Several words on the Dictionary of the 16th Century Polish Language

The paper presents some basic issues concerning the Dictionary of the 16th Century Polish Language (SPXVI). The Dictionary is an immense lexicographic undertaking which dates back to 1949. It was the period that the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences [PAN] appointed a number of Lexicographer Teams to gather material for the Dictionary. SPXVI Trial Booklet was published in 1956, Volume I of the Dictionary in 1966. The latest Volume XXXVII, which covers entries from rozum to rżysko, is currently at its printing phase. SPXVI is a historical documentary dictionary based upon the statistic method. It contains common words only. Its vocabulary information is highly extensive and multi-layered – apart from the definition of a given entry’s meaning, it includes, inter alia: analysis of its grammatical layer (paradigm) and its phonetic layer (vowel tone), description of its syntactic and phrasal relations, and information on its distribution in particular texts. From the very beginning, the authors of the Dictionary have also placed special emphasis on the ability to expose some phenomena of the textual stylistics of that time.