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Stanisław Dubisz : Witold Doroszewski – an intellectualist, linguist, teacher
Professor Witold Doroszewski (1899–1976) was an exceptional
personality, a man of great talent and great labour, which ensured
him a glittering and rapid career resulting i.a. in the linguistic school
that formed around him in the Warsaw academia. The basis of his
academic achievements was an original philosophical concept
originating from Aristotelian monism, the centre of which was the
notion of homo loquens (a talking man). With respect to linguistics,
Witold Doroszewski’s outstanding accomplishments are concerned
with word formation; lexicography, lexicology and semantics; culture
of language; dialectology; general linguistics. Professor Witold
Doroszewski’s achievements correspond with various streams of
contemporary linguistics and are an object of a continuing academic
discourse.
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Mirosław Bańko : Witold Doroszewski as a lexicographer and lexicologist
This paper presents the profile of Witold Doroszewski as
a lexicographer and lexicologist, hence allowing for his views and
accomplishments that are significant for the two areas of work on
language. Our perception of the achievements of researchers of
the past changes over time and it has been forty years since the
death of Doroszewski – the author of the most important dictionary
of the 20th-century Polish language (at least in the category
of general-purpose dictionaries). The anniversary encourages
a reflection on what Doroszewski left to next generations. The paper
is richly illustrated with statements from several of his books and
the introduction to the dictionary edited by him. They have been read
anew in order to outline a portrait that is as complete as possible
despite being limited by the assumptions contained in the title of
the text.
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Krystyna Waszakowa : Topicality of certain theoretical ideas and concepts by Professor Witold Doroszewski in the area of semantics and word formation
With reference to selected approaches in the area of cognitive
linguistics, the author discusses two associated threads of the
semantic concept by Witold Doroszewski: the relation between
the sing (the object of thinking) and the designatum, and the relation
between the meaning and the manner of using words. Further in
the study, the author focuses on presenting the phenomenon of
analogy in word formation as the basis of the derivational processes
in progress. The Professor’s viewpoint, which highlights the role of
the human consciousness in such processes and thinking, is
confronted with Ronald Langacker’s approach to parallel issues.
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Andrzej Markowski : Witold Doroszewski’s views on the culture of language
Witold Doroszewski treated the culture of language as
a significant part of linguistics. He believed that popularising correct
Polish and knowledge of language is more important than pointing
out and analysing linguistic errors since promoting positive models
is the basis of work on language. He defined language as one of the
forms of the human activity in the society. Apart from numerous
specific solutions, radio advice, collected in 3 volumes of O kulturę
słowa (About the culture of the word), he also formulated several
general principles of the culture of language. He presented the first
set of criteria for linguistic correctness, developed theoretical
assumptions of the dictionary of correct Polish, defined the notion of
linguistic norm and linguistic error. Many findings and observations
contained in his studies have been valid to date, his way of treating
prescriptive linguistics has been continued by his students.
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Halina Karaś : Dialectology as approached by Witold Doroszewski
Witold Doroszewski, the founder of the so-called Warsaw
dialectological school, was characterised by a specific approach to
dialectology, its aim, object, objectives and applied methods. The
dialectological direction represented by Professor Doroszewski can be
described, with both the issues and research methodology taken into
consideration, as synchronic and sociological (sociologising), using
statistics in dialectology long before the worldwide interest in
statistics in linguistics. An original contribution of Witold
Doroszewski to dialectology is the quantitative (statistical) research
method he developed. It is based on treating the issue of relation
between individual speech and environmental speech as a focus of
dialectological issues, and its material, linguistic basis was
phenomena from the area of phonetics.
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Józef Porayski-Pomsta : Witold Doroszewski – a positivist and organiser of the academic life
The author of the paper titled Witold Doroszewski – a positivist
and organiser of the academic life focused on presenting the research
attitude of the scholar, who held the view that language is strongly
associated with an extralinguistic reality and the (material and
mental) culture of a given linguistic community and is subject to
similar changes as the reality itself. Hence the researcher’s particular
interest in linguistic activities of language users and the influence of
language on how people communicate with each other rather than
in linguistic products. This paper emphasises the consistency of
Witold Doroszewski’s research attitude with his work as an academic
teacher, lexicographer, populariser of the knowledge of language, and
organiser of the academic life; his practical activities naturally
complement his academic activities owing to the fact that the
scholar’s interests focus on the human being, homo loquens.
