The article is devoted to the analysis of the possible relationships between (full) valency and synonymy. We first present a very short overview of positions on valency, then we proceed to present the position of researchers who see a relationship between valency (full, i.e., not distinguishing arguments from adjuncts and treating them all together as arguments) and synonymy. The article shows that since a more frequent word would appear in more contexts than a less frequent word, the more frequent word would tend to have more meanings, and therefore it will have more synonyms, and being more polysemous it would result in a greater number of full valency frames of that word. It has been shown that the hypothesis has not been sufficiently precise, because it is the word, as a form, that can be considered polysemous, but it cannot itself have synonyms: it is only a particular meaning of this polysemous word that can have them. Therefore, the analyses could not be sufficiently subtle to identify any relationship, if any, between the two phenomena. On the other hand, the results of the analyses from this not sufficiently precise starting point did not demonstrate that there is a significant correlation, let alone dependency, between the two phenomena. Kendall coefficient, which measures the ordinal association, was estimated at 0.18 in the case of the material analysed (for the range –1/+1). It was pointed out at the end that it is not possible to draw from the fact that the differentiation between arguments and adjuncts is often subtle and sometimes difficult to make, the conclusion that there is no difference between them, that the problem in fact does not exist, and to refrain from searching for satisfactory elements and criteria for differentiation of the two categories or to apply in a consequent way those at our disposal, namely, semantic implication.

This paper investigates the primary function of so-called nominal encapsulators (Spanish encapsuladores nominales) in the journalistic discourse, which consists of summarizing any predicative content of an anaphoric or cathaphoric textual sequence. It is often indicated that apart from performing the above function, the nominal encapsulators allow the author to recategorize the content of the synthesized segment and thus become a useful discursive strategy. Our goal is to conduct a Spanish-Polish analysis of the said phenomenon in order to compare the pragmatic values of the encapsulators, namely the degree to which they are modified in both languages as well as their evaluative or non-evaluative character. Our detailed, corpus-based analysis proves that in the Spanish press we can find a negative or positive evaluation of any encapsulated contents (mainly referring to social or political events) more often than in the Polish one. The news articles analysed in this paper come from a comparable corpus comprising 30,000 tokens.

The question of translating cultural aspects is one of the most often raised issues. The aim of this paper is to discuss two main types of translation strategies: target-oriented translation and source-oriented translation. We want to show how they have been defined by different researchers through time. Using contrastive analysis of the original English version of computer-animated comedy film Madagascar (2005; directed by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath) with dubbed and subtitled Polish versions, the author of this paper examines which strategy is used in case of cultural transfers.

The present paper discusses the natural polysemy of lexemes, perceived as important problem of automatic translation. We aim at presenting the results of the disambiguation process of the Spanish verb of movement subir, which is characterized by its ambiguity. The framework of this paper constitutes the lexicographical description proposed by Wiesław Banyś — the object-oriented approach (2002a, 2002b). The analysis is based on the information taken from Spanish dictionaries (Clave — diccionario del español actual, Diccionario de la Lengua Española — Real Academia Española, Gran Diccionario de uso del Español Actual, Diccionario de uso del Español — María Moliner) and it is completed by the corpus found by search engines. Every meaning of the verb (which is equivalent to its translation into Polish) is illustrated with some examples and accompanied by syntactic-semantic schemes. After analysing the contexts in which the verb has appeared and specifying the object classes for each use of the verb we give its Polish equivalents and present the results of the research in form of tables.

The book Argumentation. Analyser textes et discours (Doury, 2016) comes within the scope of language science. From this angle this work clearly distinguishes itself from The Treatise on Argumentation (Le traité de l’argumentation) published almost 60 years before (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958). Prior to the development of pragmatics or discourse analysis, The New Rhetoric focuses on discourse techniques which enable an “orator” (a litigant, a smooth talker, but also a scholar or a philosopher) to influence others. The Treatise’s focus on discourse techniques has naturally aroused the interest of language specialists. But, at the end of the day, The Treatise finds its inspiration less in linguistic issues than in philosophical ones. Our purpose is to compare Doury’s book with the Treatise to measure the impact of this discrepancy. We will argue that beyond
that evident contrast between methodologies and theoretical approaches, the structure of the two books appear, in some way, oddly similar. The structure of Doury’s textbook, particularly clear and explicit, will be used to emphasize another aspect than Perlman’s rehabilitation of rhetoric. This other aspect could be called the study of a logic with a human face.

The paper focuses on the problem of the classification of metonymy. Presenting various classifications of metonymy, the author wonders how they are useful for the purpose of automatic translation. The discussion undertaken in the paper concerns the classification proposed by Taouffic Massoussi, who in his doctoral dissertation has presented a very extensive and detailed classification of metonymy carried out from the point of view of automatic translation. On the basis of the analysis of selected examples, the author proposes a different classification of metonymic expressions employing the object-oriented approach proposed by Wiesław Banyś.

The internationalization of theatrical art and unlimited access to modern technologies results in the development of innovative forms of stage translation as surtitling (fr. surtitrage), which is currently one of the most frequently used methods of real-time translation of performances. In this paper, based on the theoretical works and on the example of a specific theatre performance, the author discusses the way that the surtitles were used in the context of inclusive arts. The play directed by Polish artist Adam Ziajski entitled Nie mów nikomu, stage-translated from sign language into Polish using surtitles, will become a starting point for the reflection on the role of translators in the contemporary world, especially in the context of excluded groups such as deaf people and hard-of-hearing persons.

The paper offers an analysis of lexical-syntactic structures based on the verb form voir / widzieć typical of a scientific text, that is, a text that follows quite a stable and rigid structure. A corpusbased analysis, achieved through the use of the Scientext corpora, runs across two dimensions. The first dimension is constituted by the subject matter of the text while the other dimension concerns the relation between the author of the text and the recipient. The analysis presented is a two-stage process. At the first stage, lexical-syntactic structures are singled out. The second stage is to assign those structures to the particular parts of the text, such as Introduction, Main body, Conclusion.

The paper investigates the cognitive approach to word formation in present-day Italian within a larger overview of lexical creativity and users’ competence. Various accounts of lexical creativity are reviewed. The aim of this work is to show the importance of changing cultural needs in word formation with a deeper insight into compounding. Moreover, the author emphasizes the fact that both lexicon and syntax are creative.

This paper analyzes the different types of irony used by Russian President Vladimir Putin during his official and less formal appearances. The analysis will focus on the Russian President’s speeches during the G8 meeting, during the first diplomatic meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, during “A Grown-up conversation” with Vladimir
Putin organized in Sochi, at the press conference following the BRICS summit in China, at a press conference in Moscow, in the Kremlin, during the intervention in the economic forum, and at the press conference in St. Petersburg. This paper will prove that the Russian president likes to joke.

To avoid the gaps in the field of denomination and simultaneously to provide the communication needs, any specialist language offers neology strategies range — more or less systematic in relation to the general language — and can therefore borrow from foreign languages, overload semantically other words already functioning in the lexicon, or form new words by recombining the appropriate linguistic elements. The objective of this paper is to analyze the mechanism of morphological derivation within the French terminology in the field of individual retirement plans and, in particular, to list a number of affixes regularly participating in the formation of terms in this lexicon.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the phenomena and mechanisms revealing the semantic-structural potential of phraseological units. The phenomena implying the notion of change such as variation, adaptation, and modification are of our particular interest. It needs to be highlighted that the analysis allows to show the unstable nature of the discussed compounds (units) and, as a consequence, it may lead to undermining the existence of the notion of canonical form. The presented analysis concerns the canonical and innovative use of the units collected from lexicographical sources and online press.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate similarities and differences in the conceptualisation of depression by Polish and Italian authors of blogs and/or posts, who experienced the disease. The analyses presented in the paper are mainly based on the cognitive theory of metaphor by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson and constitute a part of a wider research topic regarding the differences in conceptualisation of depression depending on such factors as: language, discourse, kind and personal experience of the author concerning the state of depression. The study revealed that the dominant metaphors of depression in the analysed texts, in both languages, are: depression is an enemy and depression is a bad life companion. Moreover, the second of them is a typical way/manner of representing depression by the people who experience or have experienced it. Other metaphors that occur either in Polish or in Italian texts are: depression is a location (and its more specific representation depression is an oppressive place) often situated down and taking the form of a container, depression is dark / darkness and depression is burden. The most vivid dissimilarity between the analysed languages concerns the existence of the conceptualisations in which depression is valued as positive in the Polish texts and their absence in the Italian ones, whilst the most common differences are the ones regarding specific representations of the common, more general metaphor.

The study focuses on grammatical gender primarily conceived as an inherent and classifying property of Italian and Polish nouns. Our main aim is to contrastively discuss multiple connections of this formal category with the grammar and semantics of the languages under examination. The grammatical gender is a complex and highly versatile theoretical construct. As a fixed and syntactically independent property of nouns, it formally contributes to the enrichment of lexical resources. As a co-regulator of morphosyntactic relations between sentence constituents, it plays an important role in the decoding of a sentence structure, and more globally, of the internal text structure.

According to the principles of medical art, anamnesis is an examination that enables to formulate hypothesis regarding patient’s illness, its origin and eventually prognosis. The difficulties related to translation of such documents are due to the fact that it is a very inhomogeneous type of text made of quotations of patient’s words, their reinterpretations and more detailed objective information added by the doctor. In the very moment of translation into another language, the translator of such documents should be able to distinguish at the lexical, morphological and syntactical level these two different ways of narration. Consequently, the translator of this kind of texts is obliged to distinguish terminological choices in order to translate the text appropriately. Serious linguistic and medical consequences may arise during translation of medical anamnesis if subjective and objective perceptions are mixed in one text. The aim of the present paper based on comparative studies of Italian medical documents translated into Polish is to find possible syntactical and morphological solutions that have arisen in the translation process.

In this paper the author analyzes the relations between situational structures and sources of conceptualization in fait divers. Situational structures of discourse are defined as a sequence of experiential frames. Each frame permits to conceptualize one event forming part of information introduced in the discourse. The author focuses her attention on two classes of situational structures: (1) with one possible scenario or (2) with two or more scenarios of the same event suggested in the discourse and then the analysis of sources of different conceptualizations is carried out.

The paper analyzes the discourse of weight loss diets in a popular Italian magazine Donna Moderna. More than 230 examples were examined by means of rhetorical tools as a form of methodology, in particular basic kinds of appeals to persuade audience: Aristotle’s ethos, pathos and logos. The study sheds light on a significant role of topos of authority, additionally it lists and briefly characterizes dozens of other topoi (i.e., beauty, health, envy, fear, quantity, efficient cause). The discourse of diets never refers only to one topos at a time. The persuasion in this case is built up on different elements whose presence is mutually reinforced.

The paper focuses on various automatic translation systems from the historical perspective in order to show three major directions of its development. The oldest ones, translating word by word, the subsequent ones — based on interlingua, and the newest ones — which use neural networks and machine learning. The paper presents various linguistic and interdisciplinary points of view, methodological proposals and prototypes, which have been made from the 17th to the 21st century.

The definite and indefinite articles have been studied by scholars from different backgrounds and perspectives. In this paper we take a close insight into basic terms such as definiteness—indefiniteness, specificity—non-specificity. The paper is also concerned with the (in)definite reference of a noun phrase which is the head of a relative clause in Spanish. Speakers and hearers do not share any knowledge of the referent on the basis of previously mentioned (anaphora) or situational uses. There is something about the relative clause that makes a first-mention definite article possible. We take an insight into the contents of the description conveyed by such relatives.

The present paper aims to comment on some of the cognitive mechanisms involved in the creation and interpretation of political cartoons and to explore the possibilities of their description using the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo, Raskin, 1991; Attardo, 1997, 2008, 2017). Firstly, the characteristics of press cartoons as a multimodal and humorous discourse genre are exposed. Afterwards, taking into account the assumption that the GTVH provides a flexible theoretical perspective applicable to the study of graphic humor, attention is paid to the main analytical tools of the aforementioned theory. The paper also discusses a recent genre-specific model for the understanding of political cartoons, proposed as a new approach for the study of their humorous messages and critical stances (Agüero Guerra, 2016). Finally — the above mentioned method is illustrated by applying it to the multimodal analysis of the examples of two Spanish press cartoons, which have been extracted from digital newspapers and dedicated to current socio-political issues.

Building on previous work carried out on the semantics of phraseology, we will attempt to show that the study of the interaction between the phraseologism and its environment allows us to create a typology of the meanings that is in line with the crossing of cotextual elements. Three types of meanings will emerge from this study: the structuring, the pragmatic and the playful.

The paper focuses on the double nature of phraseological relations in terms of their semantics and the mechanisms and theoretical frameworks that concern the reception of idiomatic meanings. The author presents the concept of the double meaning of phraseological structures and selected questions related to the description of semantics within phraseology. The latter part of the paper is devoted to various models of reception and understanding of idiomatic meanings.

The following paper discusses the problem of the semantic implication of predicates based on Stanisław Karolak’s theory of semantics-based grammar. As the notion of predicate-argument structure is fundamental for this theory, it is crucial to establish the number and type of arguments assigned to a given predicate. The process of assigning the appropriate number of argument positions opened by a predicate and argument-adjunct distinction is a complex and not always clear procedure. Taking into consideration the notions, definitions and propositions resulting from the theory at hand here, the author carries out an analysis of the selected group of predicates that, taking this point of view, may seem to be problematic.

The aim of the paper is to compare the categorization of the broadly understood concept of human hand in Spanish and in Polish. The author describes the linguistic and cultural image of that part of the body using lexical-semantic analysis based on cognitive grammar. Verification of semantic features of that concept is based on the analysis of individual words related to conceptualization of hands, as well as on references to conceptual structures preserved in word combinations and idiomatic expressions.

This paper aims to show the consequences of a lack of standardization in translation of titles of art works. The author examines Polish title translations of two Vincent van Gogh’s paintings in order to verify how title translation strategies have been applied. The paper concludes that there are no coherent translation strategies and that Polish versions result in indirect translation.

Modifications of phraseological units are the effect of deliberate violation by the sender of the established formal and semantic structure of the unit. The transformation operations used in phraseological units have a significant cognitive value, because they show the possibility of transforming units with varying degrees of fixation in the text. Even in the case of a literal understanding of the idiom or its structural decomposition idiomatic meaning remains in the background and it is identified by the recipient thanks to the social stability of the language unit.

This paper explores the subject of new fields of applied phraseology: phraseodidactics and phraseotranslation. The author presents their goals and tenets, indicates some problems, and pinpoints possible perspectives. Phraseodidactics, also known as didactics of phraseology, is a new emerging research discipline within the scope of applied linguistics. It is an interdisciplinary field with elements of phraseology, glottodidactics, as well as contrastive linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and sociolinguistics. Phraseodidactics, in accordance with its objectives, examines the processes associated with the natural assimilation of collocations, idioms, proverbs and other reproducible word forms in the mother language, and, foremost, processes related to the teaching and learning of these structures in the second and subsequent languages. In other words, the didactics of phraseology aspires to deal with everything that is associated with the most effective teaching and learning of broadly understood phraseology. On the other hand, phraseotranslation, as a specialized interdisciplinary science postulated in this text, is situated at the crossroads of phraseology, translation studies, contrastive studies and phraseodidactics. An effective translation implies equivalent messages in two different linguistic codes, which becomes extremely difficult in case of phraseology. The multiple-word structures entrenched in natural languages are therefore a major challenge in the process of translation and can be a prominent difficulty even for professional translators.