Dr Maciej JASKOT and Dr Wojciech SOSNOWSKI, language professors at the College of Europe in Natolin, have recently published the Dictionary of Active Polish and Ukrainian Phraseology, co-authored with Dr Roman TYMOSHUK and Dr Yurii GANOSHENKO.
The Dictionary of Active Polish and Ukrainian Phraseology [Leksykon aktywnej frazeologii polskiej i ukraińskiej] is the first publication of its kind in the history of Polish and Ukrainian lexicography. It consists of equivalent phrasal units in Polish and Ukrainian. The innovative aspect of the lexicon is that it uses a semantic metalanguage to establish equivalent units. The authors developed a new method of searching for equivalent units which uses the meaning — not the form — as the starting point.
This method enables the identification of equivalent units in both languages. Moreover, it enables the identification of units that do not have equivalents. The units which lack equivalents are usually deeply rooted in Poland’s or Ukraine’s historical and cultural context, and are thus defined as culturemes. Even though they lack equivalents, it was decided not to exclude them from the Leksykon’s structure, as they are actively used by the speakers of Polish and Ukrainian.