On two Metatextual Units: ”zaś” and ”natomiast”

Abstract

The article presents two units of unclear grammatical classification, both derived from the pronoun phrases: zaś and natomiast. In the first part of the article the units are contrasted with units considered in lexicography as being semantically close: za to, z kolei, ale and a. The first one is equally dubious when it comes to its classification, the second belongs to the class of particles, the last two – to the class of conjunctions. Based on the analysis of the TR structure of sentences with the aforementioned units and their word order, together with observations on their ability to co-occur with other metatxtual units, it can be pointed out that zaś and natomiast cannot be seen neither as particles, nor as conjunctions (as identified in modern Polish linguistics). The second part of the article provides a more detailed observation on TR structure of sentences with zaś and natomiast in order to recognise their specificity.