Magdalena Charzyńska-Wójcik | John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (original) (raw)

Books by Magdalena Charzyńska-Wójcik

This volume is a collection of papers dealing with various aspects of language change. The collec... more This volume is a collection of papers dealing with various aspects of language change. The collection is a good illustration of the place occupied by historical linguistics in modern linguistics as aptly captured by Joseph (2001) ‘while not in the center of the field of linguistics, historical linguistics nonetheless draws on virtually all aspects of the field in ways that other subfields do not’. This wide array of different aspects of modern linguistics that historical studies embrace can be seen in the papers included in the present volume. There are papers by Bloch-Rozmej, Jaskuła, Wójcik and Zdziebko, which deal with phonology and phonological theory. Syntactic analysis forms a major part of the contributions by Bondaruk and Bartczak Meszyńska, Charzyńska-Wójcik, Malicka-Kleparska, Mokrosz and Zhang. Papers by Charzyńska-Wójcik and Charzyński and a contribution by Lis deal with the historical evolution of the lexicon, while Szymanek deals with historical morphology. Finally, a contribution by Klimkowski is an interesting and inspiring inquiry into the nature of change in general.

Papers by Magdalena Charzyńska-Wójcik

Roczniki Humanistyczne

This contribution is devoted to an English translation of the Book of Psalms made by John Caryll ... more This contribution is devoted to an English translation of the Book of Psalms made by John Caryll and David Nairne at the exiled court of James II in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The Psalmes of David, translated from the Vulgat first printed in 1700, received a corrected and revised edition brought out in 1704. Despite the significant place it occupies in the history of translations of the Psalter from the Vulgate into English, it has hardly received any scholarly attention. The paper examines the circumstances in which this translation emerged, looks at its language and compares it with its rival texts, examines its reception, circulation, and sociolinguistic context with a view to determining why the text ceased to be printed and why it has suffered neglect in the literature dealing with biblical translations. The contribution also presents for the first time the text of Psalm 1 from the newly discovered manuscript version of the Psalmes preserved in SCA in Aberdeen, Scotland.

It is the objective of this paper to analyse selected English Renaissance translations of the Boo... more It is the objective of this paper to analyse selected English Renaissance translations of the Book of Psalms in the light of their reception. In particular, I intend to illustrate how a strong preference for a familiar rendition over a new one (regardless of its quality and status) showed itself in the textual composition of the most important book of the Anglican Church – the Book of Common Prayer. Discussion of the Psalm translation selected for the five successive versions of the Book of Common Prayer against the backdrop of the emergence of new renditions of the Psalms leads on to formulating a desideratum for sound methodology which would express the level of similarities between texts in mathematical terms and in this way objectivise assessments of Psalter renditions. The paper offers a preliminary attempt at such methodology by applying the cosine distance method. The obtained results need to be verified on a larger corpus of data, but they are promising enough to consider th...

Beyond Language, 2018

<jats:p>The aim of the article is to analyze two Psalter translations, translation by Richa... more <jats:p>The aim of the article is to analyze two Psalter translations, translation by Richard Rolle into English, and by Walanty Wróbel into Polish, in order to determine factors which may have influenced the translator's choice of translation techniques. Subsequent sections describe the sociolinguistic context of the times when the translations originated, the target language, as well as translation techniques used to obtain the target text. Medieval attitudes towards translated texts seem to have had almost no influence on the choice of a translation technique; thus, the author draws an elicit assumption that the translation style had no correlation with the cultural context, understood as a special attitude towards religious texts. The addressee had an influence on the final shape of translation, but they did not influence specific translation techniques used to render the text.</jats:p>

Sky Journal of Linguistics, 2002

This paper offers a new classification of the syntactic frames OE Experiencer verbs can appear in... more This paper offers a new classification of the syntactic frames OE Experiencer verbs can appear in. The characteristics of individual construction types seen against the background of the variation exhibited by individual verbs found in them allow us to propose that the fifteen attested structures are in fact only variants of three basic types. The discussion reveals that OE clausal arguments are Case-marked in the same way as NP arguments. A further observation is that OE lexicon is relatively insensitive to category distinctions but sensitive to Case.

Studies in Polish Linguistics, 2017

Th e objective of the paper is to argue against a common denotation for Walenty Wróbel's 16 th-ce... more Th e objective of the paper is to argue against a common denotation for Walenty Wróbel's 16 th-century translation of the Psalter into Polish and its printed version prepared by Andrzej Glaber. It is customary to treat Glaber's interventions into Wróbel's rendition as purely editorial and, in eff ect, consider the printed version of the Żołtarz to be the work of Wróbel. On the basis of Glaber's treatment of one syntactic phenomenon (the placement of the possessive pronoun in an NP), the paper shows that Glaber's involvement into Wróbel's text far exceeds what Glaber is usually credited with. Th erefore, the paper claims that the two works-the manuscript and its printed edition-should be classifi ed and discussed as distinct productions.

Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2016

The objective of the paper was to articulate the gap between the medieval manuscript and its mode... more The objective of the paper was to articulate the gap between the medieval manuscript and its modern editions. It emphasises the need to study medieval texts in their natural context, i.e. against the manuscript codex as only then do they speak in full voice. While the usefulness of electronic editions is indisputable, a linguist working with a modern edition of a medieval text must be aware of how far it departs from the text it intends to represent. Therefore, wherever possible, it is advisable to examine manuscript scans which are now widely accessible on internet sites of the libraries housing manuscript resources. It is of paramount importance not only as a way of verifying corpus examinations but also because manuscript examinations complement the findings based on electronic data by offering invaluable clues encoded in the materiality of the manuscript. This postulate is relevant both for historical linguistic analyses and translation studies, and is equally valid for literary studies.

Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2015

The paper reexamines a well-known semantic change observed in the history of the English word noo... more The paper reexamines a well-known semantic change observed in the history of the English word noon. The received academic opinion is that the word originates from the Latin phrase nōna hora > nōna 'the ninth hour' and was originally used in the medieval context to denote the ninth hour of the day, i.e. about three o'clock p.m., and, by metonymy, also the prayer at the ninth hour of the day prescribed by The Rule of St Benedict. Due to the central role of The Rule of St Benedict in the organisation of daily monastic life in the Middle Ages, the Latin word nōna was borrowed into vernaculars of the countries which adopted The Rule. It appeared in Old English as nōn, in Middle Dutch as nōne, noene, in Old Saxon as nōn, nōna, in Middle Low German as nōna, etc. The available historical and etymological dictionaries of English date the beginning of change in the English word noon to the 12/13th century and claim that it was complete by the 14th century. In effect, the word started to denote 'midday' rather than 'three o'clock p.m.', and the change is traditionally associated with "anticipation of the ecclesiastical office or of a meal-hour." The paper reassesses the strength of these assertions on the basis of an examination of the medieval system of time-keeping and the analysis of the monastic horarium, in particular the relationship between meal times and prayer times. It is shown that the explanation for the change put forward in the current sources relies on a misinformed view of medieval reality. I put forward an alternative explanation of the change, which is consonant both with the medieval system of time-keeping and with the monastic daily regime.

Linguistische Berichte, 2003

The paper examines the properties of the so-called impersonal passives in Irish, Polish, and Old ... more The paper examines the properties of the so-called impersonal passives in Irish, Polish, and Old English with the purpose of determining whether it is justified to claim that they contain the expletive pro subject. Since the constructions scrutinised lack the properties characteristic ...

Studies in Polish Linguistics

The objective of this paper is to bring to light an important early 16th-century Polish rendition... more The objective of this paper is to bring to light an important early 16th-century Polish rendition of the Psalter, Żołtarz Dawidów, translated by Walenty Wróbel and prepared for print by Andrzej Glaber. We argue that in spite of its unique position in the line of Psalter translations into Polish, the Żołtarz has not received a comprehensive and exhaustive treatment. While some detailed issues have been diligently addressed by individual scholars, research on the Żołtarz has generally been overshadowed by Brückner’s (1902) pioneering study, to the extent that one of its two surviving manuscript copies has not received official recognition in the scholarly literature. In particular, alongside the Kórnik manuscript (from 1528) described by Brückner, there exists another 16th-century exemplar (1536), which has been in the possession of the Jagiellonian Library since 1928. Its rediscovery by the authors of the present paper has two important consequences. First of all, the Jagiellonian Żo...

Studies in Polish Linguistics, 2022

The objective of this paper is to bring to light an important early 16 th-century Polish renditio... more The objective of this paper is to bring to light an important early 16 th-century Polish rendition of the Psalter, Żołtarz Dawidów, translated by Walenty Wróbel and prepared for print by Andrzej Glaber. We argue that in spite of its unique position in the line of Psalter translations into Polish, the Żołtarz has not received a comprehensive and exhaustive treatment. While some detailed issues have been diligently addressed by individual scholars, research on the Żołtarz has generally been overshadowed by Brückner's (1902) pioneering study, to the extent that one of its two surviving manuscript copies has not received official recognition in the scholarly literature. In particular, alongside the Kórnik manuscript (from 1528) described by Brückner, there exists another 16 th-century exemplar (1536), which has been in the possession of the Jagiellonian Library since 1928. Its rediscovery by the authors of the present paper has two important consequences. First of all, the Jagiellonian Żołtarz should become an object of study in its own right. Secondly, its existence requires a re-assessment of the current state of knowledge on the Żołtarz in the light of the data it contains.

Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2020

Na kanwie Psałterza, czy Psałterz na kanwie. Interdyscyplinarność w praktyce Artykuł dotyczy zagi... more Na kanwie Psałterza, czy Psałterz na kanwie. Interdyscyplinarność w praktyce Artykuł dotyczy zaginionego portretu przedstawiającego króla Jakuba II Stuarta z córką, księżniczką Louisą Marią, na którym są przedstawieni z otwartym Psałterzem. W oryginalnym założeniu badanie miało ustalić, która wersja angielskiego przekładu Psałterza jest przedstawiona na portrecie. Miało to na celu ocenę pozycji Psałterza przetłumaczonego w 1700 r. przez Johna Carylla i Davida Nairne’a na dworze Króla Jakuba na wygnaniu. Podczas badania wyszło na jaw, że dostępne angielskie opisy obrazu nie cytują dosłownie fragmentu psalmu rzekomo widocznego na portrecie, lecz tłumaczą na angielski oryginalny francuski opis portretu, razem z zawartym w opisie francuskim wersem psalmu. Odkrycie to przesunęło punkt ciężkości badania w kierunku ustalenia faktycznego stanu rzeczy z zastosowaniem podejścia interdyscyplinarnego, którego zalety niniejszy tekst ukazuje w praktyce.

Beyond Language

Przedmiotem badania tej monografii jest przekład. Przekład bywa tu pojmowany bardzo wąsko – jako ... more Przedmiotem badania tej monografii jest przekład. Przekład bywa tu pojmowany bardzo wąsko – jako produkt, szeroko – jako proces, a niekiedy wręcz bardzo szeroko – jako akt interpretacyjny, graniczący niemal z aktem stwórczym. Monografia zbudowana jest z prac wielu autorów (teoretyków przekładu, praktyków przekładu, językoznawców, literaturoznawców, kulturoznawców, germanistów, polonistów, italianistów, bohemistów, japonistów, hebraistów, latynistów, anglistów, a nawet teologa), zajmujących się różnymi aspektami przekładu. Autorzy tego tomu prezentują różne stanowiska, mieszczące się na skali między Nabokovem a Gadamerem. Część Autorów to badacze już obsypani nagrodami, inni dopiero wchodzą w świat badań i na nich nagrody dopiero czekają. Część zamieszczonych tu prac pięknie ze sobą współgra, a część pokazuje zgoła odmienne punkty widzenia na zgłębiany przedmiot badań. Jesteśmy zdania, że tak właśnie powinno być, jeśli tom ma rzetelnie reprezentować pewien wycinek uprawianej nauki, b...

Roczniki Humanistyczne LXI, 5: 27-45, 2013

The objective of the paper is to examine the syntax of the Experiencer verbs used in Old English ... more The objective of the paper is to examine the syntax of the Experiencer verbs used in Old English prose translation of the Psalter and see how the constructions relate to the available range of types attested with the relevant verbs in the Old English period. The text of the Paris Psalter was examined in search of the verbs defi ned as Experiencers in the relevant literature. It turned out that the seventy-three occurrences of Experiencer verbs found in the text represent all major types of constructions in which Experiencer verbs were found in the Old English period. The most important fi nding of this paper is that the data from the Paris Psalter forced a re-examination of the traditional understanding of the term ‘Experiencer verb’ used with reference to Old English – from a cover term which subsumes the common properties of certain OE subjectless and impersonal constructions to what it really is – a semantically defi ned group of verbs which appear with an Experiencer argument.

The paper is devoted to Old English prepositional ditransitive verbs of the NP+PP type and aims a... more The paper is devoted to Old English prepositional ditransitive verbs of the NP+PP type and aims at re-examining Visser’s (1963-73) typology of OE ditransitives. It is shown that Visser’s classification is insufficient as it recognises only two types of NP+PP ditransitives, namely ACC+PP and DAT+PP, while OE data exhibit more than two variants of the NP+PP construction. In particular, OE prepositional ditransitive verbs fall into three basic types, corresponding to the three verbal Cases, i.e. ACC+PP, DAT+PP and GEN+PP. Additionally, the ACC+PP type falls into two subtypes differentiated by the Ѳ-role assignment to the two arguments so that the PP can either represent the Goal or the Theme argument. In effect, there are four types of prepositional ditransitives of the NP+PP type in OE. The types are derivable on theoretical grounds from the available Goal and Theme types, a fact which reveals that OE ditransitives do not constitute a haphazard set of attested combinations but they fo...

O nieistniejącym typie czasownikow z dwoma dopelnieniami w jezyku staroangielskim Artykul poświec... more O nieistniejącym typie czasownikow z dwoma dopelnieniami w jezyku staroangielskim Artykul poświecony jest odpowiedzi na pytanie, czy w jezyku staroangielskim istnieje typ czasownikow, ktorym towarzyszą dwa dopelnienia – jedno w postaci frazy rzeczownikowej w dopelniaczu, drugie w postaci zdaniowej. O ile istnienie czasownikow z dopelnieniem zdaniowym i frazą rzeczownikową w celowniku lub bierniku jest bezsporne, o tyle wspomniany wyzej typ z dopelniaczem nigdy nie byl w literaturze omawiany, choc na jego istnienie wyraźnie wskazuje klasyfikacja czasownikow, jaką podaje Mitchell (1985: § 1090). Artykul przedstawia dane dotyczące rekcji czasownikow staroangielskich, wskazujące wyraźnie, ze typ taki w jezyku nie wystepowal.

The return to the original languages of the Bible was one of the key tenets of the Protestant ref... more The return to the original languages of the Bible was one of the key tenets of the Protestant reform and the embodiment of the Renaissance cry ad fontes. The circumvention of the Septuagint and the Vulgate was, therefore, not an expression of hostility towards Rome but an articulation of the desire for the fidelity of the text; hence the emergence of a plethora of new Latin translations of the original Hebrew Psalter. The Scottish metrical Psalter of 1564, which is going to be the focus of this paper, however, was not based on the Hebrew source but either on its fresh Latin renditions or, most frequently, on German and French versifications. In addition to that, the incipient text was adapted to the pre-set tunes associated with individual Psalms. Consequently, the requirements of rhythm and rhyme – both these obtaining in English and those which had influenced the German and French versified Psalms – were prioritised over the fidelity of the rendition. In spite of that, the Scottish Kirk accorded it the status of the liturgical text, and members of the Congregation immediately embraced it, taking the psalms from the churches to their homes and meeting places, so psalm singing became a ubiquitous activity. At the same time, the text of the Scottish Psalter was felt to be imperfect and several attempts at improving it were undertaken, but the ministers demurred. The paper sets out to explain the popularity the Scottish Psalter enjoyed despite its manifold imperfections.

The paper deals with a little-known translation of the Vulgate Psalter which was published anonym... more The paper deals with a little-known translation of the Vulgate Psalter which was published anonymously in 1700 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye by the printer of the exiled court of King James VII of Scotland and II of England. The paper argues in favour of the originality of the translation in the face of the claim expressed in the literature that it represents a revision of an earlier English rendition made from the Vulgate published in 1610 as part of the Douay-Rheims Bible. The adduced data draw from history, life writing studies and linguistics, thereby offering multidisciplinary evidence in favour of the originality of the rendition.

Roczniki Humanistyczne

Beyond Language, 2018

Sky Journal of Linguistics, 2002

Studies in Polish Linguistics, 2017

Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2016

Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2015

Linguistische Berichte, 2003

Studies in Polish Linguistics

Studies in Polish Linguistics, 2022

Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2020

Beyond Language

Roczniki Humanistyczne LXI, 5: 27-45, 2013

An examination of English prose translations of Jerome’s Psalters from OE to eMnE reveals that th... more An examination of English prose translations of Jerome’s Psalters from OE to eMnE reveals that there are four relevant equivalents of the Latin verb dicere: cweðan, secgan > seien > say, tell and speak. In each period in the history of English the verb dicere is translated by a prototypical verb of saying but the prototypes change over time. In OE both cweðan and secgan were amply attested but it was the former that had the status of the prototype. The two verbs are continued in ME but the use of quēthen undergoes morphological and syntactic restrictions as a result of which seien takes over the status of the prototype and is used in all examined ME texts in all contexts. Similarly, in the eMnE translation seien is selected in thirty-four out of thirty-eight contexts, with the remaining four occurrences of dicere rendered by tell and speak, which were quite frequently attested in the examined texts in the ME period but they were selected as equivalents of loqui, annuntiare, enarrare and narrare. Consistent selection of equivalents seems to characterise the traditional approach to biblical translation, which focuses on the form in the first place. This attitude results from the conviction that sacred texts convey their message not only via direct linguistic expression and is at the same time an expression of the translators’ reverence and respect for the sacred nature of the text they translated.

The paper examines equivalents of the Latin verbs exaudire and videre in prose translations of Je... more The paper examines equivalents of the Latin verbs exaudire and videre in prose translations of Jerome’s Psalters executed between Old and Early Modern English. The objective of the paper is to establish the principle of equivalent selection in the analysed texts. The study revealed that exaudire and videre were translated in OE, ME and eMnE by their prototypical equivalents but the prototypes changed due to language internal factors: from prefixed ge-verbs (ge-hȳran and ge-sēon ) to their simplex equivalents (hēren > hear and sēn > see). Next, it was established that while the equivalents of exaudire represented a stable pattern: ge-hȳran > hēren > hear, the equivalents of videre tended to exhibit some variation. The variation, however, was recorded in one translation only – in the Paris Psalter. These differences stem from two factors. The first of them is language internal and follows from the universally recorded property of the verb see, which tends to develop metaphorical meanings, as opposed to hear, which does not exhibit the same tendency. The second factor is language external and is a consequence of the dominant theory of biblical translation, which was based on the principle that every word of the text was sacred. As a result, biblical translations generally reflected the original very closely. The only text which exhibits dynamic correspondences is Old English Paris Psalter, which focuses on the clarity of the message not on the closeness of the rendering. The remaining translations are characterised by extreme reverence to the sacred nature of the text in all its layers, which results in the static equivalent selection.

The paper deals with a little-known translation of the Vulgate Psalter which was published anonym... more The paper deals with a little-known translation of the Vulgate Psalter which was published anonymously in 1700 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye by the printer of the exiled court of King James VII of Scotland and II of England. The paper argues in favour of the originality of the translation in the face of the claim expressed in the literature that it represents a revision of an earlier English rendition made from the Vulgate published in 1609 as part of the Douay-Rheims Bible. The adduced data draw from history, life writing studies and linguistics, thereby offering multidisciplinary evidence in favour of the originality of the rendition.