Word-forming Creativity of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz in the Structural and Cognitive Approach
Word-forming Creativity of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz in the Structural and Cognitive Approach

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to review some selected lexical units appearing in Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz’s (henceforth also called Witkacy) letters to his wife. For the analysis of these lexemes, the methodological apparatus of traditional structural word-formation was used, enriched with tools taken from Ronald W. Langacker’s cognitive grammar (1987, 1995, 2008) and the findings of other researchers remaining in this trend. Thanks to the two-dimensional view, the description of neologisms and textual occasionalisms seems more complete, and Witkacy’s word-formation creativity can be viewed through the prism of new qualities – mental spaces and amalgams. The cognitive approach also allows for effective contextual decoding of meanings and brings closer the mechanisms of mental perception of the world by the conceptualizer.

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