Prepositions na ALMOST EQUAL TO 'on', w ALMOST EQUAL TO 'in', and do ALMOST EQUAL TO 'to' in front of names of states, lands and regions. Historical usage and variation in contemporary norm
Abstract
The article presents historical changes of prepositions preceding names of states, countries, and regions in Polish with the main focus on the contemporary discussion about the choice of the prepositions with names of eastern neighbours of Poland. According to dictionaries and grammars these names: Ukraina, Białoruś, and Litwa require the preposition na instead of the locative w and the adlative do, which are typical for the vast majority of land names, except for islands and peninsulas.
Query in historical corpora since the 17th century showed that the preposition na had proliferated in reference to regions which belonged to the same country, importantly, not only with reference to Poland. It is also attested for pats of the Jagiellonian dynastic union or lands that had belonged to states that ruled parts of Poland under Partition.
Despite this tendency, before the 19th Century, the preposition most frequently used with the names Litwa and Ukraina were the locative w and the adlative do. The traditional use of w and do in the past, typical colocations of na with regions rather than independent states, an animated discussion in the media, and the fluctuation of norm attested in the dictionaries of the last century - all these factors weigh in favour of admitting both prepositional patterns: na and w/do with the names of three states, eastern neighbours of Poland.
The article was written a year before the Russian aggression against Ukraine, which changed the typical usage in Polish public discourse in favour of the prepositions w and do that seem to stress the independence of the invaded state.