Czy Piłat był zainteresowany tym, "co to jest prawda?"

Abstrakt

As the point of departure for my analysis in this article, I propose Polish sentences

(1a)  A cóż jest prawda?
(1b)  Co jest prawda?
(1c)  Cóż jest prawda?
(1d)  Cóż to jest prawda?.

All of them are translation Greek phrase T… ™stin ¢l»qeia (Pilate’s question in John  18,38).  In order  to understand the  semantic  relationships between  their elements, and  according to original sentence, it is necessary to consider the meaning of the particles  -ż and a. The Polish emphatic modificator -ż in such contexts as above influences the  semantics of wh-questions: it demands a definite context; changes, or only modifies, the  intonational contour of sentences – when it is used, the tempo of the utterance is slower  than without  it,  and  sharpening  of  the  tone  is moving  from  the  pronoun  to  the  right  part of the question; it weakens the settling of truth datī quastionis, which sometimes (in connection with utterance intonation) causes the blockade of an answer position. In  particular situations such sentences as (1d) can express contempt (or similar emotions) for  the object of questioning. Next, the initial operator a is homonymic to the conjunction a, it joins an additional information or expresses the relation of excluding. It can announce  a reply in a dialogue, join references to the definite context, and sometimes a request  for expanding or explaining any fact or state of  things. Also a can be an indicator of  oppositional rights. In my opinion Pilate – truly involved in understanding Jesus’s rights  – asks about the meaning of truth, which is indicated in John’s metalanguage phrase T… ™stin _ and metalanguage use  the of nominative noun ¢l»qeia, also the main noncontrastive   stress  falls on  the  rhematic pronoun,  therefore we have  here  an  authentic  wh- question, not  a  speech act expressing Pilate’s contempt  for  truth. This  is why  the  Polish sentences (1a), (1c), (1d) are – in relation to the meaning of -ż and a – unfortunate.  Pilate was interested in what was the truth of Jesus.