A new approach to the semantics and syntax of intentionality modifiers, and what difference it makes (in linguistics and not only)

Izabela Duraj-Nowosielska

The lecture will be devoted to adverbial exponents of (un)intentionality of actions, such as the Polish celowo and its English (near) counterparts purposefully / on purpose, niechcący and inadvertently, umyślnie (with its expressive variant naumyślnie) and intentionally, nieumyślnie − unintentionally, (nie)rozmyślnie – (un)deliberately, etc. In the classifications of adverbs, they are typically viewed as so called subject-oriented expressions, close to mental state adverbs or even included in this class. Contrary to that, my goal is to present the specificity of such lexemes and their distinctiveness against the mental state group. In particular, I would like to show how their essential semantic properties are reflected in basic syntactic structures comprising them, and how all this meets the overall communicative purpose of sentences conveying information about intentionality.

The core of my presentation is based on my book “Chcąc – nie chcąc? Intencjonalność działania w wyrażeniach języka polskiego” [Volens – nolens? Intentionality of action in the expressions of the Polish language] (Toruń 2021), yet I will use examples excerpted both from Polish and English corpora, in order to illustrate the broad scope of application of the proposed solutions.

The presented approach, based on the methods of structural semantics and referring to early pragmatic works on intentionality expressions (by John L. Austin), changes the perspective on this class of adverbs, compared to the views currently prevailing in linguistic literature. Also, I will explain what impact this may have on lexicographic practice, as well as other fields of humanities in which the use of intentionality exponents is important, including the philosophy of action and philosophy of law.

Izabela Duraj-Nowosielska’s book “Volens – nolens? Intentionality of action in the expressions of the Polish language” has won two of the most important Polish linguistic awards, namely, in 2022, the Award of the Linguistics Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences for outstanding scientific achievement in the field of linguistics, in the category of individual works, and in 2023, the Kazimierz Nitsch Award announced every 4 years in the field of linguistics, awarded by the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences.