In the recent years, it has been possible to notice an increasing interest among the
linguists in the mental vocabulary. First synchronic studies of the mental lexis analysed the
semantics as well as syntactic collocations of mental verbs in the contemporary Polish language.
The epistemic angle in diachronic studies was much less popular among scholars. Up
until this day, there have been relatively few studies published concerning particular lexemes
connected with thinking, and even fewer regarding the historical and linguistic aspect. Apart
from the abovementioned publications, the mental vocabulary has not been thus far the
subject of a comprehensive diachronic study, which results in the fact that it is one of the
least well-known areas of historical lexis. The monograph Mental Vocabulary in the History
of the Polish Language. A Study of the Lexical and Word-Formative Aspects aims to rectify
that situation. The diachronic study conducted in this publication allows for a qualitative and
quantitative analysis of the changes in the mental vocabulary. This fresh, evolutionary take
on the subject has made it possible to find the places of changes and semantic divisions in
sets of words based on a shared pre-Slavonic root. In addition to that, thanks to referring
to the pre-Slavonic etymon, the analysis could include words characterised by metaphorical
or lexicalised meanings. The conducted research allows to determine the tendencies in the
development of language, such as the disappearance of many names for performers of mental
actions (e.g. obmyśliciel, zmyślacz, znaniec), to re-discover currently forgotten formatives
(e.g. the suffix -ć, as in the word powieś-ć), as well as to describe active word-formative
models (e.g. -znawstwo)
