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.
The separation of Polish as a language is conventionally dated at the second half of the 10th century, linked with the establishment of Polish statehood and the Christianization of Poland. The history of the language can then be divided into the following periods periods of development: Old Polish with a pre-literate, pre-Polish era up to 1136, the literate era from 1136 with the Bull of Gniezno up to the start of the 16th century; Middle Polish from the 16th century until the end of the 18th century with the first parition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; New Polish from 1772-1939; and Modern Polish, since World War II.

General changes in West Slavic and Lechitic from Proto-Slavic

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 in the nominative plural and *-ę 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, 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.
Within most of Lechitic, the clusters *TorT *TolT *TerT *TelT undergo metathesis: *vȏrgъ gives Old Polish wróg, *mȏldъ gives Old Polish młody, *dȇrvo gives Old Polish drzewo, *melkò gives Old Polish mléko. Notably, both -ro- and -ar- between consonants for TorT a re present in Polabian and Pomeranian, compare reflexes of Kashubian karwa and Polabian korvo. *ť ď change to c dz: *svěťa > Old Polish świéca, *meďa > Old Polish miedza, *noťь > Old Polish noc. The nasal vowels are well retained in Lechitic, in contrast to the rest of West Slavic: *pę̑tь > Old Polish pięć, *pętъ > Old Polish piąty. Combinations of *ъr ъl ьr, ьl volcalize in various ways in Lechitic and Sorbian, but become vocalic liquids in Czech and Slovak.
Common to Lechitic is the Lechitic ablaut, albeit to varying degrees of intensity regionally: the front vowels *e *ě *ę as well as soft *ьr, ьl into two variants:
  1. dispalatalization whereby the vowel is fronted and lowered: *a *ǫ *ъr *ъl before the dental/alveolar hard consonants t, d, n, s, z, r, ł;
  2. : *bě̃lъ > Old Polish biáły
  3. : *lěto > lato
  4. : *berǫ > biorę
  5. : *nesǫ > niosę
  6. : *květъ > kwiat
  7. : *lěsъ > las
  8. : *zelo > zioło
  9. : *žena > żona
  10. : *měra > miara
  11. : *město > miasto
  12. a front variant *e ę ьr, ьl before other consonants and word-finally
  13. : *běliti > Old Polish bielić
  14. : *vъ lětě > Old Polish w lecie.
The alternation equating to Polish eł:il is absent in Polabian due to a merging of *ьl and *ъl into just oł; this process is probably older than the vocalization of liquids, since the merging of soft *ьr, ьl with hard *ъr ъl must have happened before vocalization. The source of the Lechitic ablaut likely came from Eastern Lechitic dialects, which later spread to the rest of Lechitic as the later e > o ablaut is absent from Polabian, which is Western; compare żona, żenić miotła, siodło, and Polabian zéna, métla, sedlǘ.
The distribution of nasal vowels in Polish was affected due to [|later sound developments]. See also for the articulatory-acoustic motivations for the ablaut.
The Lechitic ablaut likely took place in the 9th and 10th centuries and finished by the 12th century. As a result of ablaut, soft consonants became phonemic, as previously they only occurred before front vowels, but could now occur before back vowels, with minimal pairs like mara and miara. Similarly, the opposition of y and i is called into question, as words that were previously minimal pairs, e.g. być and bić could now be understood to differ phonemically in the softness of the consonant. Finally, ablaut led to many vowel alternations, e.g. e:a: wieźć:wiozę and e:a: lesie:las.
There are many common morphological and especially lexical developments in addition to these common phonetic developments. This group can be broken into four: the western-most Obotrites and Drevani, the neighboring Veleti, the Pomeranians, including part of Western Pomerania, whereas Eastern Pomeranian, and the Polish tribes, which had much closer contact both socio-politically and linguistically as a result of the Polans, and the creation of Literary Polish.

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 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, as they were drawn into the sphere of Polish influence later.
These similarities between the Polans, Vistulans, and Silesians include:
  1. *ьl > -eł- before front hard consonants and -il- before others, whereas in Masovian and Kashubian -’oł- appears after hard consonants and -’áł- after a soft consonant: wiołna, miołty, Old Kashubian wiáłna, piálny ;
  2. Greater Polish and Lesser Polish show voice final consonants appearing before a word beginning with anything but a voiceless consonant, e.g kod idzie, bog równy, brad niesie, zanióz em, zmóg em, and Masovian shows devoicing, e.g. kot idzie, bok równy, brat niesie, zaniós em.
Traits that are younger include:
  1. Mazuration, which took place in Masovia, Lesser Poland, and part of Silesia, but not Greater Poland or Pomerania.
  2. The realization of nasal vowels; in Greater Poland they undergo decomposition, whereas in Lesser Poland and Masovia nasality was often lost, i.e. in Central Lesser Poland geba, reka, zob.
Kashubian shows more differences that connect it with its western neighbors, namely:
  1. A uniform change of hard *ъl and soft *ьl to -oł-. Compare the Masovian change of -’áł- < *ьl before front hard consonants like wiáłna, piálny ;
  2. A softening of consonants before -ar- from soft *ьr, cwiardi ; also compare Masovian siarna.
These traits, due to their chronology, show that Pomeranian was more divergent than Masovian and show that Pomerania was a transitional area between the rest of Lechitic and Western Lechitic. However, since Pomerania eventually fell under the influence of the rest of Lechitic, albeit later than Masovia, it underwent some common changes.
  1. Development of the slanted vowels in contrast to clear ones and their alternations - something not seen in Polabian, seen even moreso in Pomeranian with the present of slanted high vowels;
  2. A change of soft alveolar/dental plosive *t d to palatal affricates ć dź and soft *s z to the palatal sibilants s ź, which in Pomeranian later underwent Kashubation. However, the change to affricates/sibilants took place in Poland in the 12th century, and this is also what separated Pomeranian from the rest of Western Pomerania.

    Phonetics

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. 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:
  1. A change of Proto-Slavic free and mobile stress by moving the stress forward or backward due to phonetic and morphological factors, kept in Slovincian and some of Kashubian;
  2. A change to initial stress, seen in North-Kashubian, many Goral dialects, and in the Southern Silesian dialects found on the border of Poland and Czechia;
  3. A change to penultimate stress, originally secondary, which gained more emphasis, present throughout the rest of the North-East Lechitic region.
During the preliterate era Polish likely still had free and mobile stress, 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, słysz, napełń but zyszczy, spuści, raczy, wstań and pojdz, chwali, puści, which could be stressed, and when it was stressed it was kept, but when the ending was not accented it was lost. Next initial accent was established in the 14th-15th century, 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.
The development of the initial stress system and the penultimate stress system are likely related in that penultimate stress is likely derived from initial stress, namely, a secondary stress on the penultimate syllable could be found alongside the primary stress on the initial syllable of multi-syllable words, whereas penultimate systems, such as in modern Polish or eastern Slovak often have the secondary stress on the first syllable; this secondary accent become stronger in border regions where the two systems meet. These facts show that initial stress developed first and that the secondary penultimate stress later began regionally to be pronounced stronger.
Penultimate stress is not entirely regular in Modern Polish due to loanwords with the proparoxytonic stress from Greek and Latin such as muzyka, logika, polityka, as well as calques such as Rzeczpospolita, however colloquially many of these have penultimate stress; furthermore many French loanwards have word-final stress. Penultimate stress was also not established in native constructions with clitics such as clitiic pronouns; historically and regionally they in fact shifted stress, e.g. Old Polish dało się but dało, zobaczył go but zobaczył; this continued in the 19th century; and finally compounds originally composed of two accentual units, namely compound past tense forms: chodziliśmy, subjunctive forms: musielibyśmy, compound numerals: osiemset, and compound nouns like graniastosłup; also compare 19th century Kazimierz, Władysław, cudotwór, however in modern Polish there is a strong tendency to fix penultimate stress in these compounds.