O znaczeniu przymiotnika nieszczęsny we współczesnej polszczyźnie
On the meaning of the adjective nieszczęsny ‘luckless’ in contemporary polish

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to perform a semantic analysis of the expression nieszczęsny ‘luckless’, which functions at the non-denotational level of language description. As a metatextual adjective, it is different both from the old expression of the same shape, and from contemporary adjectives which are often wrongly equated with it semantically, e.g. pechowy ‘unlucky’, żałosny ‘pitiful’, niefortunny ‘unfortunate’. The paper contains a survey of dictionary definitions of both homonymous units (i.e. the old and the contemporary adjective nieszczęsny), a characterization of the collocation of the expression nieszczęsny, as well as of words that are semantically associated with it (including the adjective nieszczęśliwy ‘unhappy’). Moreover, the article discusses problems which directly affect the findings regarding the semantic specificity of nieszczęsny (the issue of the subject of predication, the question of reference). It concludes with a proposal of explication of the meaning of the analysed unit.

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