Toward a Narrative Grammar of Polish - PDF

The present book investigates the elements of narrative grammar in the collection of Stanisław Lem's science-fiction stories "Tales of Pirx the Pilot " – a closed literary corpus of contemporary Polish. The book presents an innovative and illuminating analysis of the most prominent grammatical means employed in order to structure narrative and to define specific textual phenomena associated with the anatomy of the story as it is perceived by the reader. The analysis is carried out through a series of interlocking studies of the repertoire of devices that contribute to the construction of a coherent, multilayered, artistically sophisticated, narrative text: among the mechanisms examined are tense, verbal aspect, sentence patterns, particles and conjunctions, coordination and subordination, and word order. The multidimensional discussion takes into account the interplay and counterpoint of the literary and linguistic elements and effects, to create a stimulating tableau of Lem's narrative art and of the workings of the Polish language.

Lea Sawicki – teaches general, Indo-European and Balto-Slavic Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of numerous studies on Polish and Lithuanian syntax, among them "Verb-Valency in Contemporary Polish", and “Neuter passive participle in Modern Lithuanian”.