‘Enslaved particles’. Functional expressions as tools in the semantics of primitives

Abstract

The article investigates the possible usage of the functional expressions as appropriate tools in the analysis of the semantic properties of selected verbs. The main aim of the article is to compare the linguistic units belonging to different parts of speech, but having the same, nontrivial, semantic components. ‘Enslaving’ of an expression is understood here as using it as an analytical tool for identifying semantic components of other linguistic units. Such tools used in this paper include the expressions: jakoby (‘purportedly’), podobno (‘reportedly’), rzekomo (‘allegedly’), według X-a (‘according to’), and as the objects undergoing the analysis the following verbs: twierdzić, że p (‘to claim’), stwierdzić, że p (‘to state’), utrzymywać, że p (‘to maintain’), uważać, że p (‘to think/consider’), myśleć, że p (‘to think’), and sądzić, że p (‘to suppose’).