Summary The Polish school of semantic syntax constitutes a distinct direction of scholarly research that emerged in the 1980 s, largely owing to the groundbreaking work Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego (“Grammar of Contemporary Polish,” 1984), in which S. Karolak elaborated the fundamental assumptions of a semantically grounded conception of syntax. Karolak’s framework draws, on the one hand, from the Polish tradition of semantic inquiry – particularly the Lwów–Warsaw School of logical positivism – and, on the other hand, engages with contemporary developments in semantic-syntactic research. The present study aims to demonstrate the value of the Polish school of semantic syntax in relation to major models of syntactic theory in contemporary linguistics, including categorial grammar, functional generative grammar (in the version proposed by S. Dik), lexical-functional grammar (as developed by J. Bresnan and collaborators), and Role and Reference Grammar (as formulated by W. A. Foley and R. D. van Valin). The paper examines those aspects of syntactic-semantic analysis that the Polish school has adopted from other theoretical frameworks, as well as those that constitute its original contributions. Furthermore, it presents key theoretical and heuristic proposals advanced by Polish scholars, emphasizing their potential applicability to syntactic studies of other languages.
Summary The study is dedicated to the reception of Rainer Maria Rilke’s work in the Slovak State (1939–1945). It uses André Lefevere’s translatological approach to highlight the manipulative nature of Slovak translations of Rilke. With the help of the category of patronage, it shows how Slovak translators Ladislav Hanus and Viliam Ries transcended the meta-patronage of the Slovak state and relativised its ideological monopoly by questioning clericalism as a component of state ideology. They did this by emphasising nationalistic poetics in their translations of the novel Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) and the prose poem Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (The Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke). Hanus relied on the sub-patronage of the cultural association Matica slovenská, whose representative Stanislav Mečiar, a supporter of National Socialism, was largely accommodating towards him; Ries acted under the external patronage of Nazi Germany and misinterpreted the Cornet for propaganda purposes.
Summary This paper examines the pragmatic strategies of protest slogans used during the Serbian student protests that erupted in November 2024 after the deadly collapse of the train station canopy in Novi Sad. Drawing from a manually compiled corpus of 150 protest posters and banners, the study applies a discourse-pragmatic approach, focusing on presuppositions, implicatures, and rhetorical devices. The analysis combines the DIMEAN framework with elements from protest discourse research in Belarus and Ukraine. It identifies a high density of pragmatic presuppositions and implicatures as central features of protest communication, which relies heavily on intertextual and intradiscursive references. The slogans are marked by a strategic violation of Gricean maxims, particularly the maxim of manner, to provoke cognitive engagement. Furthermore, the protest discourse is characterized by a notable degree of intellectualization and academization, evidenced by the frequent use of complex rhetorical structures and culturally coded allusions. The paper concludes that the Serbian student protest movement is shaped not by aggressive confrontation or carnivalistic subversion, but by a form of communication marked by juvenile self-irony, peaceful academization, and intellectual playfulness. Its language is witty and culturally sophisticated, drawing on a broad semiotic and historical reference space that both legitimizes the protest and consolidates a shared, educated identity.
