The two experiments described in this article are focused on semantic priming in the context of lexical ambiguity and hierarchic model of mental lexicon. For both experiments, the verification method was a decision taken in the process of translating a sentence from Polish (L1) to English (L2). The decision was a result of solving dilemma of interpretation of the particular sentence that included homonym. The sentences used in the experiments were prepared in a manner that allowed them to be interpreted in at least two ways – each way being a direct result of interpretation of a ambiguous word meaning included in a sentence. In this study the secondary meanings of the homonyms were primed. In the first experiment the primes were presented in L2 – therefore this part of the study was concentrated on interlingual aspect of semantic priming. The second experiment was focused on intralingual aspect of semantic priming and the primes were presented in L1. The results of both experiments have shown the effect of semantic priming of ambiguous words’ meanings when translating from one language to another. Participants used significantly more often (when translating sentences from Polish to English) those English words the meaning of which was primed in the experimental groups during the first phase of the conducted experiments. We discuss the results in the context of the hierarchic model of mental lexicon in the case of bilingualism and we suggest possible paths for future research.

The main purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the approach to ambiguity presented in Tadeusz Pawłowski’s work Tworzenie pojęć w naukach humanistycznych („Creating concepts in the humanities”) (1986), to systematize and analyze this conception. Due to the fact that Pawłowski was a student of Tadeusz Kotarbiński and Janina Kotarbińska, and that he dealt with methodological issues concerning the language of science (and scientific philosophy), the background of my considerations is the tradition of the Lvov‑Warsaw School. In the article I also formulate some remarks on Pawłowski’s conception, as well as some other observations on ambiguity.

The aim of this article is to present the fantastic literature of J.-P. Bours, one of the least known representatives of the Belgian uncanny. His oeuvre is remarkably rich: Bours practices all the sub-genres of the fantastic and remains a master of the short form. In this article, I analyze the distinct characteristic of this fantastic literature: ambiguity. In order to produce this effect, the writer uses a vast array of techniques (like the unsaid and ellipsis), as shown in La Mort du juste.

The article considers information technology for the realization of human communication using residual human capabilities, obtained by organizing text entry using mobile and auxiliary devices. The components of the proposed technology are described in detail: the method for entering text information to realize the possibility of introducing a limited number of controls and the method of predicting words that are most often encountered after words already entered in the sentence. A generalized representation of the process of entering text is described with the aid of an ambiguous virtual keyboard and the representation of control signals for the selection of control elements. The approaches to finding the optimal distribution of the set of alphabet characters for different numbers of control signals are given. The method of word prediction is generalized and improved, the statistical language model with "back-off" is used, and the approach to the formation of the training corpus of the spoken Ukrainian language is proposed.

In this paper I respond to Elżbieta Mikiciuk’s polemic with my article: The Brothers Karamazov: Dostoevsky’s Tainted Hosanna (“Slavia Orientalis” 2017, nr 1; the polemic was published in “Slavia Orientalis” 2017, nr 2). I use this opportunity to look at my article anew and restate my interpretative approach to Dostoevsky’s last novel as well as the line of argumentation I had decided to adopt. The substance of my response relies heavily on the point evoked several times by E. Mikiciuk, concerning my “biased” selection of citations from the novel which generates a “one-dimensional”, “manipulated”, and “false” image of Christianity as a religion that approves of an “economic” idea of God, a God from whom one has to “buy” a right to salvation. Recalling narrations of starets Zosima on the problem of involuntary suffering and death, and meditating on an indefi nite, unpredictable or highly ambiguous nature of such characters as Dymitr and Alyosha Karamazov or Smerdyakov, I emphasize the radical openness and polyphonic nature of Dostoevsky's text which allows for manifold, even contradictory readings and understandings of the same fragments of his complex works. Further, I develop a key thesis that both theological/religious interpretations of Dostoevsky’s oeuvre, as supported by Elżbieta Mikiciuk, and philosophical/ existential ones, as advanced by me, are feasible and valuable as long as they remain anchored in a close reading and do not lay claims to representing the one and only valid approach to his literary universe. The paper ends with a conclusion in which I encourage a mutually inspirational dialogue (the agon, if you will) between these two exegetic strategies. Such a dialogue seems essential for a reinvigoration of Dostoevsky’s literary work, against which one should continuously measure himself in a constant, even painful at times, sense of insuffi ciency of his/her interpretative insight facing a paradoxical, axiologically ambivalent, and strictly polyphonic oeuvre.