Polish reż and English rye concealed in Polish rżysko: a case study of a pair of cognates and a root archaism

The aim of this paper is to conduct a diachronic analysis of the Polish word r ż ysko ‘stubble’, whose root retains the primary designation of rye, namely re ż ‘rye, obs . ’ . Although this noun was ousted by ż yto ‘rye’, a derivative of the verb ż y ć ‘to live’, its cognates are still used in many Slavic and Germanic languages, e.g. Russian rož ь ( рожь ) ‘rye’, and English rye. The paper presents other cognates with a view to contrasting the English word rye with its obsolete Polish cognate re ż and understanding the evolution of both words. For this purpose, the study seeks to identify the sound changes responsible for the discrepancy between the Polish-English cognates which developed from * rug h i- . The derivative r ż ysko ‘stubble’ has been analysed in the context of other nomina loci as well as the semantic change which affected the word . It is suggested that the phenomenon exempli fi ed by r ż ysko can be referred to as a root archaism .