The main goal of this paper is to show that the proposed relationship between Turkish kayık ‘boat’ and Eskimo qayaq ‘kayak’ is far-fetched. After a philological analysis of the available materials, it will be proven that the oldest attestation and recoverable stages of these words are kay-guk (11th c.) < Proto-Turkic */kad-/ in */kad-ï/ ‘fir tree’ and */qan-yaq/ (see Greenlandic pl. form kainet, from 18th c.) < Proto-Eskimo */qan(ə)-/ ‘to go/come (near)’ respectively. The explicitness of the linguistic evidence enables us to avoid the complex historical and cultural (archaeological) observations related to the hypothetical scenarios concerning encounters between the Turkic and Eskimo(-Aleut) populations, so typical in a discussion of this issue. In the process of this main elucidation, two marginal questions will be addressed too: the limited occasions on which “Eskimo” materials are dealt with in English (or other language) sources, and the etymology of (Atkan) Aleut iqya- ‘single-hatch baidara’.

The paper is devoted to the concept of tropological space, introduced by Michel Foucault in 1966 and alluded to in Hayden White’s tropics of discourse (1973, 1978, 2000), but never described in any detail in literary semantics or linguistic stylistics. The author presents her theory of a triple functional subdivision of stylistic figures and, consequently, of tropes (micro-, macro- and mega (meta)-level of description) and relates it to a gradually expanding tropological space of particular figures, their chains and groupings within a text. The author postulates that tropological space, the imaginary space created through figuration, is a sub-space of the Wittgensteinian logical space as well as a sub-space of textual / discursive space. Although the discussion refers mostly to literary texts, tropology – a branch of stylistics / poetics / rhetoric makes generalizations valid for the study of all kinds of texts / discourses. Figuration is assumed here to be an inherent feature of conceptual and linguistic expression. Finally, the author raises a methodological query as to the ontological status of tropological space, opting for the approach which treats it as a peculiar kind of semantic space rather than a mere metaphoric term.
The discussion is based mostly on the Anglo-American studies on figuration (K. Burke, H. White, P. de Man, J. Hillis Miller, G. Hartman) that are rooted in the neo-classical rhetoric and writings of G. Vico. This line of thinking draws its philosophical inspiration from the European hermeneutics of P. Ricoeur, the Foucaultian theory of discourses and the Derridean deconstructionist ideas on the operation of language. The author brings additionally into consideration the conception of artistic space propagated by the Russian semiotic tradition and V. N. Toporov (1983/2003) in particular.

This article – based on a larger study (Pawelec 2009) – has two aims. The more limited one is to present network models proposed by Ronald Langacker and George Lakoff. I try to show that both ventures rest on manifestly different assumptions, contrary to the widespread view that they are convergent or complementary. Langacker’s declared aim is “descriptive adequacy”: his model serves as a global representation of linguistic intuitions, rooted in convention. Lakoff, on the other hand, offers a developmental model: a fairly general abstract schema is “imagistically” specified and transformed, while the more specific schemas serve as the basis for metaphorical transfers. My wider aim is to offer a preliminary assessment of theoretical justifications and practical potential of network models in lexical semantics.

Some Turkish verbs, besides their basic function, have an auxiliary function, forming compound verbs with nominal forms. This function is known not only in modern Turkish but also in Ottoman-Turkish. The purpose of this paper is to present the verbs etmek, olmak, eylemek, kılmak as examples of this function.
The lexical material excerpted from Giovanni Molino’s seventeenth-century Italian-Turkish Dictionary constitutes the basis for the analysis. When analysing the material we can ascertain that in Ottoman-Turkish the verb etmek especially was frequently involved in the process of forming compound verbs, olmak rather less so, with eylemek and kılmak rarely performing this function. Indeed, the verbs etmek and olmak can still be observed to perform this function in modern Turkish, however, not on the same scale as in Ottoman-Turkish.

The article presents a – to the best of the author’s knowledge – new method of preparing data for quantification of loanword adaptation, together with two of its possible uses. The method is particularly fit for poorly investigated languages where a great deal of data, especially socio-linguistic, are missing. It is illustrated with the example of Russian loanwords in Dolgan. The result is an attempt to measure the commonness and meaningfulness of adaptations, and an index of loanword nativization

Numerous Tukic words with only partially coinciding meanings (cf. the title and the first paragraph of the article) are traced back to very similar or even identical Proto-Turkic stems in ÈSTJa, and for most of the stems two or even three phonetic variants are suggested. In this article an attempt at finding possibly clear reconstructs is made.
 

The present paper concerns the status of the literary variety of the Czech language (the so called spisovná čeština) with the system of the Czech language, with a particular focus on spoken language and literature. As a result of the constant eradication of Czech literary language (spisovná čeština) from the spoken language of Czech users, the process of its becoming stylistically marked has been noticeable for some time. It is, therefore, no longer a neutral variety of language in literary texts – this function is being taken over (as much as in the spoken language) by the colloquial variety of the language, i.e. obecná čeština.

The aim of this article is to determine the basic genre conventions of electronic magazines, i.e. e-zines. The analysis illustrates the main characteristic features of e-zines, involving their function, format, content and functionality. The results of the analysis show that e-zines represent a group of heterogeneous forms, exploiting the conventions of other electronic genres, and thus creating hybrid constructions. The article presents a preliminary categorization of electronic magazines, carried out on the basis of the differences in content and in formatting techniques of these websites. The study illustrates as well the most recent trends in the form and content of electronic magazines.

This paper focuses on an important divide in theoretical linguistics between two broad perspectives on the structural properties of human languages, generative and functionalist. In the former, linguistic structure is explained in terms of discrete categories and highly abstract principles, which may be language-independent or language-specific and purely formal or functional in nature. In the latter, explanation for why languages have the structure that they do is found ‘outside’ language, in the general principles of human cognition and the communicative functions of language. The aim of this paper is to highlight the need for abstractness, explicitness, simplicity and theoretical economy in linguistic description and explanation. The question is not whether principles of grammar are formal or functional. The question is whether the principles that are postulated to explain linguistic structure express true generalizations.