Kazimierz Nitsch i 'Mały atlas gwar polskich'

Kazimierz Nitsch and Mały atlas gwar polskich (‘A small atlas of Polish dialects’) This paper describes K. Nitsch’s road to dialectology and linguistic geography. It begins with a presentation of some events from Nitsch’s youth. In those times, he was inspired by Baudouin de Courtenay’s phonological methods and Gilliéron’s linguistic geography. Having completed his genius description of Polish dialects, Nitsch began work on the atlas and dictionary of Polish dialects. After World War II, he organized the work on Mały atlas gwar polskich (‘A small atlas of Polish dialects’) which was planned to precede a large one. This work, commenced by an editorial team under the direction of Nitsch in a special department of the Polish Academy of Sciences, was continued and completed under the supervision of Nitsch’s student, M. Karaś. The work discussed in the present paper comprises 13 volumes, 601 maps, 116 main and about 200 supplementary localities. Linguistic phenomena have been shown on maps using geometric figures, coloured areas, and isoglosses. Labels were rarely used. The atlas focuses on phonetic and morphological phenomena. It also contains multiple lexical maps. Mały atlas gwar polskich is the single largest work in the field of Polish linguistic geography.