The author states that the language functions in the service to the thought; it organizes the course of our thought and enables transfer of information. To attain this purpose, it has two mechanisms at its disposal: 1. lexicalisation, which enables us to give form to the results of our conceptualisation of the world, and 2. grammaticalization, which ensures that the information most important to the successful course of the linguistic communication gets regular transparent surface categorial markers (= markers of the so‑called grammatical categories). She discusses parallels and differences in the functioning of these two mechanisms in Polish and in Macedonian.

The author supports the thesis that the semantic derivation presents the basic mechanism enriching our lexical resources.

The author discusses the importance of Wiesław Boryś' etymological dictionary of the Polish language for research on the semantic derivation in Polish and Macedonian conducted at the Research Center of Areal Linguistics at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Skopje.