Difficulties in tracing the etymology of lexical isolates and loans from other languages are exemplified in the discussion of a gathering of English words previously without satisfactory explanations of origin.

Stanisław Stachowski wrote a series of articles devoted to studies on the New Persian loanwords in Ottoman-Turkish, which were published in Folia Orientalia in the 1970s and later republished in 1998 as a single volume. Since then, however, a good number of editions of new Ottoman texts have appeared, especially transcription texts dating from before Meninski’s Thesaurus (1680), which provide much new lexical material. Within this material there are many Persianisms – predictably enough where Ottoman-Turkish is concerned. This paper aims to supplement Stachowski’s work with words of Persian origin taken from pre-Meninski transcription texts. It is divided into two parts, the first including data to be added to entries already recorded by Stachowski (eight articles), the second containing data that constitute new entries (three articles). A short historical-etymological note on the words dealt with also features at the end of each entry.

Stanisław Stachowski wrote a series of articles devoted to studies on the New Persian loanwords in Ottoman-Turkish, which were published in Folia Orientalia in the 1970s and later republished in 1998 as a single volume. Since then, however, a good number of editions of new Ottoman texts have appeared, especially transcription texts dating from before Meninski’s Thesaurus (1680), which provide much new lexical material. Within this material there are many Persianisms – predictably enough where Ottoman-Turkish is concerned. This paper aims to supplement Stachowski’s work with words of Persian origin taken from pre-Meninski transcription texts. It is divided into two parts, the first including data to be added to entries already recorded by Stachowski (eight articles), the second containing data that constitute new entries (three articles). A short historical-etymological note on the words dealt with also features at the end of each entry.

This paper demonstrates that by applying Chaos Theory to the modelling of the evolution of verbal forms and verbal systems, it is possible to view classical grammaticalization paths as universal, and align this deterministic assumption with the unpredictability of concrete grammatical developments. The author argues that such an explanation is possible because traditional grammaticalization paths do not represent realistic cases of grammatical evolutions, but rather correspond to abstract and non-realistic deterministic laws which codify the order of the incorporation of new meanings to the semantic potential of a gram. Therefore, from a synchronic perspective, they can be used to represent the semantic potential of a form as a map or a state. In contrast, a realistic development emerges as a trajectory connecting such maps or states. Consequently, the cross-linguistic typological model of realistic evolutionary processes of a certain type corresponds to a state-space – it is a cluster of all possible trajectories the grams of a certain class can travel. This article – the last of the series – will formulate a chaotic model of the realistic evolution of verbal grams.

The ever more popular and global use of English in the world is an undeniable fact. One of the obvious manifestations of this process is the selection of English as an official language, typically in former post-colonial states. Its global status, however, also motivates some African and Asian countries which have never been a part of the British Commonwealth to choose this tongue as an official state language (sometimes – the only official language) too. Does this decision assume that the citizens of those states know English fluently? How is English integrated in their everyday life? The case study of Namibian newspaper articles and personal advertisements from classified pages as well as billboard texts is an attempt to offer some insights into the use of the variety of English typical of this country both in the official and private milieu in writing. The objective of the study, presented in two parts (Part 1: theoretical background and Part 2: analysis of data) is to outline the unique context of the use of English in Namibia and describe the most characteristic features of Namibian English grammar when compared to Standard British English and on the basis of the results illustrate the existence of a social dialect continuum with regard to the use of the English language to be detected in the analysed written texts.

In his article the author deals with the meaning of uč, which appears in lines 44 and 46 of the so-called “Manichaean Pothī-book” and not only means “end” but can also point to the “exterior / the beginning (of your path [= your teaching])” in that text.

Binomials in general and English binomials in particular are a frequent, complex and important linguistic as well as stylistic phenomenon.1 Compared to other linguistic phenomena, however, they are a relatively under-researched field. Therefore our aim is to provide a concise survey of English binomials, sketching their structure, function, history and the current state of scholarship, and pointing out possibilities for further research.2
In Part I we provide a preliminary definition of binomials (2.), explain the concept of multinomials (3.), discuss the functions of binomials (4.), give a brief review of research (5.), followed by a quick survey of binomials in the history of English (6.), and an example of a dense use of binomials, i.e. where several binomials are used in sequence (7.). Subsequently we discuss some formal features of binomials (8.), especially their basic structure and various variations of it (8.1.), their word classes (8.2.), the conjunctions used (8.3.), additional embellishment and strengthening, especially alliteration and rhyme (8.4.), and other morphological aspects, especially word-formation (8.5.). The second part of this article will be published in the next issue of the journal.