diversity largely depended on the surrounding. Other factors, such as the contacts with other linguistic populations, infl uenced too. Recognizing the origin of the individual terms, we can establish that the forms are most often processed by onomatopoeia. But apart from the audacious perception, the motives for naming the woodpecker arose from the visual perception – the color of the feather, as well as the abilities characteristic of this kind of bird.

The discussed and reviewed book may be considered not merely a collection of word studies, but also a monograph dealing with lexical language contacts in the Polish-Eastern Slavic linguistic borderland. The authors examine more than 30 dialect words against the background of imposing Polish and East Slavic linguistic material, utilise the extensive subject literature, and apply modern dialectological research and language contact theory methods. Their main academic achievements include a precise delineation of the extent of East Slavic lexical borrowings in Polish dialect and a convincing verification of the criteria used to determine them. These efforts also allowed them to discover relict Polish-East Slavic references, previously considered borrowings from Ruthenian languages, in the examined lexical material. The publication, due to its advantages in material, theory and methodology, should serve as a model of research on dialectal linguistic borderlands for Slavic language studies. I believe that the book of Dorota Krystyna Rembiszewska and Janusz Siatkowski should deserves to be rated highly.