Dignity and Women’s Rights in the Texts of John-Paul II: An Applying of Corpus Linguistics to the Editing of Bilingual Dictionaries

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of some syntagmas taken from a bilingual corpus of parallel texts. The methodology, which has been applied, combines the elements of distributive and transformational grammar with some components of cognitive semantics based on realistic metaphysics. In the first part of this article, it is presented the etymology of words (niewiasta, kobieta / femme) and discussed a microstructure of an entry taken from a monolingual dictionary. In this structure, the components of word lexical sense reflect the ontological structure. Analysing a microstructure of an entry taken from a bilingual dictionary, it is important to answer a question about the order of included equivalents. These Polish and French syntagmas with words which designate a woman in the texts of John-Paul II show dignity—an important woman’s value. They also present this dignity in the inherent relations with other components (such as vocation, role, rights, love) as well as the relations of other subjects to women. These predicates become a basis for nominal syntagmas and verbo-nominal collocations. Being well-ordered, according to the ontological criterion, they can be a proposition to edit a Polish-French bilingual dictionary.