Czapiga, Artur

English

University Scientific Journals (Univ. of Gdansk)

Beyond Philology No. 22/4, 2025 ISSN 1732-1220, eISSN 2451-1498  https://doi.org/10.26881/bp.2025.4.14   The phenomenon of parcelling  in contemporary Russian and Polish:  A review of the monograph  Zjawisko parcelacji we współczesnym języku  rosyjskim i polskim by Anna Stasienko  ARTUR CZAPIGA   Received 24.10.2025, accepted 28.11.2025.   1.  Introduction   At the end of 2024, Anna Stasienko published a monograph de-voted to the phenomenon of parcelling in Russian and Polish.1 This book addresses a significant gap in the existing scholarly literature, as the topic receives minimal attention in Polish lin-guistics and is not widely studied by Russian researchers (Ko-morowska 2001: 9). In its four main chapters, the book presents a comprehensive theoretical framework and offers syntactic and pragmalinguistic analyses of the phenomenon.  2.  Parcellation in Russian linguistics  First, the explication of parcellation is presented from the point of view of Russian linguistics, with a rich bibliography being consulted and analyzed in the search for a current definition  1 Stasienko, Anna (2024). Zjawisko parcelacji we współczesnym języku ro-syjskim i polskim. Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego. 240 pages. ISBN 978-83-8277-180-0. 300                                                                          Beyond Philology 22/4  mainly as the stylistic notion (Dobrycheva 2012, Petrenko 2007). The phenomenon was initially attributed to the features of spoken language, mainly due to the unambiguous role of the full stop in separating subsequent sentences or was described from the point of view of stylistics (Vinogradov 1981). In the mid-dle of the 20th century, such statements were interpreted in  a broad category of detachments (Skovorodnikov 1978). At the end of the 1960s, the concept of parcelling as a unit belonging to the functional and communication plan (Beloshapkova 1967), present in written texts (Maksimov 2011) began to crys-tallize, until it reached a generally accepted definition: the sep-aration of an utterance into any number of constituent parts, between which analogous relations and forms of connection take place, as in the corresponding non-parcelled construction (Babaytseva 2000). Establishing such an interpretation did not end the discussion on the nature of parcellation. Some re-searchers consider it to be a phenomenon characteristic only of spoken, others – only of written language (Vaulina 2003). The problem of interpreting parcellation as an example of detach-ments returned in contemporary Russian linguistic considera-tions (Vaulina 2003).  3.  Parcellation in Polish linguistics  The next subchapter is more complex, as the author analyzes the state of Polish terminology in this field. It turns out that parcelling does not appear in Polish encyclopaedic dictionaries (Polański 1993, Urbańczyk and Kucała 1978), but it is present in bilingual lexicography, e.g. in the Russian-Polish dictionary of linguistic terms (Alekseenko 2003) and in the works of lin-guists referring to Russian literature on the subject (Angełowa 1985, Komorowska 1995). The phenomenon itself has been con-sidered in various ways – from linguistic errors (Saloni 1971, Pisarkowa 1975, Pospiszylowa 1973), through deviation from the norm or a feature of an author’s peculiar style (Angełowa 1985: 59), incomplete sentence equivalents (Musiołek 1978), to  Reviews                                                                                                  301  a deliberate procedure aimed at emphasizing the importance of the extracted element in postposition (Łuczyński 1999). Parcel-lation is used to strengthen the emotional character of a state-ment, therefore it also appears in works devoted to structures expressing emotions, but under the name of separation (Grze-siuk 1995). In the interpretation of a sentence as a bilateral (grammatical-referential) unit, there is room for fitting parcella-tion as a coherent element of the system, because in this ap-proach the textual realization of a sentence is not always a sin-gle utterance (Wiśniewski 1994). As far the phenomenon is re-ferred to under numerous terms that concentrate on its various aspects, the need to express it with one clear and explicit name is stated by the author with the suggestion to choose parcelacja as pertaining to the labels in other languages (like Russian парцелляция [parcellâciâ] or English parcellation).  4.  Analytical chapters of the monograph  The following two chapters unveil the nature of parcellation in simple (Chapter 2) and compound sentences (Chapter 3), intro-ducing the reader to nuances of syntactic analysis and revealing the complexity of the phenomenon. The factual material for the study was excerpted from literary works, approximately 7000 pages per language. Only original texts were analyzed to avoid any influence the translation processes could have on the out-put wording; thus, both languages are treated equally, and nei-ther has the status of the source language. As the introduction to the study the author’s model of inter-preting the material is proposed. The most important distinctive features of utterances with parcellation include:  (a) the parcellator – a base part and a dependent part separated by a full stop (or another punctuation mark ending a sen-tence), (b) the postposition of the parcellator, 302                                                                          Beyond Philology 22/4  (c) the possibility of replacing a parcelled construction with  a version without parcelling which is semantically equivalent, but devoid of expressiveness.  The first empirical chapter carries the analysis of sentences with parcelling occurring in individual clauses of a simple sentence. The material is divided into three groups: (a) with a modifier ex-cerpted from the main part and included into the second as  a parcellator; (b) with a part of the parent clause repeated in the parcellator; (c) with a modifier from the main part repeated for several times in the series of parcelling phrases. In the material gathered for the study, if the elements form a more complex structure, various semantic relations are observed between the components, namely: inclusion, junction, disjunction, opposi-tion, simultaneity, succession, result, enumeration, generaliza-tion and gradation. It is also possible for the relations to coexist in one structure. The second substantive chapter discusses the division of compound coordinate and subordinate sentences. The Author divided the material due to the type of components of these  sentences separated as the parcellator. The relationship be-tween the main clause and the parcelled clause is determined by the conjunctions in the initial part of the parcellator. Junc-tion and inclusion relations are signalled by the indicators  i [и] / i  ‘and’, opposition – no [но] / ale ‘but’, a /a ‘while’, dis-junction – ili [или] / albo, lub ‘or’, result (only in the Polish-lan-guage material) – a, więc ‘therefore’. Chapter 4 examines the semantic and pragmatic determi-nants of parcelling in Russian and Polish, concentrating on functional aspects of the phenomenon and focusing on its lead-ing pragmatic functions: clarification, detailing, broadening, generalisation, highlighting, strengthening, intensification, and correcting the utterances.     Reviews                                                                                                  303  5.  A final word   The monograph concludes by summarising findings, comparing Russian and Polish examples of parcellation, and suggesting proposals for further research in the area. In the case of Russian linguistics, it offers a critical review of existing theoretical foun-dations, whereas in Polish, it provides a much-needed explana-tion, filling gaps in terminology. The problem of parcellation is comprehensively presented with detailed analysis of the col-lected data. The monograph is a valuable contribution to the field of linguistics.   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The phenomenon of parcelling in contemporary Russian and Polish: A review of the monograph Zjawisko parcelacji we współczesnym języku rosyjskim i polskim by Anna Stasienko

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The phenomenon of parcelling in contemporary Russian and Polish: A review of the monograph Zjawisko parcelacji we współczesnym języku rosyjskim i polskim by Anna Stasienko

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