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The author supports the thesis that prepositions are an integral part of noun phrases and as such function primarily as grammaticalised exponents of the semantic category of ’space’, and - secondarily - of the semantic categories of ‘source’ and ‘goal’ of an action.

The author presents her version of the semantic paradigm of case in Slavic and states that it is almost identical with the inventory of substantival word-formational categories.

The author discusses some social/ethnological characteristics of the Slavic South as opposed to the Slavic North: 1. the influence of the multicultural and multilingual environment on the direction, scope and pace of grammaticalization processes, 2. the character, phases and results of the first Slavic standardization with the church, and not the state, as the controlling power, 3. the influence of the absence of state administration based on the local language and local customs on the growth of local patriotism and the emergence of the so-called „little motherlands,“ 4. a late standardization of national languages and, in consequence, an accelerated development of the local variants of the „science of language“ and its reflection on all levels of education.

The author presents the thesis that complementary clauses and relative clauses are de facto noun phrases founded on the shifter-tandems of the type that, which..., that, who... Mutatis mutandis, constructions constituted with causal conjunctions are also often „syntactically nominalized“ with shifters built into the constitutive predicate, cf. Polish conjunctions as dlaTEGO, zaTEM, przezTO... , or French as pour que, parce que, quoique...

The author understands the “case” as a semantically motivated syntactic relation between the predicate and its implied argument. The semantic motivation of the relation means that the semantic role of the respective argument is coded in the semantic structure of the controlling predicate. Traditional adverbal cases such as Nominative, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Locative imply primarily arguments functioning as agent (N), addressee/beneficient (D), object (A), accompanying factor (I), location (L) - the above labels should be understood as generalized semantic roles. The set of concrete roles is open and it is impossible and unnecessary to compile a universal inventory of semantic roles.

The author argues in favor of the thesis that on the semantic level conjunctions and particles function as predicates, in other words, as constitutive members of propositions; they imply propositional, and only propositional, arguments and - in case of conjunctions - reflect the train of our thought, respectively provide information about relations between the events as perceived by the author of the text, and - in case of particles - reflect the speaker’s evaluation of corresponding events.

The paper is conceived as answer to the question why just the locative / adlative preposition na was chosen as grammatical marker for both dative and genitive case relationship in the Balkan Slavic languages. As key process which triggered all the subsequent changes the author sees generalization of the dative morphological form in the adnominal position.

We wszystkich pracach syntaktycznych Grickat w centrum uwagi autorki znajduje się składnia współczesnego języka serbskiego i historia składni tego języka, a raczej, dokładniej: semantyka i pragmatyka wybranych konstrukcji morfosyntaktycznych w historii i w dniu dzisiejszym języka serbskiego. Grickat wprawdzie nie posługuje się terminem ‘morfosyntaksa’, jednak regularnie bierze pod uwagę zmienność wykładników morfologicznych badanych konstrukcji i pragmatyczną motywację tej zmienności, m. in. tzw. „znaczenie leksykalne“ zaangażowanych w tych konstrukcjach leksemów. Charakterystyczny jest dla niej całościowy ogląd tekstu językowego na wszystkich poziomach jego struktury formalnej, co zresztą sama niejednokrotnie stwierdza expressis verbis.

The author finds that one of the most prominent features of the so-called Balkan Sprachbund is the extended system of grammaticalized modal distinctions both in the episthemic and deontic functional zone. She then focuses on two tendencies characteristic of the Balkan Sprachbund which are also present in the Serbian verbal system: (1) the differentiation of the exponents of the predicate of negation depending on its function and position in the discourse, and (2) the tendency to transform the synsemantic, most often modal, verbs into indeclinable particles.

The author states that a “biography” of a language presents de facto its capability to adapt to natural and/or man‑made changes in the environment of the community speaking the language in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Linguistica Copernicana is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Linguistica Copernicana is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Linguistica Copernicana is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Linguistica Copernicana is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Linguistica Copernicana is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Linguistica Copernicana is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author examines grammaticalization procedures in Slavic languages. Topics discussed include the ability of language to adapt to cultural changes through lexical borrowing and morphosyntactic pattern creation, the distinction between linguistic communication and grammaticalized information, and the grammaticalized definiteness observed in Macedonian and Bulgarian languages.

Copyright of Linguistica Copernicana is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author analyses a series of Polish sentences, including those utterances which grammatically do not belong to the basic structures of their respective sentences. Her goal is to prove that so-called sentential transform is not a separate type of grammatical structure, but any sentence and/or noun phrase structure that has been transformed in order to be incorporated into another sentence structure. The transformation is usually morphological in character, and applied to constitutive members of the respective sentence and/or noun phrase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues that the so-called category some of the grammaticalized segments of the corresponding semantic fields that are especially important for successful linguistic communication. She presents semantic categorical paradigms in Polish and in Macedonian, along with their formal correlates, i.e., categorical markers. She states that in the course of time, the old postpositional bound markers, suffixes and infixes are often eliminated, while the prepositional markers (prefixes, prepositions, verbal particles...) multiply. The Macedonian situation demonstrates that this type of evolution is accelerated in multilingual environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses some problems characteristic of the inventories and distribution of the operators of reference (Jakobsonians shifters) in Slavic languages. In the focus of her analysis is the problem of the so-called singularia tantum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author understands word-formation as a system of formal means for lexicalization, i.e. for creation of new lexemes and enriching the inventories of the lexical semantic categories. She suggests that in a grammar written after the formula "meaning > form" the thematic block 'word-formation' should be correlated with the semantic classification of predicates and conceived as an analysis of the lexical semantic categories with word-formational exponents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Juznoslovenski Filolog is the property of Serbian Academy of Sciences & Arts, Institute for the Serbian Language and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author argues that prepositions are an integral part of nominal phrases, and their graphic treatment as autonomous words is purely a lexicographic convention. They have maintained their primary meaning which is localization of material objects and events in space and time, and they subsequently evolved to also express localization in the social world and in the mental world. In a grammatical description of a language they should be discussed together with the semantic and formal structure of nominal phrases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Juznoslovenski Filolog is the property of Serbian Academy of Sciences & Arts, Institute for the Serbian Language and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author underlines the importance of the Macedonian language for the research of spontaneous linguistic evolution in the multiethnic and multilingual territories with the language of the administration foreign to the local linguistic communities. She analyzes both causes and results of the Macedonian processes of grammaticalization at the level of the noun phrase and at the sentential level and states that they concern information most important for successful communication and that they all lead to the transfer of the categorical formants from postposition to anteposition and - most often - from the morphological to the syntactic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on some of the more serious issues faced by the Macedonian language. One of them, is certainly the lack of a serious scholarly Macedonian grammar that shall be up-to-date with the development of the language which, like all other languages, is a complex adaptive system. Consequently, there is a lack of a historical grammar and modern language grammar. Another serious issue identified is the unfinished work on the Macedonian dialect dictionary and, in general, the inadequate care for dialectology. In the first part of the paper, we highlight the link between the need for greater linguistic research and the fact that this volume of the journal Contributions is dedicated to the marking of the 80th birthday of academician Bojan Šoptrajanov, our "honorary linguist". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the importance of Wiesław Boryś' etymological dictionary of the Polish language for research on the semantic derivation in Polish and Macedonian conducted at the Research Center of Areal Linguistics at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Skopje. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Linguistica Copernicana is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author elaborates the thesis that pronouns, as a "pars orationis", function as a universal system of reference in their respective linguistic code. She gives a short review of three pronominal subsystems in Polish from the point of view of their referential function: (a) definite pronouns, i.e. the basic means of referential identification; including personal, possessive and demonstrative pronouns, (b) indefinite pronouns, and (c) relative-interrogative pronouns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the relationship between the period in which a language was standardized and the morphosyntactic structure of its linguistic code, particularly factors that influenced the evolution of Macedonian dialects. Topics discussed centered on means of conveying information from semantic fields in multilingual communities including definiteness, modality and the speaker's line of reasoning.

In the word class of conjunctions, the paper discerns: (a) exponents of associative predicates, i.e. predicates which connect/link events/propositions by way of a simple association, (b) exponents of temporal links between events, and (c) exponents of causal links between events. The author discusses certain special uses of Polish associative predicates formalized as conjunctions, and concludes that they are also characteristic of the corresponding class of predicates in other languages. She emphasizes their domination in the oral communication and comments on their ability to appear in the secondary function of quasi-particles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Linguistica Copernicana is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)