The exclusively semantic definitions of the words found in different dictionaries present a simplified and distorted image of the lexicon. Paraphrasing a term gives it a meaning reduced to a small number of appropriate operators. A true semantic definition is significant only when we take into account all the predicates that characterize it. This is what we will highlight studying the combinatorics of the substantive débat with the set of verbs where it can appear in the position of subject or complement. A study in extension of the elements of the lexicon reveals an unsuspected complexity of the lexicon. The definitions found in dictionaries, necessarily reduced, give a simplified idea of lexemes. These are often “conceptual” definitions that are not supported by the presence of appropriate operators. Indeed, the definition of a substantive is the set of appropriate predicates that can be applied to it. Who could intuitively imagine that in French there are more than 800 appropriate verbs that co-occur with the substantive débat, and that there are almost as many appropriate adjectives as well. These observations emphasize the fact that the description of words must be internal to the system and not fall within “conceptual” definitions.

In this text we will briefly discuss some examples of the influence of the chosen philosophy and epistemology leading in a natural way to a change in research paradigm and consequently to a change in methods of linguistic description. We will present two types of situations:
• The situation where one arrives at the same types, basically, of descriptive methods in the same discipline starting from different philosophical and epistemological foundations, generally without being aware of it or without having specified them (see, e.g., Predicates-Arguments Structures vs Object-Oriented Approach vs Classes of Objects vs. SketchEngine).
• The situation where one arrives at the same types, basically, of descriptive methods in different disciplines starting from different or similar philosophical and epistemological foundations (see e.g., Object-Oriented Approach, Classes of Objects vs Ecological Psychology / Incorporated Radical Cognition).
In a “good method”, descriptive methods derive from the philosophical and epistemological foundations adopted consciously or unconsciously. Sometimes, if the choices are more operational and more practical applications oriented, in “normal science”, in T. Kuhn’s terminology, one must go backwards to discover these foundations from the chosen descriptive principles. At the same time, different philosophical foundations can lead to the same types, at least roughly, of descriptive methods of reality.
The descriptions made in the framework of different paradigms, like these paradigms, are complementary and, in the last instance, “cumulative”, thus giving a more complete description of the reality, which, while submitted to different visions, does not, naturally, change.

As a dynamic expression of vagueness, approximation takes the shape of several discourse identities, such as indeterminancy, hesitation, ambiguity, attenuation, certain forms of ellipsis, everything that is characterised by an imprecise value of semantic and discursive content. Approximation has multiple sources, which are extremely dynamic in terms of their production. Depending on whether approximation affects ‘classifying’ discursive unities (Milner, 1973) with a denominative role or evaluative or axiological unities, we can speak of a category-based approximation and of a predicative approximation, each type involving a wide variety of instruments of approximation. Our article aims to analyse the linguistic behaviour of the Romanian noun gen (lat. genus, generis) in relation to other Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian). This instrument of approximation is at the interface between the taxonomic categorising value and the approximation value, which, in turn, manifests itself at the level of the referent either as partial identification or suspensive approximation. The complexity of this marker’s behaviour resides especially in the non-categorising role, which accounts for its multiple actualisations in most of Romance languages, especially in Romanian.

Débarquer, amarrer, gréer, baliser… Even a brief study of the French language in Quebec shows therein a vast array of words from the maritime vocabulary. French in Quebec has long been influenced by the maritime tradition present in the culture of the region. Those nautical terms are integrated into the language and, together with other words, form an original lexical network different from that of the European French. The aim of this article is not only to present the semantic extensions of certain nautical terms which are characteristic of Quebec French, but also to draw the reader’s attention to the possible sources of these enlargements. It transpires that many of the extended meanings are not pure Canadian innovations but have their origin in French dialects from the time of colonization.

The paper focuses on the automatic translation of metonymic expressions. Due to the fact that metonymic expressions are very frequent in varous texts, the Author reflects on possible problems they may pose for automatic translation. At the same time, the Author underlines the fact that the metonymic expressions that may be especially complex for the machine to translate are those which have come into being on the basis of cultural, historical, or religious factors — that is those factors
that are typical of a given community, as they reflect the way the community perceives various phenomena and extralinguistic situations. On the basis of the group of chosen examples, the Author proposes the solution to the problem of correct translation of metonymic expressions with the use of the object-oriented approach by Wiesław Banyś.

This paper focuses on discursive routines used to express apology in email exchange. We adopt a contrastive (French-Polish) and intercultural approach, integrating apology in the politeness theory. We start from the hypothesis of cognitive grammars (see e.g. Langacker 2008a and 2008b) that apology, even if it includes a shared conceptual core in various languages, presents for each language an original configuration that specifically reorganizes semantic constituents. The results of the research previously conducted by Dziadkiewicz (2007) show that, in the case of apology, the extent of the polite scale in Polish is not the same as in French. The corpus is composed of interpersonal emails (about 200 mails per language) collected in both languages, in professional or private context.

The present paper aims at presenting the results of the disambiguation procedure of the French polysemic verb remettre. Each meaning of the analysed word is illustrated with examples, associated with the Polish translation and properly formalized with the use of syntactic-semantic schemes (being one of the formats of the computational lexicographic description proposed in the object-oriented approach by Wiesław Banyś). Furthermore, in the second part of the article, the author examines the prefixed equivalents of remettre and tries to establish some semantic relations between the French and Polish prefixation process.

This article presents the analysis of nouns that act as indicators of large or very large undefined quantity. They have a structure in French DET N1 de and in Polish N1N2 (where N2 is used in genitive case). They are called ‘nominal quantifiers’ and are defined as formal indicators of the amplification of objects marked by nouns, which these quantifiers co-occur with. The set of nominal quantifiers being the subject of this analysis consists of 12 French nouns denoting meteorological phenomena or hydrographic forms and their equivalents in Polish. The semantic features of quantifiers and nouns that most often co-occur with them are analyzed. The semantic analysis allowed to distinguish two basic types of collocations with the use of these quantifiers: “prototype” collocations and figurative collocations, which in turn can be divided into several subtypes. Finally, there is presented a comparative analysis of the connectivity of these quantifiers in French and Polish languages.

The aim of this article is to compare the press columns “Letters from readers” in several French and Polish magazines and newspapers. In the first part we describe the specificity of the analysed magazines. In the second part we try to analyze some examples to check if this section is realized in the same way in French and in Polish press. The analysis focuses on the following aspects: qualities of comments or of letters, text structure, aims of the readers, specificity of different magazines.

The repertoire of forms of address can be considered as one of the determinants of the discourse genre, which makes it possible to capture its evolution and cultural variations. From such comparative, intra- and intercultural perspective, adopting an interactive approach in the analysis of political discourse, we will look at the practice of addressing one another in the French and Polish politicalmedia discourse. While in both languages the linguistic norm recommends the use of the polite forms of address in official situations, the cases of the use of the familiar pronoun tu / ty in media interactions between politicians are not rare at all. Whether it is an informal talk of politicians caught by the media, a television pre-election debate, or a meeting of the heads of state, addressing the other person by the familiar forms is a manifestation of a deliberate blurring of the boundaries between the front-stage and backstage in political discourse in order to create the impression of intimacy and
equality between the interlocutors.

The article concerns a functional description of Polish nominal vocative forms and their equivalents in French. Due to typological differences, it is difficult to precisely indicate the French equivalents of Polish vocative forms. The most suitable in this respect are ‒ however characterized by functional criteria — nominal forms/terms of address (French terme d’adresse or forme nominale d’adresse). The basic function of the Polish nominal vocative forms and their French counterparts is addressing a listener directly as well as appealing to the addressee of an utterance (address function): determining to whom (or, alternatively, to what) an utterance is addressed. This function is accompanied by the intention to establish direct contact with the addressee. Vocative phrases with such an invariant function — the so-called proper appeals — serve the phatic function of language. Modification of the invariant function occurs in the case of the so-called conventional appeals, well-established polite forms used primarily to signal social relations between interlocutors, as well as conventionalised emotional relations. They are connected only with certain types of utterances: they are used as letter/email salutations, opening formulas for speeches and toasts, and as interludes in longer speeches. A significant complement to the functional invariant occurs in the case of the so-called predicative appeals. The vocative form then carries additional generic content, thus becoming an expressively marked declarative utterance, that characterises an addressee and is a carrier of emotions and evaluation on the part of a sender. In practice, it is extremely difficult to unambiguously define the functional character of vocative phrases, while analysing only their form.

The aim of the article is to examine the functioning of Italian prepositions di and da and the French preposition de. Given their common Latin origin, it can be noted that some of the uses of the French preposition de are divided between at least two Italian prepositions. The author of the article briefly presents the state of the research in this field and then proposes a reflection in the context of cognitive linguistics. The functioning of the prepositions in question is presented in relation to the
language image of the world, which is formed at the level of collective experience, in relation to both conceptual and linguistic levels, where the predication is determined (semantic invariant, usage preferences). It also refers to the discursive level, where the linguistic choices of the speakers are made.

Agentives still do not dispose of the full paradigm of feminine forms. Today, the tendency to reintroduce the principle of a symmetrical linguistic use in this lexical repertory is quite strong. The discussion of some theoretical issues concerning the grammar and use of feminine agentives is followed by a preliminary analysis of different ways in which the information about the sex of a referent can be encoded on morphological, morphosyntactic, lexical and pragmatic level in two inflected languages, i.e. Italian and Polish. The contrastive perspective has allowed us to grasp some linguistic aspects often ignored in the analyses of the phenomenon in only one language.

The research object of the present paper is the language of physiotherapy, analyzed on the basis of records of an oral communication between specialists in movement rehabilitation and patients, and the corpus of articles of informative character, yet not on specialist but on popular science level, written by trained physiotherapists and addressed to non-expert readers seeking advice on the treatment of diseases and dysfunctions of the spinal column. The language of physiotherapists, who are officially representatives of the health system, relies heavily on the language of medicine, but its specificity is also due to its strong links with sport, biomechanics, healthcare, fitness industry, and social psychology, as well as to the character of the interaction between physiotherapists and patients. The conducted analysis enabled to identify typical lexical and morphosyntactic features of the language of physiotherapy. The discussed subject is in line with the research on effective communication between the patient and health providers which is essential for the delivery of high-quality medical care.

The paper examines an alternative question as a special type of an interrogative sentence. The alternative question is considered as an integral syntactic unit with a number of specific features. The main goal is to determine the place of the alternative question in the syntactic system of the French language, and also to analyze various structural and semantic models of this syntactic unit.

This paper is an attempt to present different ways of conceptualizing the past in languages: Polish, Italian and English, based on the analysis of the role of the verbal aspect in the creation of the linguistic picture of the past actions in these three languages. However, the notion of verbal aspect appears in the grammars of all three analyzed languages, the same contexts are not always represented linguistically by the same verb form regarding the aspect. In this work we try to find the differences in conceiving the past seen from different perspectives, thus creating different pictures of the world.

This study seeks to approach the problem of disambiguation of adjectives in the context of translation. On the basis of the French adjective austère analyzed as a case of study, the author demonstrates that adjectives can have a few equivalents in the Polish language. Such multiple interpretations caused by polysemy can be a problem for the description of adjectives in lexicographical publications, as well as for translation. Correspondences between adjectives are rarely bi-univocal in two languages and this study gives some insights on the possibilities of using this terms in both languages. Differences between senses are often highly subtle and contextually determined, so the author makes use of the theory of classes of objects. This kind of complex description allows to select the correct equivalent in another language and to make explicit the relations of equivalence between two languages.

In this article we compared the introductory verbs of feelings in French (sentir, ressentir, éprouver) and in German ( fühlen, empfinden, (ver)spüren) across the time in order to bring to light the affinities between these verbs. To this end, we measured the principal collocations of these verbs and determined for each verb the most salient ones. This allowed us to determine affinities between French and German verbs according to the time. We also noticed the kind of feelings, which are more connected to feeling auxiliary verbs, notably pain, joy and pleasure, whereas emotion words such as anger and fear are less present.

In this paper, a contrastive analysis of a certain number of intensifiers belonging to the conceptual domain //FOLIE// (//MADNESS//) in French and in Polish is carried out. Basing on a study of corpora, the author ascertains their degree of equivalence on different levels (conceptual, semantic, morphological-syntactical, that of frequency).

It is well known that the analytic form ir a + infinitive is gradually replacing the synthetic forms cantará and cantaría, whose role is becoming more and more limited to their modal value. The replacement of the synthetic forms by the analytic one can be classified as a nuclear change, whereas other temporal and modal forms of ir a + infinitive such as va a + haber + participle / iba a + haber + participle) and irá a + infinitive / iría a + infinitive may be considered related changes. The aim of this article is to comment on the usage of irá a + infinitive and iría a + infinitive in contemporary peninsular Spanish. Based on the CREA corpus the author focuses not only on their meaning, but also draws attention to the frequency of their usage and types of sentences in which they usually appear.

The aim of the research presented in the article is to determinate the cause of the coexistence of the three names of the bile / gall in Spanish and their semantic evolution through the centuries. The study is an attempt to explain this lexical abundance by invoking the similar richness in Latin.

This study will examine the role of morpho-syntactic structures in the creation of metaphor from a contrastive point of view and in relation to Romance and Germanic languages. Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, the analysis suggests that morpho-syntax, as a part of the linguistic component largely neglected in cognitive research concerning metaphor creation, plays an important role in literary innovations. This appears to be the case in the formation of composite adjectives. In line with the impact of physiological and sensory conceptualization proposed by Cognitive Metaphor Theory, it seems that morphologies related to the Romance and Germanic languages also contribute to the creation of a literary style arising from the morphology concerned. Stylistic effects thereby appear to vary between these two language groups. Additional constraints may arise within one language group, however, due to semantic features in morphemic order and collocations.

Observations collected in this paper result from our research on predicate nominatives in French and Polish. We focus on: 1) definition of the concept of predication in French versus Polish language linguistic tradition, 2) methodological issues concerning data acquisition and description procedures; traditional versus computer-assisted methods, 3) evaluation of reference corpora used for acquisition of predicative nouns in both concerned languages, 4) format of lexicographical descriptions of predicative expressions.