Vol. 22 (2010)

Études sémantico-syntaxiques des langues romanes. Hommage à Stanisław Karolak

Published: 2010-11-03

Semantic and Syntactic Studies of Romance Languages. A Tribute to Stanisław Karolak

Volume 22 of Neophilologica, edited by Wiesław Banyś, is conceived as a tribute to Stanisław Karolak, creator of an innovative approach to language analysis in terms of predicative structures, founder of our journal, a leading figure in world linguistics in the second half of the twentieth century—who, as Georges Kleiber writes at the beginning of his text: “In memory of Stanislas Karolak, who, better than most, knew—through a radiant lucidity and a fruitful, because logical, good humor—how to defuse [dé-jouer] more than one paradox of meaning.”

The commemorative dimension of the issue is established from the outset by two introductory texts that combine scholarly reflection and personal remembrance. In “Staszek Karolak,” Wiesław Banyś retraces Karolak’s academic path, emphasizes the scope of his work, and highlights the enduring importance of his semantic-based grammar, centred on such notions as predicate, argument, quantification, determination, and thematic structure. In « Właśnie taki pozostanie z nami… » [“And this is how we will remember him…”], Izabela Pozierak-Trybisz offers a more personal portrait, stressing his intellectual energy, theoretical rigor, and formative influence as a teacher and mentor.

A first group of contributions is devoted to theoretical, typological, and historical-comparative issues, all of which resonate strongly with Karolak’s research interests. In “Parallèles phonétiques romano-slaves,” Leszek Bednarczuk explores structural convergences between Romance and Slavic phonetic developments. In “Causes et inférences,” Gaston Gross investigates the relationship between causality and inference, within a framework in which meaning depends on the organization of predicative relations. Georges Kleiber, in “L’autonymie, en faisant l’école buissonnière,” reflects on autonymy and its theoretical implications, while Michele Prandi, in “La grammaire dans les dictionnaires : le cas des verbes,” examines the representation of grammatical information in dictionaries and what verb description reveals about the interface between lexicon and grammar.

A second major strand concerns aspect, grammatical tense, and their syntactic and translational implications, a domain central to Karolak’s legacy. In “Autour de la notion d’aspect : problèmes choisis de la traduction du passé imperfectif polonais en français,” Magdalena Karolak analyses the difficulties involved in translating between two heterogeneous aspectual systems. Małgorzata Nowakowska, in “Le ‘paradoxe de l’imperfectivité’ dans la perspective de la théorie de S. Karolak,” revisits one of the most subtle issues in verbal aspect within Karolak’s framework. Dorota Sikora and Józef Sypnicki, in “Ce qui change avec le temps (grammatical)… Substitution passé composé / imparfait et imparfait / passé composé dans les phrases plurielles en français,” study substitutions between French past tenses and show how aspectual and temporal values are redistributed in more complex sentence structures.

Several articles then extend the discussion to lexical structure, predicates, and grammatical semantics. In “Les ressources lexicales dans les langues contrôlées,” Krzysztof Bogacki examines the lexical constraints imposed by controlled languages and shows how the reduction of polysemy and synonymy aims at limiting ambiguity. Lucyna Marcol, in “Semantica lessicale dei verbi sintagmatici in italiano. Analisi intra-/interlinguistica del VS mettere fuori,” studies the lexical semantics of Italian syntagmatic verbs from an intra- and interlinguistic perspective. Izabela Pozierak-Trybisz, in “Apport de l’analyse sémantique dans la recherche sur les prédicats de communication : du sens d’un prédicat au texte et à la traduction,” demonstrates how semantic analysis of predicates can illuminate both textual functioning and translation issues.

The volume also includes important contributions on information structure and determination, two areas that were central to Karolak’s research program. Ewa Miczka, in “Le rôle de l’enchaînement rhématique dans la structure informationnelle de discours,” analyses the dynamics of information progression and the contribution of rheme chaining to textual coherence. Teresa Muryn, in “La détermination en polonais : un déterminant zéro ?”, discusses definiteness and indefiniteness in a language without grammatical articles, drawing on Karolak’s intensional theory of the article.

Taken as a whole, this volume reveals the deep coherence of a research field organized around the relationships between semantics, syntax, aspect, determination, and information structure. By combining scholarly tribute with original research, it demonstrates the continuing vitality of Stanisław Karolak’s intellectual legacy and its lasting influence on theoretical, contrastive, and applied linguistics.

Number of Publications: 14

Neophilologica 22(2010) (Język Polski) Table de Matières (Język Polski) Contents (Język Polski)