Abstrakt: | The contemporary functional phrase – niech – most probably originates in theverb niechać being a negative polysemantic form of the verb *chać which, in turn,is a continuation of the pre‑Slavonic lexeme *chajati. Originally, niechać functionedas a notional lexeme, constituting the formative base for such verbs as:zaniechać, poniechać, poniechawać, uniechać. Afterwards, on its basis, a functionalunit – niechać – has developed and, in the Old Polish era, it was already used parallelly.Apart from niechać, the synsemantic niechaj was also in use, which hadthe same formal counterpart in the class of verbs, introducing the descriptive53 Anna Szczepanek: Wspolnordzenne wyrażenie funkcyjne i czasownik…imperative mode in the second person singular. Niech was an abbreviated formof one of these functional phrases. Niech and niechaj were often reinforced by theemphatic morphemes (especially in the 16th century), which contributed to theemergence of a considerable number of forms, eg. niechać, niechaj, niecha, niech,niechci, niechajci, niechajć, niechajżeby, niechżeby, niechajże, niechajżeć, niechżeć,niechby, niechajści. |