Leksyka wspólnoodmianowa XVII-wiecznej polszczyzny (na przykładzie słownictwa utworów Wacława Potockiego)

This paper presents the results of stylistic and semantic research on Middle Polish vocabulary represented by 300 nominal names excerpted from selected works by Wacław Potocki (1621–1696). The insufficient number of studies dedicated to stylistics of the 17th-century lexis encouraged the author to carry out the analyses. Based on the works by A. Markowski and D. Buttler, which describe methods of identifying common infl ection vocabulary of the contemporary Polish, the author makes an attempt to apply similar examinations to old lexis. By means of vocabulary research and her own analyses, she separates, among others, sets of expressive, specialist and erudite vocabulary from the collected material, which in turn permits her to distinguish a group of neutral, stylistically unmarked, lexis from among 300 nouns. The employment of the structuralist method of semantic fields for Middle Polish common words enables the development of a thematic grid representing the distribution of the studied units in individual classes of real meanings. A comparative analysis of the semantic layer of the common vocabulary in two distant historical phases confi rms a high stability and universal anthropocentrism of this part of the lexical resource of Polish.