CZŁOWIEK SIĘ RODZI NA PRACĘ, A PTAK NA LATANIE. SEMANTYCZNO-SKŁADNIOWE A KONTEKSTOWE WŁAŚCIWOŚCI LEKSEMU PRACOWAĆ
A man is born to labour and the bird to fl y. Semantic-syntactic vs contextual features of the lexeme pracować ‛to work’

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to semantic-syntactic analysis of the lexeme pracować ‛to work’. The author’s aim is to verify the hypothesis, suggested in the title, of the relationship between being human and the necessity of working, as well as to collect arguments to take a stance on the polysemy of the word pracować postulated in dictionaries. The analysis of the syntactic positions and the performed semantic tests allow to describe following components of the meaning of the examined verb: 1) there is somebody (a human being) who notices the purposefulness of his/her actions; 2) the actions include making changes to the object; 3) the changes are intentional and regarded as good, useful or desirable. All these components prove that one should link the work with the human being. A full answer to the question of the meaning of the verb pracować – according to the author – will become possible only after a contrastive analysis of the verb in question and the verb robić coś ‛to do something’. However, it is possible – on the basis of the analysis – to question the polysemy of the verb pracować suggested in dictionaries.

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