About absurd. Semantic considerations

Abstract

The present article aims at analysing the meaning of the Polish word absurd ‘absurd’. In my discussion, especially at the beginning, I refer to my previous observations concerning the meaning of the word nonsens ‘nonsense’. Further absurd ‘absurd’ is compared with another expression which is semantically synonymous, namely with the predicate dziwne‘strange / odd’. The compared units to nonsens, że_ ‘it is nonsense that_’ and to absurd, że_ ‘it is absurd that _’ differ from each other mainly in that the former refers to what somebody has said about something (it has a metalinguistic reference), whereas the latter to what has happened,  that  is  to events and the state of affairs  (it has  a situational  reference). These referential differences influence the semantic range of the analysed expressions. The main difference between the predicate absurd ‘absurd’ and dziwne ‘strange / odd’, however, is that the absurd requires the agent, which is not necessarily the case with astonishment:  compare  the  acceptable  sentence  To dziwne,  że  o  tej  porze  roku  pada śnieg / talerzyk przesunął się po stole ‘It is strange that it is snowing at this time of the year / that the plate has moved on the table’ with the unacceptable sentence *To absurd,że o tej porze roku pada śnieg / talerzyk przesunął się po stole ‘*It is absurd that it is snowing at this time of the year / that the plate has moved on the table’ (see examples (13) and (14)). Distinctive  semantic  features  of  the  eponymous  expression  are  contained  in  its definition (see (35)), being the outcome of the semantic interpretation presented in this paper.