O czytaniu i odczytaniu dzieł literatury staropolskiej. Czy językoznawca czyta inaczej?

The paper discusses how the knowledge of historical linguistics can contribute to appropriate understanding and interpreting of old texts. Selected examples serve to demonstrate that a detailed linguistic analysis can help to both appropriately decode particular words with their semantic and grammatical features, and to understand the text itself. However, a comprehensive linguistic analysis of an old text is effective only when the researcher examines the original text or its duly prepared transliteration as it enables them to draw certain conclusions, for example on the basis of vowel articulation. The paper also emphasises the necessity to refer to extralinguistic knowledge of broadly understood history of language or to history in general. Thus, it is useful to be acquainted with old manuscript and editing techniques applied in particular printing houses, and to be able to conduct a comparative analysis of original texts and their translation or a lexicographic analysis, and to refer to general cultural background.