The text analyses the documentation of the periodic evaluation of academic teachers at 22 Polish universities with the faculties of Pedagogy, shows the conditions of this evaluation and characterises its procedure. The content analysis reveals what issues in the internal regulatory documents establish the periodic evaluation of academic teachers and its procedure, as well as the extent to which they are represented in these documents. In order to fully describe the regulations and to explore the differences among the universities in the area of teacher evaluation, the authors used a statistical analysis. The results show a wide variation of the elements that are included in the internal documents regulating the periodic evaluation of academic teachers. The authors refer to the contemporary press and media discussion on the condition of universities and the directions of their development. They interpret the findings referring also to the contemporary perception of a university as an enterprise as well as to strong bureaucracy at the universities and its adverse impact on their evaluation system.

The following analysis investigates selected properties of the language of the tweets used in the interaction with consumers on English and Polish brand profiles. The analysis examines the structure of tweets, word frequency, as well as the frequency of informal and non-standard language items, language mistakes, the use of emoticons and hashtags. The study contrasts the language used by English and Polish representatives and reveals a number of similarities and differences between the corpora. What the corpora share is a high frequency of conventional politeness acts and language structures reflecting a customer-oriented tone of the interaction. Differences are observed in the frequency and use of informal and non-standard structures, emoticons and hashtags, as well as in the structure and complexity of the tweets. The study indicates a lower formulaicity and a greater individualization of the interaction on the Polish profiles.

The review covers Ruselina Nicolova’s The Bulgarian Grammar. This is a revised version of Bǔlgarska gramatika. Morfologiia (Sofiia 2008) edited in English by Frank & Timme (Berlin 2017). This outstanding achievement is appraised highly by the review author. The review compares the new work with an earlier academic morphology of Bulgarian (Gramatika na sǔvremenniia bǔlgarski knižoven ezik, t. 2: Morfologiia, Sofiia 1983). It concludes that the Grammar of R. Nicolova makes important progress in semantically and functionally oriented type of Bulgarian linguistic description as well as that publication of this study translated to English is important because it provides a widened reception of the work.

The author states that there are in our vocabulary three, and only three, classes of semantic units: a) predicates, i.e. generic concepts – the result of our conceptualization of the world; they represent more than 90% of the vocabulary; b) operators of reference – a small, almost closed set bounding predicates to their concrete denotates; c) proper names, which are by defi nition referentially bound and are object of research of a specialized linguistic discipline. Thus, the main tasks of our grammar are (1) to defi ne and to describe the scope of the grammaticalization in the language in question and (2) to present the semantic classification of predicates, the description of their – bound and/or free – functioning in the text included.

The article presents reviews of the European Union regulation on reporting formalities for ships entering the EU ports. It also analyses IMO regulation concerning that matter. Finally, the author exposes the differences between both legal systems and weaknesses of the solutions adopted. In the second part of the article the author discusses the Polish way of the reporting formalities system’s implementation. On the basis of a legal analysis as well as practice of the maritime authorities in Poland, the author finds that the Polish regulations seem to be exemplary.

To calculate the transmission coefficient of ultrasonic waves through a multi-layered medium, a new approach is proposed by expanding it into Debye’s series. Using this formalism, the transmission coefficient can be put in the form of resonance terms series. From this point of view, the relative amplitude of the transmitted wave can be considered as an infinite summation of terms taking into account all possible reflections and refractions on each interface. Our model is then used to investigate interaction between the ultrasonic plane wave and the N-plane-layer structure.
Obviously, the resulting infinite summation has to be reduced to a finite one, according to some level of accuracy. The numerical estimation of the transmission coefficient using the exact expression (Eq. (1)) is then compared to the one of our method in the case of two or three plane-layer structure. The effect of the order of the finite summation on the calculated value of the transmission coefficient is, as well, studied. Finally, our proposed method may be used, with the decomposition into Gaussian beams of a pressure field created by a circular source, to draw a 3D image of the pressure field transmitted through a multilayered structure.

Formalization of a set of beliefs expressed in one language consists in translating them into sentences of another language. The characteristic property of a good formalization is that the target language is correctly chosen and the translations precisely reflect the meaning of the original sentences. In the paper a formalization of ontology of situations (given by Professor Bogusław Wolniewicz) is discussed. I argue that this is an example of a perfect solution of the problem.

The article examines the English version of some poems by the Russian writer Nina Iskrenko (1951– 1995), included in the collection The Right to Err (Washington 1995) and translated by the American poet John High. Considering High’s observations in the introduction of the work, I will analyze the translation process as an existential dialogue between two intersecting poetics, leading to the liberation of language from any ideological connotations.

Becoming more and more a multidisciplinary domain of study, the development of research in second language acquisition, and even more visibly in multilingualism, has moved away from its sole focus on cognitive aspects to social-affective dimensions. Consequently, research in these areas makes more extensive use of research methodology characteristic of social sciences. The focus on identity brings together issues of social context and the construction of one’s identity through negotiation of who we are, how we relate to the outside world and how we position ourselves in relation to others (Pavlenko 2001). Language is the main tool in this construction/ negotiation through the acquisition/learning and use of multiple languages. In relation to the development of one’s multilingual identity, the major distinction has to be made between acquiring a language in its natural context (the case of one’s mother tongue or immigration) and learning it in formal contexts. Block (2014) believes that the issue of identity can only be studied in a natural environment of language acquisition, and not in a formal instruction context. This article aims to confi rm or reject the above belief, based on evidence from various studies of bi- and multiple language users and how they perceive their identities and their relation to the languages in their possession. It includes a pilot study of trilingual language learners and their understanding of how the individual languages they know (L1, L2, L3) build their identities and the way they enrich, impoverish or challenge who they see themselves to have been by birth (Gabryś-Barker 2018). The issues discussed relate to external (other people, situations, contexts) and internal identity-building factors (individual affectivity, personality features).

This paper sets out to characterise and analyse logical atomism of Bertrand Russell. Main tenets of that theory are described by reference to Russell’s lecture Facts and Propositions (1918) and to other publications by that author. The essential claims of Russell’s position are discussed and confronted with tenets of ontology of situations developed by Bogusław Wolniewicz, a position inspired by logical atomism of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The author argues that several of Russell’s theses on logical atomism can be interpreted in the light of Wolniewicz’s ontology of situations. Finally, some minor concluding remarks are offered that can help to develop an ontology conceived in the spirit of the ontology of logical atomism. 366 Janusz Kaczmarek

Selected scientific contacts of Jacek Hawranek and Jan Zygmunt with Professor Bogusław Wolniewicz in the period from the end of the 1980s to the beginning of the 21st century are presented in this essay. They concerned the algebraic aspects of the ontology of situations and from one moment – one only question that was posed by Wolniewicz in his note A question about join-semilattices (Bulletin of the Section of Logic, 19/3, 1990, pp. 108–108), and resulted in the Hawranek & Zygmunt paper Wokół pewnego zagadnienia z dziedziny półkrat górnych z jednością (“Some comments on a question about semilattices with unit”) (Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis 1445, Logika 15 (1993), pp. 59–68) containing an answer to Wolniewicz’s question. The Hawranek & Zygmunt paper is reprinted below, and the essay might be also treated as a kind of an analytical and historical introduction to it. The story of contacts Wolniewicz – Hawranek & Zygmunt has been told with the help of the preserved correspondence between the three persons. In his letters Professor Wolniewicz appears as a passionate researcher, open to discussion, ready to share his research successes and difficulties with others.

The aim of the paper is to provide hints on how to read Acemoglu and Robinson’s institutional hypothesis. First, we recall the meaning of their inclusive and extractive institutions. Then, we classify and compare the concept to certain approaches present in development economics. Additionally, we outline the perspective of historical research of institutions, raising the approach of historical natural experiments and comparative methods. We claim in the paper that to understand Acemoglu and Robinson’s institutional hypothesis and their strong rejection of other hypotheses on economic development one has to turn back to the basic notion of institutions. We argue that the authors of Why Nations Fail are focused on considering formal institutions only, which impoverishes the research perspective presented in that book.

The national power industry is based primarily on its own energy mineral resources such as hard and brown coal. Approximately 80% of electrical energy production from these minerals gives us complete energy independence and the cost of its production from coal is the lowest in comparison to other sources. Poland has, for many decades had vast resources of these minerals, the experience of their extraction and processing, the scientific-design facilities and technical factories manufacturing machines and equipment for own needs, as well as for export. Nowadays coal is and should be an important source of electrical energy and heat for the next 25–50 years, because it is one of the most reliable and price acceptable energy sources. This policy may be disturbed over the coming decades due to the depletion of active resources of hard and brown coal. The conditions for new mines development as well as for all coal mining sector development in Poland are very complicated in terms of legislation, environment, economy and image. The authors propose a set of strategic changes in the formal conditions for acquiring mining licenses. The article gives a signal to institutions responsible for national security that without proposed changes implementation in the legal and formal process it, will probably not be possible to build next brown coal, hard coal, zinc and lead ore or other minerals new mines.

In this article I present the problem of identity of objects (that persist in time and space) and their identification (also in time and space, when these objects persist and change their location) indicated in the title of the paper. I therefore present an outline of P.F. Strawson’s proposal, but also a purely formal approach that can be found in formal sciences (logic and mathematics). In the final part I give some ontological solution to Strawson’s research. It is a solution based on formal considerations within the so-called ontologically oriented versions of modal and temporal logics, which I proposed in my book Indywidua. Idee. Pojęcia (2008).

Bogusław Wolniewicz, inspired by his formal ontology of situations, has put forward a question on semilattices with a unit (A question about joinsemilattices, Bulletin of the Section of Logic 19/3, 1990). The present paper is entirely devoted to this problem in the formulation given by Wolniewicz. First, the meaning of the question is analyzed and its lattice-theoretical and Boolean algebraic contents are exhibited. Second, set-theoretical and topological counterparts of the question are formulated and commented upon.