Narzędnik afirmacji w wybranych językach słowiańskich
Instrumental of affirmation in selected Slavic languages

Summary/Abstract: In the present article I argue that apart from the genitive of negation, Slavic also makes use of the instrumental of affirmation – but its recogni¬tion requires a more sophisticated, function-oriented analytic model, firmly grounded in the real linguistic usage and sensitive to semantic condition¬ing – such as cognitive semantics. The discussion offered seems to suggest that the Slavic instrumental is an inherently affirmative case, as opposed to genitive which has specialized in expressing partition, disjunction and nega-tion, e.g. compare Pol. ciasto z orzechami/ Srb. kolač sa orasima ‘a cake with nuts INSTR’ vs. Pol. ciasto bez orzechów/ Srb. kolač bez oraha ‘a cake without nuts GEN’. Furthermore, because of its semantic properties, the instrumental case is attracted by positive contexts and acts as an intensifier of affirmation. Slavic instrumentals can be classified, on the basis of the positive meanings they imply, as instrumentals of completeness, instrumentals of conjunction and instrumentals of existence. The proposed semantic classification becomes more refined when image-schemas of CONTAINER, PATH, SURFACE and conceptual metaphors related to the physical relation of COVERAGE are in¬cluded in the model.

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