O wdzięczności

Abstract

The first aim of the article is to present contemporary hypotheses on the origin of the notion of gratitude (wdzięczność) as well as on the Polish-Polish dictionary definitions of the notion in question. The second goal of the article is both to find the meaning components of the examined notion and to characterize and discuss its syntactic and semantic features. There is, in consequence of these procedures, a conclusive ‘paralocution’ of the notion of gratitude. The gratitude is a relation between X (experiencer) and Y (giver) that the experiencer knows the giver did or does something to the experiencer and as a result of the experiencer needs to do something to the giver in return (it could be even verbal thanks/gratitude or a smile).