About nouns with soft labial consonants in modern standard Polish

Autor podpisany na publikacji : Wiesław Tomasz Stefańczyk

Nouns with soft labial rhyme, such gołąb, or krew, historically formed a large group of lexems. Late in the 16th century, the process of their depalatalization in the final position was observed. By the 18th century, soft pronuntiatin was the dead phenomenon alredy. Historical softness of labial consonants has been preserved in the declination of nouns that originally featured labial consonants in their final position, e.g. gołąb-gołębia, modrzew-modrzewia, krew-krwi, cerkiew-cerkwi, Radom-Radomia. Such nouns are untypical of contemporary Polish; therfore, their number gradually decreases. Same of such lexems have disappeared altogether, e.g. rukiew, małgiew, while other, affected by frequency of use, adopt the paradigm of declination typical of nouns ended whith hard consonants: głąb, potraw, take-on feminine suffixes: -ka or -ina, e.g. konew-konewka, głąb-głębina (głębia), or entirely change their grammatical gender, e.g. sitow-sitowie, ślep-ślepie. Due to absence of clear morphological rules, foreigners learning Polish must simply memorise this group of lexems. Some regularities only occur within the group of masculine proper names.