History of the Polish language today : possibilities, aims and postulates of the research into the history of Polish lexicon

The article presents the opportunities and tasks now facing researchers into the history of the Polish language. It contends that closed language subsystems, such phonological, inflectional, syntactic subsystems, such as are studied from the start of Polish scientific linguistics, are sufficiently developed and known, and little can be added to their description, except for particulars. The greatest opportunities and tasks now face researchers into open subsystems such as vocabulary, phraseology, and historical stylistics. The author devotes the most attention to research opportunities and tasks in the history of the Polish lexicon, the field in which he has long been engaged. Broad research opportunities in this area are offered by existing historical dictionaries of Polish and many published, comprehensive sources from past centuries, like inventories of royal and manorial estates. Such non-literary texts should continue to be published, with many still to be found in archives. They contain a wealth of interesting vocabulary in material culture. Studies and descriptions of such vocabulary should aim at developing a synthetic history of Polish vocabulary.