History of the Polish language
The Polish language is a West Slavic language, and thus descends from Proto-Slavic, and more distantly from Proto-Indo-European; more specifically, it is a member of the Lechitic branch of the West Slavic languages, along with other languages spoken in areas within or close to the area of modern Poland: including Kashubian, Silesian, and the extinct Slovincian and Polabian.
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Proto-Slavic broke into three dialectal regions, Western Proto-Slavic, Eastern Proto-Slavic, and Southern Proto-Slavic. Within declension, in North Slavic, the nominative-accusative feminine plural ending of *-ja stems leveled from *-ě (< PIE *-’ās) in the nominative plural and *-ę (<*-’åns < PIE *-’ans) in the accusative to *-ě for both cases: *dȗšę̇ > Old Polish dusze. The leveling of these cases for -ja stems was motivated by the fact that -a stems had the same ending -y for both cases. This also affected the accusative plural of soft-stem masculine nouns (e.g. *koňь, *mǫžь), which was motivated by the homophonous ending -y for feminine and masculine hard-stems. Within West-Slavic, *ś shifted to *š: *vьśь gives Old Polish wiesz. The clusters *tl dl are retained in West Slavic, and elsewhere simplify to *l: *ordlo gives Old Polish radło. In initial *or-, ol-, as a result of the law of open syllables, metathesis occurs, which usually resulted in the lengthening of *o to *a, giving ra- la-. This occurred in all situations in South Slavic, but in North Slavic only in syllables with an acute, but those with a circumflex, *o remained as *o: *ordlo gives Old Polish radło. In addition, there was a tendency to raise mid and low long vowels: Old Polish pták, mléko, grzéch, wóz. There existed a western tendency to fix stress, except in Pomeranian and Polabian. The pronoun of *tъnъ was created in all of Western Slavic. Finally, the genitive and dative forms of the complex adjectival declension establishes for the masculine and neuter gender the endings resulting from the contraction of the endings -ego, -emu. This is in contrast with East and South Slavic *-ogo, -omu.
Beginnings of the Polish language and its relation to Pomeranian
The earliest attested names from the Middle Ages come mostly from the west, including the Silesian Dadosesani, Bobrans, Silesians, Opolans, Golensizi, and others, the Greater Polish Polans, Kuyavians; from the east only the Vistulans and Masovians (Masurians) are mentioned. Both the Vistulans and Masovians probably had other smaller associated tribes, records of which have been lost. Based on similarities between the dialects of these tribes, it is possible to surmise that Standard Polish was formed based on the closely related dialects of the Polans, Silesians, and Vistulans, and the Masovians had a weaker connection, and the weakest was the input from the eastern Pomeranians (Kashubians), as they were drawn into the sphere of Polish influence later.
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Below are sound changes and their motivations with examples from Proto-Slavic throughout the course of history of the Polish language.
Prosody
Historic Polish lost the Proto-Slavic accent system, modified its stress system, and gradual lost its length distinctions (see § Vowel length). Slovincian displays the most archaic state of the Lechitic stress system; Polabian in theory does as well, but due to incomplete material it is difficult to use. See Slovincian grammar for information on the stress system. The timeline of stress can be divided into three periods: During the preliterate (10th-11th centuries) era Polish likely still had free and mobile stress (akcent dynamiczny i ruchomy), then in the 12th-14th century, the accent was still at least mobile, seen in the second and third person singular imperative of verbs formed with the ending -i, e.g. usłysz (Bogurodzica), słysz (Bogurodzica), napełń (Bogurodzica) but zyszczy (Bogurodzica), spuści (Bogurodzica), raczy (Bogurodzica), wstań (Holy Cross Sermons) and pojdz (Holy Cross Sermons), chwali (Sankt Florian Psalter), puści (Sankt Florian Psalter), which could be stressed, and when it was stressed it was kept, but when the ending was not accented it was lost (however notably no imperative forms with -i are kept in Slovincian). Next initial accent was established in the 14th-15th century (compare Northern Kashubian dialects and some Goral dialects like Podhale, where initial accent here is considered a preserved archaic feature), this is also evinced in the loss of medial -i- in words like wielki < wieliki, wszelki < wszeliki. Finally penultimate stress developed as early as the 15th century or at the beginning of the 18th century. It is uncertain whether penultimate stress formed earlier in most dialects, or if it spread unevenly; it is more likely that it spread unevenly.
Vowels
Within the vocalic system, the contrastive length was first developed into a system differentiating different qualities, then was generally leveled; the loss of yers plays a part in this as well as in the phonemicization of soft consonants, and closed syllables were introduced into the language as a result as well, ablaut took place resulting in alternations, diphthongs with liquids vocalized in various ways, and nasal vowels underwent large changes. Proto-Slavic vowels could be either long or short, including the overshort yers, had pitch accent, and words had free and mobile stress; various changes led to the slanted/clear opposition of vowels. Long vowels are inherited in stressed syllables and post-stress syllables shortened except when there was a neoacute: lato, błoto, męka, krowa, słoma, groch, and long vowels in pre-stress syllables stayed long only when directly before the stress in disyllabic words, but shortened in longer words: rzéka, świéca, brózda (> bruzda), mąka, łąka, dłóto (> dłuto), ciągnę. Other instances of slanting are innovative, including compensatory lengthening after the loss of yers and the contraction of two older vowels.
Consonants
Polish undergoes major changes in terms of palatalization, changing both inherited palatal consonants and innovating some new ones, especially via the general changes in West Slavic and Lechitic from Proto-Slavic. Inherited soft consonsants initially remained soft, and later depalatalized; other consonants palatalized near front consonants, and after ablaut and the loss of yers, also phonemicized. p remains without change, e.g. płakać < *plakati, spać < *sъpati, chłop < *xolpъ. b is without change except when word-final or before a voiceless consonant, where it phonetically devoices, e.g. baba < *baba, dąb (pronounced domp) < *dǫbъ, babka (pronounced bapka) < *babъka. Devoicing, triggered by the loss of yers, began before the 15th century and finished in this century; this is true for all voiced and voiceless consonants.
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Two tendencies within the historic development of inflection occur: 1) inflectional endings undergo the above discussed phonetic changes, 2) a reduction in the number of inflectional paradigms via analogical leveling and supported by phonetic changes. In terms of number, Polish gradually lost the dual seen in nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs.
Nouns
Closely connected to the declension of nouns is grammatical gender and the morphologization of it, that is gender being determined by the ending. Polish inherits morphologized gender from Proto-Slavic replacing thematic declension, for example in the neuter, but also later demorphologizes its endings, that is spreading certain endings regardless of gender, for example -om in the dative plural displacing feminine -am, -ami in the instrumental plural spreading from feminine declension, and -ach in the locative plural also spreading from feminine declension. Polish declension also underwent semanticization, that is changing under influence of the meaning of the word, seen in the use of genitive for accusative among masculine animate nouns. Polish further develops this by innovating its modern three-way split of animacy, masculine personal, masculine animal, and masculine inanimate in the New Polish era. Other examples include full declension of words like to państwo "this nation", te państwa "these nations" versus defective declension like ci państwo "this husband and wife" and the differentiation of proper nouns, e.g. mech : mchu but Mech : Mechu.
Pronouns
Polish makes many changes to the pronouns of Proto-Slavic: *onъ *ona *ono become personal pronouns, *jь sees a considerable restriction in use, *sь is lost except in derivations like dzisiaj, latoś, the indeterminate ending -ś, or fossilized phrases like do siego roku, ni to, ni sio. Changes in declension in the masculine and neuter singular comes from a Proto-Slavic phonetic process of the influence of *j on the following vowel, resulting in *-jo > -je, *jě > ji, *jъ > jь, *jy > ji; the Polish tendency was to level both types according to the soft-stem endings. In masculine nominative, after the loss of yers Polish gained -∅: ów, on, mój, nasz. The pronouns *tъ, *jь were extended with *nъ: *tъnъ, *jьnъ. ten remains in use, jen falls out of use over the course of the 16th century. There are no changes to the neuter nominative and -o is inherited.
Adjectives and adjectival pronouns, numerals, and participles
Proto-Slavic adjectives, except possessional adjectives, had definite forms, used when a noun was definite, and indefinite forms when a noun was indfinite; the definite form was built from the indefinite form extended with the pronoun *jь. Polish did not keep any marking of definiteness, but instead changes their semantic function; the indefinite form is possible only in the predicate, and only the definite form is used attributively. Only a few vestigal exceptions exist. Proto-Slavic adjectives stems could also be soft or hard; continued into Polish. The declension of indefinite adjectives consisted of adding the ending appropriate to the noun declension to the adjective, i.e. masculine and neuter hard-stem adjectives take masculine and neuter endings of *-o stems, and masculine and neuter soft-stem adjectives atke feminine *-a stems, feminine soft-stem adjectives take feminine *-ja endings: star stara staro, stara stary, staru starze, star starę staro, starem starą, starze; this declension is sometimes called a nominal declension because of this. Mostly nominative forms are kept as a result of the fact that it was possible to use indefinite non-possessive adjective forms only in the predicate.
Numerals
Ordinal numerals declines as adjectives; the cardinal number jeden declines like an adjective, and tysiąc declines like a noun. The history of Polish cardinal numbers can be split into three epochs: Polish inherits the nominative and accusative dwa from *dъva and continues in the masculine non-personal: dwa domy, dwa stoy, dwa psy, but within the masculine the form dwa occurs without exception before the 16th century and is retained in an increasingly narrow range to the 19th century, then in place of limited dwa the innovation dwaj is introduced in the 16th century. The origin of the form dwaj is not yet well explained; it arose perhaps under influence of trzej, or it could be a crossing of dwa and the collective numeral dwoje. Next to dwaj from the middle of the 17th century the genitive forms dwu, dwóch, dwuch take on a nominative and accusative function for masculine personal nouns.
Verbs
Proto-Slavic thematic declension undergoes morphological perintegration in Polish, for example the second person plural of moťi (modern móc) was *mož-e-te, but in Polish the thematic vowel -e- becomes absorbed by the personal ending, thus moż-ecie. This parallels the loss of thematic nominal inflection. All persons are continued from Proto-Slavic; Polish initially continues the dual number, but it is ultimately lost by the Middle Polish period due to simplification tendencies. Polish continues the indicative mood, imperative mood with changes, and the subjunctive mood with changes. Polish inherits the active voice, passive voice, and reflexive voice, sometimes considered a mediopassive voice from Proto-Slavic.
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Syntax has not changed much throughout historic Polish one gets the impression that its syntactic system in general agrees with the modern system; certain syntactic structures disappeared, others were innovated. Dialectal syntax doesn't differ much from Standard Polish both in modern times and in Old Polish in its syntactic rules; in certain aspects it is similar to Old Polish. The largest changes that took place were within numeral-noun agreement. Forms like chwalono, zbudowano, ukryto are etymologically the nominative neuter singular of the passive past participle (see also the § Passive participles), but they now perform the function of a past tense active voice predicate in subjectless sentences, e.g. chwalono bohaterską postawę żołnierzy, zbudowano nowy dom, broń ukryto w lesie, meaning there was a change a passive meaning of the participle becoming an active meaning; there are many proposed theories as to how. Per Oesterreicher, forms like chwalono, zbudowano, ukryto developed from older chwalono, zbudowano, ukryto - jest; therefore they were forms of the passive voiced composed of the auxiliary word jest in the function of a copulative and the participle in the function of a predicate and it referred to the past and had the original meaning as modern chwalone, zbudowane, ukryte było, zostało; this can be seen in that the copulative jest is sometimes kept, e.g. owa postawiano jest wszytko przed ołtarzem bożym; nie obleczesz się rucho, jeżto z wełny a ze lnu tkano jest, but most often is ellided, e.g. a popędzono sierce ludzkie ku działaniu (= popędzone zostało serce ludzkie ku działaniu); also in the masculine gender, e.g. i pobit Judas od izraela (został pobity); a uźrzawszy Syrski, iże pobit od Izraela, posłał posły (iż został pobity). The process of omitting the copulative in these formations can be understood the same as it is understood in third person singular compound past tense forms, in which ultimately the copulative jest, as a rule, stopped being used, and the old -ł participle took on a personal function: chodził jest, widział jest, niosła jest, leżało jest changed to chodził, wiedział, niosła, leżało etc., see also the § Past tense personal forms. Forms of the passive participle with the copulative were used not only in relation to a subject of the neuter gender, as in the example nie obleczesz się w rucho, jeżto z wełny a ze lnu tkano jest; it also appears often in subjectless sentences: jako jest przeproszono (15th century); and it also happens often with the use of the copulative było: a Adamowi było naleziono pomocnika podobnego jemu (15th century). The pressence of the accusative complement with the passive voice form can be explained with parallel constructions, for example tę książkę czyta się przyjemnie, where the sentence is active in meaning, reflexive in form, and appears in a subjectless sentence, and similarly the appearance of accusative książkę changes the meaning of the form czyta się from passive in a construction like ta książka czyta się przyjemnie to active in construction, and in the same way the presence of the accusative with forms -ono, -no, -to causes it to be understood as active and transitive despite the original character of the passive forms.
The subject
The biggest changes occurred within noun phrases in connection with a cardinal numeral or numeric adverb e.g. modern dwa domy, trzech żołnierzy, pięciu synów, sześć miast, kilku przyjaciół, kilka dni, dużo mężów, mało krajów, mało ludzi, parę przyjaciółek, sporo dni., where the gender or type of numeral can cause the subject to appear in either the nominative or genitive. The nominative usually occurs with the numerals 2, 3, 4, i.e. an adjective-attributive structure, a trait inherited from PIE; isolated exceptions with the genitive occur, most likely modeled on numerals from 5 up, .e.g. trzy wielbłądów chodziło (15th century), trzej albo czterzej młodzieńcow, kardynałow czterzej (16th century), dwaj murzów, trzej sędziów, zapalonych gore dwie pochodni związku sobie życzy, dwie srebrnych fontant bucha (19th century), however constructions where each element in the genitive began to spread when the noun was of masculine personal gender, e.g. dwóch mężów, trzech żołnierzy (see below).
The predicate
In historic Polish the verbal predicate agrees with the subject in person, number, and gender. There are certain deviations from this rule: Sometimes both constructions are used in the same text, e.g. lud... rozmyślał, jeśliby miał przestać od chwały świętej Anny... or jeśliby ją mieli chwalić (The Life of father Suso, 16th century); the closer to the New Polish era, the more these formations disappear, and now a predicate in the plural is used only with collective nouns denoting a pare composed of a man and woman, e.g. państwo przyszli, wujostwo wyjechali, Tadeuszostwo nas odwiedzą. The noun księże shows fluctuation in its governed agreement already in the 14th century: książęta seszli są sie (Sankt Florian Psalter), with the masculine form of the predicate with a neuter form of the noun, also in the singular: książę jedno żydowskie przyszło ku Jezusowi, prosił jego (Przemyśl Meditation), książę jedno rycerstwa Daryjuszowego ubaczał Aleksandra (The History of Alexander the Greater); in the 16th century the construction with masculine government based on the semantics of the word comes to dominate. Mesgnien writes “Usu tamen factum est, ut iam plerique sic loquantur: książe przyjachał, potius quam przyjachało” (However, in practice, most people now speak thusly: książe przyjachał, rather than przyjachało), this uncertainty likely continued however through the 18th century, as Kopczyńśki recommends to consider the word książę as a masculine noun.
Structures with a modifier
Quantitative attributives of measure expressed by a cardinal numeral, e.g. dwie godziny, od trzech godzin, przed pięciu godzinami are of note; in modern Polish two constructions dominate: The numerals 1-4 already from the oldest times are in a structure of concord with a noun the function of an attributive relative to it; this also happens with masculine personal nouns for example in the most ancient construction like trze krolowie, and later trzej królowie, and the latest trzech króli. Sporadic deviations from this norm are based on introducing case marking into the relation of the numeral to the noun, which is expressed in the genitive form of the noun, e.g. we dwu lat - this is particularly frequent in dialects on the eastern borderland - within the cardinal numerals 1-4 the old syntactic relation of concord is kept until now generally without change.
Structures with a complement
Polish inherits casal complements (marked in some case), prepositional complements (constructed with a preposition and then a governed case), and infinitival complements (where the verb is in the infinitive); the exact distribution of these types sometimes matches or sometimes changes, whereby a word that previously took e.g. a casal complement can take a different case, the preposition of a prepositional complement can change, a casal complement becomes a prepositional complement, etc. The infinitival complement continues uninterrupted in some verbs, however if the infinitive complement had its own dependent noun complement, it was originally expressed by the genitive, not the accusative: jął się owiec i też koz bić, bieżeli gasić ognia, błedow oświecać mają, nas nauczył pokus zwyciężać, aby tego przebaczyć r aczył, umyślił jej dogonić, tych przykładów chować przystoi (16th century), komukolwiek sie zabaży wierszów pisać (17th century).
Structures with an adverbial
Not many changes occurred in adverbials. The adverbial of place when denoting which is the end of the action of the superordinate verb could sometimes be in the genitive, e.g. krolewstwa niebieskiego domieści nas bog (14th century), from which the action of the superordinate verbs originates expressed with the genitive, e.g. Sędziwoj mej włoki ujął (= S Sędziwoj z mej włóki ujechał, i.e. jej część oderwał), puszczej Synaj wyszedwszy (15th century), iżeś mię tych god oddaliła (16th century); in which the action of the superordinate verb unfolds expressed with the adjective z and the accusative, e.g. te się rzeczy działy z onę stronę Jordana, wojska rzymskie stanęłu, z jednę stronę Oktawkiego, z drugę Brutusa (16th century) and this archaic construction lasts as late as the 18th century; and an adverbial denoting the aim of an action was often denoted with ku + dative, which was later replaced with do + genitive, albeit somewhat unevenly in dialects. The adverbial of time may often expressed by: the genitive of a noun, e.g. błogosławi gospodzin dnia na każdy dzień (14th century); in later Polish the nominal genitive of the adverbial of time is possible only in combination with an attributive, e.g. tamtego tygodnia, owej nocy, dziesiątego grudnia; or expressed by: the accusative, ktorykolidzień jego wykusicie (15th century); the locative, e.g. zimie, lecie, wieśnie, which is kept as an archaic until the 18th century, and stillin some dialects.
Syntactic use of the indeclinable participle form
Participles ending in -ąc (-ę) and -szy have in the Old Polish era most often an adverbial function, but there are cases where the indeclinable participle performs the function of various cases of the declension of the declinable preposition; in the 14th century this is rare, occurs more often in the 15th century, and over the course of the 16th century they leave use: In dialects participle constructions are on the whole very rare with the exception of Pomeranian dialects; furthermore the indeclinable participle formed with -ęcy or -ący may occur instead of -ąc: tak mu to wej sło, jako inemu nie przykładajęcy jedzenénie; jesce z téj pościele do powały dopluchnem lezęcy; na gnátkak siedzęcy; ona sła śpiwajęcy; however these adverials are replaced in dialects quite often by prepositional phrases, e.g. na siedząco, na leząco, na siedząckę, na lezącke, chylączką, po siedzącku, na klęcącku, na stojącku.
