Dialectology in Poland 1873–1997

The advent and the first stage of development of the Polish dialectology is connected with the Neogrammarian trend. In 1873, Lucjan Malinowski (1839–1898) published in Leipzig the first scientific description of a Polish dialect. His student, Kazimierz Nitsch (1874–1958), included in his research the entire territory of the Polish language, and in 1915 published the first synthesis Dialekty języka polskiego (Dialects of the Polish language).In the inter-war period and later, there appeared a number of descriptions of dialects of individual villages and larger regions. A new, synthesizing discussion of the subject, in Karol Dejna’s (b.1911) Dialekty polskie (Polish dialects), was published in 1973. Geolinguistic atlases of particular dialects were produced, as well as Mały atlas gwar polskich (A little atlas of Polish dialects) comprising the whole country. A number of dialectal dictionaries were issued; work on the voluminous Słownik gwar polskich (A dictionary of Polish dialects) is in progress. A new area of research is developing – historical dialectology which is concerned with the problems of participation of particular dialects in the formation of literary Polish.