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Stanisław Dubisz : Hierarchy of political and social notions in Poland and Ukraine at the turn of 20th and 21st century. Words, values or stereotypes?
Central Eastern Europe is nowadays a region of diverse culture where a lot of dynamic changes take place. Słownik pojęć politycznych i społecznych krajów Europy Środkowej i Wschodniej [SPPS] is a research project whose aim is to describe the meanings of words in the languages of this region’s countries. Fragmentary results from the research let to draw conclusions concerning quality, frequency and range diversity of socio-political vocabulary. This diversity enables to define concept hierarchy in this field. Both these spheres (lexis and concepts) are the basis of stereotypes that are being formed.
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Ewa Rudnicka : Cosmopolitan calques – normative aspects in functioning of syntactic calques in the Polish language
One can expect that nowadays, due to the increase and tighting of international relations, the number of lexical calques is going to increase. These elements are often difficult to identify, especially for average language users whereas linguists and linguistic purists often have reservations about them. The aim of the article is to point out problematic issues connected with lexical calques, starting from definitional problems, through case of attitudes towards calques, down to normative judgments of calques. The author tries to answer the question whether nowadays people should avoid calques and what kind of correct usage rules ought to be applied to them. Reflections on normative judgments of calques are also the basis to a more general contemplation about correct language usage criteria.
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Agnieszka Jawór : Reinterpretations of Polish phrasal collocations
The main aim of the article was to indicate relations between the „burnt out” meaning of a collocation’s lexeme – component and a general collocation’s semantics. The material analysed showed that collocations which contain „dead” meanings of lexemes are receptive to reinterpretation. Units with paleosemantisms function nowadays not only with broaden but also with new meanings, e.g. stanąć, wstąpić, wejść w szranki (to enter the lists against sb.); ktoś, coś spod znaku czegoś, spod czyjegoś, jakiegoś znaku (under the sign of sth.); pod czyimś przewodem (under sb’s lead); spalić na panewce (go down like a lead baloon); grzech pierworodny (the original sin); być, pojawić się, znaleźć się na tapecie (be/get called on the carpet); mieć coś na tapecie; rzeź niewiniątek (massacre of the Innocents); nudny jak flaki z olejem (dull as ditchwater). Usually, secondary meanings appear as a result of motivational „redeploy”. These motivational „redeploys” on other lexemes or on currently used meanings of paleosemantisms are a characteristic feature of the phraseological lexicon analysed.
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Monika Sułkowska : Typicality and proto-typical structures in phraseology and their meaning to phraseological didactics
The subject of the article is the problem of typicality and proto-typical structures in reference to phraseological units and the meaning of this issue to phraseological didactics. The author presents a detailed description and the results of diagnostic research conducted by her. The aim of the research was to analyse the typical features of Polish phrases and phraseological proto-typical structures from a Polish language user’s perspective. The research included 150 people, master’s cycle students of modern languages studies and it was conducted on the basis of an anonymous questionaire. The results were thoroughly analysed. This kind of research has never been done in Poland before. The article finishes with conclusions from the research and practical suggestions of phraseological didactics.
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Sylwia Fabisiak : Imitativeness in Polish sign language
The article is devoted to the issue of icony in Polish sign language. It is the first study that concerns this matter, that is why its aim is to show a brief historical draft of the research on imitativeness in a language and to verify the notion of icony which is realised differently in sign language than in auditory-vocal languages. In the further parts of the article, the author analyses linguistic material from multimedia dictionary pjm (Polish sign language). Thanks to cooperation with native speakers of sign language and the research conducted on people who do not sign, the number of iconic signs of pjm was set on 23% to 41% of the lexicon. Next, the signs were divided according to the character of icon and each of the group was described. The research verified the myth that Polish sign language is highly iconic and that appearance of icons is a heterogeneous phenomenon occurring in sign language not only on a lexical level but also on phonological, morfological and lexical levels.
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Alicja Podstolec : Names of cities in Polish signed language
The present article shows the problem of naming Polish cities in language of the deaf. The author, by analysing mechanisms in the creation of sign equivalents of Polish cities’ names, distinguishes a few groups of ideographic signs: names generated by animatism; names generated by associating the name of the city with an object characteristic for it; names generated by associating phonetic form of the name of the city with phonetic form of another word; arbitrary and mixed signs. The comparison of unified signs in signed language with the signs of a sign language leads to the conclusion that the process of naming geohraphical objects runs similarly in both systems.
