The Polish Prime Minister Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis in Toponymy

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We are happy to announce that Dr. Wojciech Włoskowicz was awarded the Prime Minister Prize for Outstanding PhD Thesis. There are several thousand PhD theses defended in Poland every year. And the number of Prime Minister Prizes awarded for theses defended in 2018 is twelve.

The aim of his thesis “Toponymic usus. An outline of theory (on the basis of the Polish toponymy of the Hutsul region)” was to create an outline of a theory of toponymic usus. This goal covers the introduction and the definition of the concept of toponymic usus as well as the description of linguistic and extralinguistic factors that mould a toponymic usus. Thereby an attempt is made to introduce some normative components to the theory of onomastics and to extend the theory of normative linguistics with a more precise description of mechanisms that influence linguistic usus. In the empirical part of the present work the proposed theoretical apparatus has been exemplified with descriptions of formation processes of the Polish toponymic usus regarding some selected geographical names of the Hutsul region (in Ukraine).