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Radosław Pawelec : A centenary of emancipationists. The evolution of the lexical nest
The word emancypacja (emancipation) in Polish is a 14th-century borrowing from Latin. It was used to refer to the process of gaining freedom and independence by various people and social groups, in particular peasants, Jews and women in the Poland of that time. The lexeme is recorded and accurately described in dictionaries, which also point to a special position of emancipation of women among emancipation processes: it concerned the largest number of people and assumed the form of a decades-long and complex process. The quotations collected in the Files of Słownik języka polskiego (Dictionary of Polish) edited by W. Doroszewski prove the power and diversity of emancipation movements and permit the reconstruction of the controversies behind emancipation of women. Nowadays, the words from this nest can be seen mainly in books and are often used in historical contexts. The current problems related to the question of women’s status are referred to with words from the feminism nest, some of which are similar to and others different from emancipation.
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Celina Heliasz : From titling to name-calling. Nominative and addressative verbs in the contemporary Polish
This paper presents the resource of addressative and nominative verbs in the contemporary Polish, which serve the purpose of giving account of addressing an utterance to a selected addressee and describing him or her, simultaneously or not, in a certain manner. This resource is composed of: strictly addressative verbs, cf. zwrócić się do [kogoś] [jakoś] (to address [someone] [somehow]) and powiedzieć [coś] do [kogoś] (to say [something] to [someone]), naming verbs, cf. naz(y)wać [kogoś/coś] [jakoś] (to name [someone/something] [somehow]), powiedzieć na [kogoś/coś] [jakoś] (to call [someone/something] [somehow]),
descriptive verbs, cf. powiedzieć ([komuś]) [coś/że_] o [kimś/czymś] (to tell ([someone]) [something/ that_] about [someone/ something])), as well as titling and insulting verbs, cf. (z) wyzywać [kogoś] od kogoś/czegoś] (to call [someone] names), tytułować [kogoś] [jakoś] (to title [someone] [somehow]). These verbs are part of the metalinguistic competence of the users of the contemporary Polish and enable them to describe important aspects of acts of communication in everyday conversations and their existence confirms and specifies the intuitions of researchers formulated in the artificial metalanguage, cf. the scope and definitions of czasowniki adresatywne (addressative verbs) as approached by M. Marcjanik and wypowiedzi DO kogoś (utterances addressed TO someone) as approached by J. Lalewicz.
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Mariola Wołk : Can shock be positive? On the expression szok (shock) in the contemporary Polish.
This paper is dedicated to analysing lexical (mainly semantic) properties of the Polish expression szok (shock) in its secondary meaning, that is a meaning different from the primary one, where this word refers to strong emotions most often caused by a negative incident. The ‘shock’ that is described in this text is often related to positive events and is sometimes close to euphoria. The undertaken analysis focuses on szok, more precisely: a linguistic unit including the word and, to a lesser extent, the corresponding verb zszokować / zaszokować kogoś czymś (to shock someone with something). The analysis encompasses issues related to identifying a linguistic unit which represents the relevant notion, its syntactic properties and a description of its meaning. The analysed unit is additionally compared to verbs representing notions of surprise, bewilderment and amazement. The text is concluded with an attempt to explicate sentences which contain the expression ktoś jest w szoku, że_ (someone is in shock that_).
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Dorota Kruk : On syntactic and semantic properties of the verbs zaprzepaścić (to squander) and przepaść (to be lost)
This paper contains a semantic and syntactic analysis of two verbal language units identified by the author and represented by the forms zaprzepaścić (to squander) and przepaść (to be lost), namely [ktośi] zaprzepaścił [cośj] ([someonei] squandered [somethingj]) and [cośi] przepadło ([somethingi] was lost). By means of language tests, the author tries to reconstruct their semantic properties (which imply their formal features), the result of which is the proposed (working) explications of the units.
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Hélène Włodarczyk : Mnie or mi (me)? On the use of the 1st person pronoun in the dative case.
Contemporary native Polish speakers experience difficulties with the choice of one of the two possible forms of the dative case of the 1st person singular
pronoun (mnie or mi). Based on prosodic and morphological characteristics, two variants, called enclitic and orthotonic, are usually distinguished in the inflection of personal pronouns. This paper presents the pragmatic conditions underlying the use of orthotonic and enclitic forms of personal pronouns as part of the Meta-Informative Centering Theory (MIC). These conditions refer, among others, to phrases pointing to the speaker’s attention and directing the listener’s attention. Then, on the basis of Polish language history and the comparative grammar of Slavic languages, a hypothesis is put forward in order to explain how the alteration of the grammatical norm came about. In the last decades, the form mi has been used more and more ambiguously (either as enclitic or orthotonic) just as is the case with the 1st person singular genitive-accusative form mnie. The cause of this situation is probably the disappearance of the enclitic form mię. Hence, a new paradigm of the inflection of the 1st person singular pronoun is emerging with only one dative form mi. This new paradigm is thus comparable to that of the 1st person plural pronoun where there has only ever existed one dative form nam.
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Agnieszka Mikołajczuk : The value of semantic reflection in teaching Polish language & literature
The aim of this paper is to identify the place and value of semantics in the school education of Polish language & literature, and to demonstrate various opportunities to expand students’ knowledge and interests with the use of reflection on the meaning. The presented discussions include: (a) the answer to the question what could be an object of semantic reflection, (b) the analysis of the new core curriculum in teaching Polish in a primary school as well as the analysis of selected textbooks, (c) the presentation of examples taken from lexicographic and corpus materials worthy of use in teaching Polish language & literature, (d) the indication of the latest publications dedicated to Polish, which use humour, astonishment and a rich linguistic material and help inspire students to reflect on the meaning and facilitate their development.
