Author-provided keywords as the basis of bibliographical description in the iSybislaw bibliographyA bibliographer primarily relies on the abstract and keywords provided by the author of the original article. However the author-provided abstract and keywords are rarely sufficient. The bibliographer’s task is to ascertain that they correspond to the content of the article itself, as well as to find the closest equivalents in the language of the bibliography, Polish in our case. Additional confounding factors in determining the keywords corresponding most accurately to the submission in question include terminological inconsistencies within the works by certain authors, terminological inconsistencies within each of the languages as well as possible inconsistencies due to different theoretical backgrounds. This article deals with all of these issues on the basis of two pairs of examples. The first is the Polish term frazeologizm ‘idiom, phrase’ and the Croatian term frazem ‘idiom, phrase’. The second pair is the Polish term dialekt ‘dialect’ and the Croatian terms dijalekt/narječje ‘dialect/vernacular’. The complication inherent in the work of the bibliographer is due to, inter alia, the fact that the bibliographer’s strategy in prepairing the bibliographic description should enable the user to achieve the best possible effectiveness and efficiency in his/her search. Słowa kluczowe podawane przez autora publikacji jako podstawa opisu bibliograficznego w iSybislawieStreszczenie/abstrakt i słowa kluczowe podane przez autora w oryginalnym artykule są podstawą opracowania bibliograficznego, nie stanowią jednak wystarczającego źródła pracy bibliografa. Jego zadaniem jest przede wszystkim sprawdzenie, czy streszczenie/abstrakt i słowa kluczowe odpowiadają treści samego artykułu. Kolejne zadanie polega na odnalezieniu w języku bibliografii (w naszym przypadku jest to język polski) najbliższych ekwiwalentów słów kluczowych. Czynniki utrudniające dobór odpowiednich słów kluczowych z istniejącej bazy to brak ujednolicenia  terminologicznego w pracach niektórych autorów, zróżnicowanie terminologiczne między językami, a także różnice terminologiczne związane z różnymi teoriami lingwistycznymi. W niniejszym artykule rozpatrywane są wszystkie te problemy na podstawie dwu przykładów. Pierwszy z nich stanowi para: polski termin frazeologizm i chorwacki termin frazem. Drugi reprezentowany jest przez polski termin dialekt i chorwackie terminy dijalekt/narječje. Problemy w pracy bibliografa wiążą się z opracowywaniem przez niego opisu bibliograficznego, który powinien zapewnić użytkownikowi jak największą skuteczność wyszukiwania informacji.

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A contrastive view of adjectives in Croatian, Polish and English: subjectification as a local phenomenonA study of English adjectives (Athanasiadou 2006) suggested that subjectification (defined as the degree to which the conceptualizer plays a role in construing the objective scene; Langacker 2000) may be helpful in examining the various uses of adjectives in English. In this paper we attempt to do the same, comparing and contrasting three languages: English (as the point of reference), and Croatian and Polish. Croatian and Polish were selected because they allow relatively free combinations, with the caveat that Polish uses postposition for classifying senses. We examine whether subjectification may be taken as the organizing principle behind the prenominal, postnominal and predicative positions found in the three languages, i.e. whether the role of subjectification is global – working across constructions, or local – working within a construction. Examples from three languages showed that although subjectification does play a role in the various positions, it may not be taken as the organizing principle behind the differences. We argue that this is due to the fact that subjectification is a local phenomenon which works within a single construction, which is delimited formally and functionally. This is corroborated by other subjectified constructions. We believe that this is due to the gradual nature of subjectification, which requires recoverable links to previous stages.

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Forgetting synonyms: on the “jokerization” of everyday languageThe democratization of social relations can bring about linguistic liberalization, where the effectiveness and speed of transmitting information are of utmost importance. Wherever possible, information is presented in a condensed form, as an icon or a gesture. When speaking, we increasingly rely on a limited vocabulary, using very polysemous and broad terms. Such terms undergo jokerization – they begin functioning as wild cards in a card game, being able to represent any other cards depending on the current needs.In addition to internationalisms, which appear as jokers as a matter of course (e.g. Polish super ‘great’ and ekstra ‘great’), native words may also be used as jokers. In this case, in addition to their core meaning, they develop a new joker meaning signaled by new formal features, such as loss of inflections (cf. Croatian mrak lit. ‘dark’, joker ‘great’; guba lit. ‘leprosy’, joker ‘great’). When used in this way, they may form new derivational chains, becoming, in a way, less universal and resisting analytic tendencies. By the same token, derivational morphemes may also acquire joker meanings (e.g. the Croatian naj-).Jokerization, which is based on replacing a synonym chain with a single all-encompassing word, does not prevent communication, but does impoverish it. It is an intermediate stage between verbal and non-verbal communication. This process, common in spoken language, is examined, and illustrations are drawn from computer blogs and forums.