Abstract:
Tradition is understood here in the cultural sense (following Kazimierz Dobrowolski) as “the heritage that older generations pass on to younger ones”, regardless of whether the process is conscious or not and to what extent. By confronting data from contemporary Polish with data from its earlier stages (excerpted from the work of Lehr-Spławinski, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, Gołab, Rzetelska-Feleszko and others), the author identifies various linguistic and cultural spheres, sources of the cultural heritage, linked to the lexical and conceptual system of contemporary Poles in a variety of ways. Those include: the Slavic sphere, the Indo-European sphere (the weakest in terms of memory), the Ancient Greek-Roman and Judeo-Christian spheres, the Western-European sphere, which modified and enriched the Ancient and Christian traditions. The Polish of the 20th c. also draws from the tradition of the landed gentry and from folk tradition (including peasantry). Links with specific spheres are documented with lexical examples, both common and proper nouns (given names, family names). This kind of “stratigraphic” approach reveals layers of contemporary Polish and the multiplicity of stages in the development of Polish national culture.
