The article is a contrastive analysis of two important conceptions dealing with the description of language: S. Karolak’s semantic theory of predicate-arguments structure and G. Gross’ object oriented approach. The first part of the article is devoted to a brief presentation of basic principles of both the approaches. An attempt is made at analyzing the notion of predicate in both conceptions, as well. Taking into consideration the fact that the theory of predicate-arguments structure has influenced the development of G. Gross’ lexicographic approach, the authors concentrate also on the presentation of differences and similarities between the two conceptions.

This study analyses the use of the French causal verb déterminer with the aim of disambiguating their meanings. The process consists in finding every possible meaning of the word by analysing contexts in which it might appear. This stage constitutes an integral part of creating a Polish-French and French-Polish electronic dictionary and exemplifies the methodology of object-oriented approach proposed by Professor W. Banyś. The analysis is based on the information taken from Le Trésor de la Langue Française and the internet by Google. After analyzing all contexts in which the verb has appeared and after specifying the object classes for each its use of the verb, the author gives its Polish equivalent. Twelve Polish equivalents of the French verb déterminer are presented.

This paper focuses on an analysis of lexical ambiguity observed in legal language. The first part of the article explains the definition of legal language and characterizes the vocabulary typical of legal language. The second part aims to situate the lexical ambiguity issues against a background of language for special purposes, or, more specifically, legal language. The semantic relations of synonymy, homonymy and different aspects of polysemy are described in the context of legal language.
In the conclusive part of this paper the problem of disambiguation of legal terms is highlighted and then it is shown how it affects the translation of such terms.

This article aims to analyze the concept of meditation (meditazione) in the Italian language, with special emphasis on the role of body, movement and space in the conceptualization process. The research presented is based on the following theories: Idealized Cognitive Models by G. Lakof f (1987) and thematic proto-roles by D.R. Dowty (1991). Three basic cognitive models for meditation have been extracted as part of the analysis: the metaphor of journey (viaggio), container (posto chiuso) and water (acqua). These models sprout from Kinesthetic Image Schemas of: source — path — goal, up — down, front — back, and inside — outside. I also trace the directions of the metaphoric movement of the meditating individual both during the very meditation process and as a shift in consciousness level occurs, depending on the cognitive model researched, and the thematic role of the meditating individual. In order to demonstrate the current view of meditation in Italian, the examples constituting the analyzed language content were culled from selected web pages available between 2007 and 2008.

This paper arose out of research carried out at LDI (UMR 7187, CN RS-Université Paris 13) on a description of French nominal predicates with a view to creating an electronic dictionary. The principles of the analysis, which we implement, are the same both for general language predicates and for specialized language predicates. We select the class of nouns of ‘thinking processes’ from general language and nouns of ‘diseases’, ‘therapeutic action’ from the language of medicine in order to illustrate two types of semantic classes, namely, the class of synonyms and the class of hyperonyms. The two types refer to internal semantic relations which do not display, by themselves, any criteria for classification. All the structural, distributional, syntactic, and semantic properties, when integrated, are taken into account. An integrated description answers the demands of software which processes language data to the extent that the properties are incorporated into electronic dictionaries.

The paper is a tentative to describe the way the concept of corpo umano (human body) is conceptualized in persuasive texts treating about health. The article presents the language of feminine online magazines directed to modern women. The chosen methodology, regarding cognitive semantics, helps to explain how the concept of corpo (body) is expressed by means of the ontological metaphor of macchina (machine). The notion of machine allows to distinguish the following aspects of the body: construction, functioning, maintenance and repairing.

The aim of this article is to analyze the events traditionally perceived as natural phenomena. This type of event does not form a homogenous class from a linguistic point of view. The author presents some observations and comments on a few nouns: rain, snow, hail which belong to the lexical field natural phenomena. Moreover, the author raises the issue of the impersonal constructions which cover the category of meteorological verbs.

This article is an attempt at an introduction to the problems of phraseological didactics. It should be said that phraseological didactics is a new scientific branch, which is only just developing. Its main goal is to investigate the ways of effectively teaching as well as learning phraseological structures. This article shows why phraseology in a foreign language should be taught and what problems are the most frequent in this area. Moreover, in this article the author discusses selected didactic ideas which
can make the process of teaching and learning idiomatic expressions in L2 easier.

The following article regards problems concerning the conceptualization of ontological structures. The participants are analysed through their meronymic relations in a special type of journalist writing, represented by language of editorial, whose primordial function is always persuasive. Consequently, the conceptualization of every participant depends on the selection of information, the way of communicating media facts and the journalist’s point of view. According to the approach proposed by Ewa Miczka (1993, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2005), the author focused her attention on the issue of constructing the ontological domain in the creation of discursive representations as well as on potential dangers of language manipulation connected with classifying features.

The following paper aims at presenting the conceptualization of immigrate and immigrazione in the cognitive approach. In basis of the gathered linguistic corpus, which constitutes of publicity texts provided by three biggest newspapers Il Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, La Repubblica. The researches evidence these concepts are replaced by synonyms from three semantic views and six metaphorical conceptualization. The results demonstrate the model of lingustic image of these concepts.

The following paper discusses the notion of three arguments locative verb based on some linguistic studies chosen by the Author. It is an attempt to present different kinds of difficulties we may find in the case of nuclearity of the locative argument. Our aim is also to show how the syntacticsemantic structure of this type of verb imposes special requirements, fulfilled by a small number of uses. The French locative verb monter and its Spanish equivalent subir provided valuable examples to the study that has been conducted.