Naturally reflexive actions are expressed by intransitive reflexive stems in Hebrew and by transitive verbs with the reflexive pronoun się in Polish. 2. Actions that are not naturally reflexive are expressed by transitive stems with the reflexive pronoun ’acmo in Hebrew, and by transitive verbs with the reflexive pronoun siebie in Polish. 3. Adverbials with anaphors referring to a subject contain personal pronouns in Hebrew, the reflexive pronoun siebie in Polish, if the reflexive reference of the pronoun is not abnormal. Otherwise the reflexive pronoun ’acmo and the emphatic pronoun samego siebie are used. 4. If a pronoun referring to the subject is a predicate, then in Hebrew it always has the form of an ordinary personal pronoun, while in Polish both the personal and the reflexive pronoun is possible, depending on the copula.

Franciscus Meninski generally used the letter ‹y› as a symbol for today’s Turkish ı. However, this letter also appears in front vocalic words which contradicts the palato-velar aspect of Turkish vowel harmony. Mertol Tulum has recently attempted to show that the phonetic value of ‹y› in front vocalic words was a central, high vowel placed between the Turkish i and ı (one that would probably be rendered [ɨ] in the IPA; however, since this letter is barely visible in print, especially in the footnotes, I have decided to replace it with its Fenno-Ugristic equivalent [i] here). The present author, thus, examines Tulum’s line of reasoning and dicusses the possibility of reinterpreting the functions fulfilled by ‹y› and ‹ü› in Meninski’s work.

The article addresses the issue of diglossia in its original and extended definition. The main point of discussion is the validity of the ‘defining cases’ of diglossia selected by Ferguson (1959) to substantiate his concept. The four well-known pairs of languages described by Ferguson in his seminal article include the ‘Swiss pair’ of Standard German and Swiss German and their functional distribution. Following a number of critical opinions, I will show that the consistency between the definition and its Swiss illustration raises a few questions and cannot be considered tenable. Lastly, I will highlight the main differences between diglossia and bilingualism as two phenomena which in certain contexts may overlap.

Increasing popularity and dynamic expansion of online newspapers creates a need for an in-depth analysis of online press, genre and discourse properties of online news in particular. The aim of the following analysis is to investigate genre characteristics of a newly developed news structure – a news abstract. The analysis examines the basic conventions concerning the purpose, form and content of these text types. The study encompasses news abstracts published on the websites of leading British, German and Polish newspapers. The inclusion of websites of culturally distinct newspapers was designed to evaluate the degree of universality and internationalization of the structure.

Discussed are the etymologies of twelve Hittite words and word groups (alpa- ‘cloud’, aku- ‘seashell’, ariye/a-zi ‘determine by or consult an oracle’, heu- / he(y)aw- ‘rain’, hāli- ‘pen, corral’, kalmara- ‘ray’ etc., māhla- ‘grapevine branch’, sūu, sūwaw- ‘full’, tarra-tta(ri) ‘be able’ and tarhu-zi ‘id.; conquer’, idālu- ‘evil’, tara-i / tari- ‘become weary, henkan ‘death, doom’) and some points of Hittite historical phonology, such as the fate of medial *-h2n- (sub §7) and final *-i (§13), all of which appear to receive somewhat inadequate treatment in Kloekhorst’s 2008 Hittite etymological dictionary. Several old etymologies are defended and some new ones suggested.

This paper is an edition of an article by Władysław Kotwicz (1872–1944) entitled Les voyelles longues dans les langues altaïques, which the author could not publish himself during wartime and did not live to publish after the War was over. The edition is designed to read almost as if published by Kotwicz, but without falsifying the actual manuscript. Also, a brief archival description is provided and the history of the last four years of the text has been reconstructed, based mostly on Kotwicz’s correspondence.

This paper is an edition of an article by Władysław Kotwicz (1872–1944) entitled Les voyelles longues dans les langues altaïques, which the author could not publish himself during wartime and did not live to publish after the War was over. The edition is designed to read almost as if published by Kotwicz, but without falsifying the actual manuscript. Also, a brief archival description is provided and the history of the last four years of the text has been reconstructed, based mostly on Kotwicz’s correspondence.