A Historical Phonology of the Kashubian Dialects of Polish (Slavistic Printings and Reprintings, 255)

## Acknowledgement I should like to express my gratitude to my friends and colleagues for their criticism and comments on the manuscript. In particular I am indebted to Professor Dalibor Brozovic, of the University of Zadar, Professor Frank Y. Gladney, of the University of Illinois, Dr. Roman Laskowski, of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Kazimierz Polañski, of the University of Poznañ. A special debt of gratitude must be acknowledged to Professor Zdzislaw Stieber who first introduced me to Slavic linguistics and to the study of Kashubian. I wish to express my appreciation to Professor C. H. van Schooneveld whose good will and critical interest in the work made the publication possible. Thanks are also due to Professor Howard L. Aronson, of the University of Chicago, to Mr. Rudolph Magyar, of the University of Chicago, and once more to Professor Frank Y. Gladney, who have taken the trouble to read earlier versions of the manuscript and check the numerous errors in my English usage. GENERAL INFORMATION ON THE KASHUBIANS AND KASHUBIAN DIALECTS 1.1. The Polish Kashubian dialects are the only remnants of the previously vast area of the Lekhitic Pomeranian dialects spoken once on the Baltic shore from the Vistula to the right side of the Elbe. In course of time major portions of this area -the very Northwestern periphery of the Slavic linguistic world -was Germanized. The diachronic dialectology of Pomeranian is based on toponymie data furnished by German sources, on the analysis of Polabian texts dating from the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, and -last but not least -on the analysis of contemporary Kashubian dialects. 1.2. Kashubian is spoken today in a small compact area of about 2500 square kilometers in northern Poland, to the West of the Lower Vistula. This area, an oblique strip about 80 km. long and 30 km. wide, crosses the Gdañsk, Koszalin and Bydgoszcz counties from the North/East to the South/West. The Baltic shore forms a natural Northern and North-Eastern border, while both in the West and in the East the Kashubian territory borders on the so-called NEW MIXED DIALECTS. This is a label for what is a result of the transfer of dialect speakers from different regions into areas Poland recovered after the Second World War. In our case these are West Pomerania (Pomorze Zachodnie; German: Pommern\*) in the West and the territory of the former Free City of Gdañsk in the East. The former Slavic dialects in these areas have been, with some few exceptions, destroyed and eliminated by consistent Germanization. West of the Polish-German state border from 1939 the dialect is preserved only in one village in the North and in some villages \* In German geographical terminology, West Pomerania (Pol. Pomorze Zachodnie) is called Pommern, while East Pomerania (Pol. Pomorze Gdañskie or Nad wiálañsk ie ) is called Pomerellen. THE KASHTJBIANS AND KASHT7BIAN DIALECTS South-East of Bytów. In the territory of the former Free City of Gdansk -its northeastern part being originally Kashubian -no trace of the local Kashubian dialect could be found after 1945. In the post-war period due to the interference of different linguistic systems of the new population settled in the recovered territories some kind of interdialectal substandard norm was formed. It differs from place to place depending on where the inhabitants of a given village came from. A very similar linguistic situation emerged in the areas bordering on the south-eastern part of the present-day Kashubian territory ae a result of constant migrations of the local -Kashubian and non-Kashubian -farm-hands employed by the big landowners. As a consequence of these new developments, the old linguistic border between Kashubian and non-Kaehubian Polish dialects is restricted to about 25 kilometers in the South. It is rather clearcut, having been formed as a result of the colonization of a big forest: Bory Tucholskie, both from North -that is by Kashubian colonists, and from South -from the neighborhood of the town Tuchola. The settlements of the colonists were rather few in number, so that in the sixteenth century when the majority of common Kashubian linguistic characteristics emerged, the two areas were strictly separated. Most of the border villages which still are largely dispersed and not quite numerous are recent nineteenth century settlements of forest-workers. Concerning the linguistic peculiarities taken into consideration in order to define this border see § 4.4. West of the compact Kashubian area there is a small linguistic islet of the so-called Slovincian dialect which is really the Northwestern most surviving remnant of the Kashubian dialectal group. Slovincian is about to disappear today. In one of the villages by the lake Leba, Kluki Smoldzinskie, there are about 80 inhabitants of Kashubian descent. None of them can speak Kashubian, but some of them -the total number is not greater than 10still remember some Kashubian words. In 1959 a group of Polish dialectologists working on the Kashubian linguistic atlas (see § 1.7.) came to that village. We wrote down some 400 words. Some of them were in oblique cases, mostly in the accusative. The questions were put to the informants in German and most of the responses were in the local Low German dialect. Thus many of the Slavic words we recorded should be treated as loan-words, petrified in the foreign linguistic context. Also the manner of articulation was already Ger-\* This edition is continued on the basis of Lorentz's legacy as well as other available materials; to date the second volume as well as the first instalments of Volume Three have been published, under the editorship of dr. F. Hinze. Acknowledgments Maps 1. General information on the Kashubians and Kashubian dialects 1.1. Linguistic position of Polish Kashubian dialects 1.2. Present-day Kashubian linguistic area 1.3. Linguistic systems spoken today in the Kashubian area 1.4. Old Polish texts of Kashubian origin; Kashubian literature 1.5. The scientific study of Kashubian: history and perspectives 1.6. Phonemic development of Kashubian: introduction 1.7. Selected bibliography 2. Northwestern variant of the Polish-Pomeranian phonemic system of the twelfth century 2.1. Paradigmatic relations 2.2. The origin of particular NWPP phonemes 2.3. Syntagmatic relations 3. The thirteenth to fifteenth centuries: the beginning of an autonomous Kashubian development, the consolidation of the northwestern border of the Kashubian linguistic area 3.1. Vocalic developments 3.2. Consonantal developments 4. The sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: the consolidation of the southeastern border, the beginning of the internal differentiation 4.1. Consonantal developments 4.2. Vocalic developments 4.3. Prosodic developments 4.4. The final consolidation of the Kashubian linguistic area 5. The eighteenth to twentieth centuries: further internal differentiation 5.1. Prosodic developments 5.2. Vocalic developments 5.3. Consonantal developments 5.4. Conclusions 6. Basic phonological patterns of contemporary Kashubian Bibliography 7. Chrestomathy 7.1. Old Polish texts of Kashubian origin 7.2. Kashubian dialect texts 8. Indexes and glossaries 8.1. Indexes of reconstructed forms 8.2. Indexes and glossaries of words used as examples or appearing in the chrestomathy

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