The Lexis of the First Official Documents in Galicia

Abstract

The paper The Lexis of the First Official Documents in Galicia is a part of a master’s thesis entitled The Origins of the Official Style in Galicia. The paper records the vocabulary of the first Polish official texts (of the years 1772-1774, 1778 and partly 1780) translated in Galicia from the German on the basis of the so-called Piller’s (Pillerians) collection, one of the provincial collections of the law issued in the countries of the Austrian Crown. Pilleriana are a bilingual collection and for this reason one could compare their Polish translation with the German original. Particular attention was focused on the official-legal vocabulary (both the foreign and vernacular words) and borrowings. The analysis allows us to state that the vocabulary of the Piller’s collection contains a large number of legal-administrative terminology. Latinisms prevail over the terms of German origin and of Latin origin, which is in accordance with what happened in Poland before partitions. The Latin borrowings prevail also over the borrowings from other spheres.

The influence of the German language is noticeable not so much in assimilating new Germanisms, as in introducing by way of the German language borrowings from other languages, or even more in using the formulations which are translations from the German original.