Contrasting Cognates in Modern Languages from a Diachronic Perspective

The book presents a convincing attempt at combining contrastive analysis as applied to modern languages with a diachronic approach. The author analyses collected Polish-English cognates, referring to their Proto-Germanic and Proto-Slavic forms, and goes on to explain their relationship at the level of Proto-Indo–European. He investigates their similarities and disparities thoroughly, while illuminating the phonological, morphological and semantic processes that occurred in the development of the languages under comparison or in their prehistories. Dr Mikolaj Rychlo has elaborated convincing methodological criteria for researching Polish-English cognates, which he skilfully develops, discussing not only evident and probable cases, but also controversial and difficult ones. The work under review is innovative both for methodological reasons and also by virtue of the author’s approach to the issue of a Polish-English linguistic affinity. I recommend the study as being a major scientific contribution to the fields of contrastive and diachronic research. prof. dr hab. Krzysztof Tomasz Witczak