Stanulewicz, Danuta

English

University Scientific Journals (Univ. of Gdansk)

 Beyond Philology No. 14/1, 2017 ISSN 1732-1220, eISSN 2451-1498   Professor Roman Kalisz (1948–2017)                      We were deeply sorry to hear of the death of Professor Roman Kalisz, one of the fathers of cognitive linguistics in Poland, af-filiated with the University of Gdańsk for many years. He was  a very important figure for Beyond Philology – as a member of the Editorial Board (1999–2012) and the Board of Reviewers (2013–2017), as well as for the series Gdańsk Studies in Lan-guage – as a member of the Advisory Board (2014–2017).  *** 10                                                                               Beyond Philology 14/1 Roman Kalisz was born on 14 June 1948 in Suwałki (in the north-east of Poland). Having passed his matura (i.e. second-ary school-leaving examination), he decided to study English Philology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He wrote his M.A. thesis, entitled The Grammar of the Verb in Stein-beck’s “Cannery Row”, under the supervision of Professor Jacek Fisiak.  Roman Kalisz’s academic career was brilliant. In 1971–1973, he worked at the Institute of Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Poznań. In 1973, he was em-ployed in the newly-founded English Department (which later turned into the Institute of English) at the University of Gdańsk. He obtained the degree of Doctor of Humanities in 1974 and the degree of D. Litt. in linguistics in 1981, to be-come Full Professor in 1995. For many years, he served as the Director of the Institute of English. In most recent years, he was employed in Uczelnia Lingwistyczno-Techniczna (formerly Wyższa Szkoła Języków Obcych) in Świecie. Professor Kalisz was a genuinely friendly and competent  academic teacher whom students really liked and deeply ap-preciated. His works inspired many young scholars to investi-gate various aspects of language and language teaching/ learning. He supervised numerous Ph.D. dissertations whose authors include Olga Aleksandrowska, Łucja Biel, Magdalena Bielenia-Grajewska, Ewa Dąbrowska, Izabela Dixon, Ewelina Gutowska-Kozielska, Karolina Janczukowicz, Zofia Knutsen, Dorota Majewicz, Nataliya Malenko, Ewa Modrzejewska, Iwona Mokwa-Tarnowska, Hanna Muńko, Cezary Perkowski, Maciej Rataj, Joanna Redzimska, Olga Sokołowska, Piotr Stal-maszczyk, Danuta Stanulewicz, Xymena Synak, Jarosław Wi-liński, Ewa Wychorska, Mariusz Zborowski and Bronisława Zielonka. Professor Kalisz also reviewed numerous Ph.D. and D. Litt. dissertations, let alone other works.  Professor Roman Kalisz (1948-2017)                                                          11 Poster informing about the guest lecture delivered  by Professor Roman Kalisz at the University  of California in San Diego on 6 April 1998  12                                                                               Beyond Philology 14/1 Professor Kalisz participated in numerous conferences in Poland as well as in Germany, Spain, France, Great Britain and the Netherlands. It is worth emphasizing that he frequent-ly gave plenary lectures. He also organized conferences in Gdańsk, including the “Parasession on Passive, Reflexive, Im-personal and Related Constructions” in 2007.  Professor Kalisz received Fulbright Foundation scholarships in 1976/1977 and 1997/1998, and a grant from the United States Information Agency in 1986. He published five excellent books dealing with different lin-guistic topics approached from various perspectives:    The Syntax and Semantics of the Clauses of Result in Eng-lish and Polish (1978), based on his doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of Professor Kazimierz  Polański;  The Pragmatics, Semantics and Syntax of the English Sen-tences with Indicative That Complements and the Polish Sentences with Że Complements: A Contrastive Study (1981);   Pragmatyka językowa [Linguistic Pragmatics] (1993);   In Search of a Frame of Mind: An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence, co-authored by Woj-ciech Kubiński and Andrzej Buller (1996);  Językoznawstwo kognitywne w świetle językoznawstwa funkcjonalnego [Cognitive Linguistics in the Light of Functional Linguistics] (2001).   He also edited three volumes:    Papers in English Literature and Linguistics (1998);  Językoznawstwo kognitywne: Wybór tekstów [Cognitive Linguistics: A Selection of Papers], with Wojciech Ku-biński and Ewa Modrzejewska (1998);  De Lingua et Litteris: Studia in Honorem Casimiri Andreae Sroka, with Danuta Stanulewicz, Wilfried Kürschner and Cäcilia Klaus (2005). Professor Roman Kalisz (1948-2017)                                                          13 Besides, Professor Kalisz was the author of numerous papers and book chapters published in Poland and abroad, including, inter alia, Germany, Holland, Spain and Sweden.  As the titles of the publications mentioned above suggest, Professor Roman Kalisz concentrated on semantics and prag-matics. His scholarly interests included phonology and syntax as well. In his book Pragmatyka językowa [Linguistic Pragmatics], which was the first scholarly work in Polish concerning the subject, Roman Kalisz discussed the most important topics in pragmatics, such as speech acts, maxims of conversation, im-plicature, referentiality and presupposition.  Professor Kalisz was also one of the first linguists in Poland to develop the cognitive approach to language. He investigated various linguistic phenomena, including prepositions, as well as metaphors, metonymies and blends. Furthermore, he was one of the initiators of the series Języ-koznawstwo kognitywne [Cognitive Linguistics], issued by Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego (Publishing House of the University of Gdańsk). So far, three volumes have been published in this series. They contain papers written not only by Polish linguists, but also translations of works written by foreign researchers.  Roman Kalisz looked for similarities between different ap-proaches to language, including cognitive, generative and functional grammar. Collaborating with Wojciech Kubiński and Andrzej Buller, he analyzed connections between cognitive grammar and artificial intelligence. In more recent years, Professor Kalisz was preoccupied with developing his own theory of general meaning. He presented its main assumptions at the conference on relativity in language and culture held in Sandomierz in 2008 as well as in several published papers. The essence of the theory is reflected in the title of the paper he delivered in Sandomierz: “Gramatyka 14                                                                               Beyond Philology 14/1 prawdy, dobra i piękna” [The grammar of truth, good and beauty].1   ***  Professor Roman Kalisz passed away on 14 January 2017. He will be remembered not only for his pioneering works in lin-guistics and dedication to language study, but also for his warmth, kindness and sense of humour as well as for his culi-nary and musical talents (he played the guitar and the flageo-let). We will miss him.   Danuta Stanulewicz                                                             1 For a more detailed account of Professor Kalisz’s career and publica-tions, see Stanulewicz, Danuta (2010). “Profesor Roman Kalisz, pragmatyka  i kognitywizm”. In: Danuta Stanulewicz (ed.). Lingua Terra Cognita I: Księga Pamiątkowa ofiarowana Profesorowi Romanowi Kaliszowi. Gdańsk: Wydaw-nictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 23-36; Stanulewicz, Danuta, Tadeusz  Z. Wolański (2010). “Professor Roman Kalisz, pragmatics and cognitive lingu-istics”. In: Danuta Stanulewicz, Tadeusz Z. Wolański, Joanna Redzimska (eds.). Lingua Terra Cognita II: A Festschrift for Professor Roman Kalisz, Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 23-37.   

Professor Roman Kalisz (1948–2017)

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Professor Roman Kalisz (1948–2017)

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