Kilka uwag o wpływie przycisku zdaniowego na interpretację przysłówków-modyfikatorów intencjonalności (na przykładzie niechcący, przypadkiem)

Abstract

In the article I consider the problem of sentence stress and its influence on the semantics of the adverbs modifying information on the intentionality of actions, i.e. expressions such as niechcący ‘unwillingly’ , nieświadomie ‘unconsciously’ , przypadkiem ‘accidentally’ , celowo ‘on purpose’, specjalnie ‘intentionally’ etc., with special attention paid to the two expressions from this class – niechcący and przypadkiem. I try to demonstrate how their interpretation may differ according to the position they take in the sentence structure. I assume that these units of language – as they are adverbs – belong primarily to the dictum of the sentence, which means that one should take the rhematic position as basic in the explication; all the differences that result from moving them to the thematic dictum should be then interpreted as secondary (as the effect of thematizing). Yet, there appears to be a special methodological problem in the interpretation of this type of expressions: it lies in the fact that the rhematic position within the sentence structure cannot be accepted as their neutral position, as it always points to a particular situational context and presupposes the operation of the so called explicit theme selection. For example, in the sentence Jan podarl gazete / niechcący ‘Jan tore the paper / unwillingly ’ the speaker says about the fact that Jan tore the paper that he did it unwillingly. In the article I try to show that the neutral position within the sentence dictum is the thematic position, as in the sentence (taken in isolation) Jan niechcący podarl gazete ‘Jan unwillingly tore the paper ’ (cf. Jan specjalnie podarl gazete ‘Jan intentionally tore the paper ’. vs: ? Jan specjalnie podarl gazete ‘ Jan intentionally tore the paper ’). What is more, although the thematic position triggers some “additional” senses as compared with the rhematic position, one cannot say that in the semantics of the expressions in question these are “extra senses” supplementing some other “basic senses”. Contrary to that, it appears that it is in this position (and not – as could be expected – in the rhematic position) that such adverbs demonstrate their most characteristic features (which could be specific of this class). In that case one could assume that the initial set of semantic features (in the sense of derivational order) is the set tested in the rhematic position, and yet representative for a given unit would be the set of features verified in the “secondary” position, i.e. thematic one. The issues touched upon in the article are further developed in the author’s monograph Nie przypadkiem o ‘niechcący’ and in the article O (tajemniczej) roli intencjonalnego dzialania w zdaniach z przyslowkiem ‘przypadkiem’.