Res Humanitariae

The idea of (un)translatability, that features of one language are too difficult to be translated into another language due to cultural differences, appeared in the Renaissance, was developed by German Romanticism, and evolved together with translation studies. The dichotomy of the term, different types and perspectives on (un)translatability, led to different definitions. Research on (un)translatability questioned whether translatability is possible, what the relationship between (un)translatability and equivalence and culture is, and whether (un)translatability has a place in modern translation studies. The questions are controversial, but the concept remains relevant to modern translation studies.

This article focuses on the suffixed verbs denominatives and deverbatives of the Anonymous Catechism (1605), i.e. the suffixed derivatives of nominals and verbs. All forms of suffixed verbs and their derivatives were extracted from this source. A total of 301 words were collected. Non-recurring suffixed verbs were identified and generalised by removing prefixes. This revealed that the Anonymous Catechism contains 105 non-repeating suffixed verbs. The suffixed verbs found in the Catechism were divided into synchronically non-segmentable and segmentable verbs, and the basis and categories of the latter were then clarified. The ratio of deverbatives to denominatives, the categories of derivation, the frequency and derivability of suffixes were established.

Polish language in Latgale today is only one of many languages spoken in the local community. The Polish minority here forms seven per cent of population but Polish language, which extended to the territory during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, is in fact threatened with extinction. The regiolect in question is mainly exposed to the influence of the Russian and to a smaller extent Latvian language, thus it extensively incorporates foreign linguistic units. The report aims at describing some structural and semantic peculiarities of verbs functioning in the spoken variety of Latgalian Polish. Current research is based on interviews with eighty-six Poles born from 1922 till 2006 representing all generations of the local Polish minority.

The article presents an analysis of the derivational system of one group of verbs attested to in the old Lithuanian text ‚Ziwatas‘ (1759), in particular denominative verbs derived from adjectives and nouns. The verbs analysed belong to factitive, ornative, fientive, stative, instrumental, similative and participative word formation categories. The centre of the denominative derivational type is comprised of desubstantives (51% in total) and deadjectives (42%), while derivatives from other parts of speech stand on the periphery of this type. The prototypical derivational types of denominatives are deadjectival verbs with the suffix -inti, and desubstantives with the suffixes -avoti and -yti, both belonging to the factitive category.