Surely There Must Exist a Polish Equivalent: On the Inadequacy of Dictionary Explications

Elżbieta Tabakowska
Jagiellonian University, Kraków
Abstract

The paper is a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the requirements that dictionaries should meet in order to satisfy the needs of language learners and translators. The shortcomings of some standard dictionaries are discussed in reference to one particular item: the modal qualifier surely and its Polish equivalents. The latter were compared with actual choices made by a group of advanced Polish learners of English, asked to translate five explanatory sentences taken from English—English dictionaries. Discrepancies between dictionary equivalents and translation replacements clearly suggest that apart from "prototypical" examples of usage, dictionary entries should also contain potential discourse functions of sample sentences.

Table of contents

The present paper is a contribution towards an ongoing discussion concerning requirements that bilingual dictionaries should meet in order to satisfy [ p. 200 ]the needs of translators or language learners.

Full-text access is restricted to subscribers. Log in to obtain additional credentials. For subscription information see Subscription & Price. Direct PDF access to this article can be purchased through our e-platform.

References

Antas, Jolanta and Elżbieta Fajfer
1985 “O szczególnym funkcjonowaniu modulantów skladnikowych w przekazach telewizyjnych”. Rokoszawa and Twardzik 1985 . 117–127.Google Scholar
Boers, Frank
1987 Behind, Beyond, Under, Underneath, Beneath, Below: A Descriptive and Explanatory Study of Spatial and Non-spatial Senses. Antwerp: Universiteit Antwerpen. [Antwerp Papers in Linguistics, 53]Google Scholar
Grochowski, Marek
1986 Polskie partykuly: Skladnia, semantyka, leksykografia. Wroclaw: Ossolineum.Google Scholar
Grzegorczykowa, Renata
1985 “O funkcji impresywnej zdań Stwierdzających”. Rokoszowa and Twardzik 1985 . 73–78.Google Scholar
Halliday, M.A.K.
1985 An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Honowska, Maria
1984 “Prawdopodobnie. (Przyczynek do teorii aktu mowy)”. Polonica 10. 121–131.Google Scholar
Jodlowski, Stanislaw
1976 Podstawy polskiej skladni. Warszawa: PWN.Google Scholar
Karttunen, Lauri
1972 “Possible and Must”. John P. Kimball, ed. Syntax and Semantics, 1. New York: Seminar Press 1972 1–20.Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey and Jan Svartvik
1975 A Communicative Grammar of English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Mayenowa, Renata
1983 “Próba eksplikacji wyrazu przecież ”. Pamietnik Literacki 74:2. 175–182.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik
1972 A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rokoszowa, Jolanta and W. Twardzik
eds. 1985 Nowo-mowa. Materialy z sesji naukowej poświęconej problemom wspólczesnego języka polskiego odbytej na Uniwersytecie Jagiellońskim w dniach 16 i 17 stycznia 1981. London: Polonia.Google Scholar
Tabakowska, Elżbieta
1989 “Lexical Markers of Subjective Modality and Equivalence in Translation”. Multilingua 8:1. 21–36.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna and P. Wierzbicki
1970 Praktyczna stylistyka. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna.Google Scholar