Zur Problematik der semantischen und pragmatischen Äquivalenz von Partikeln am Beispiel des deutschen ja und des polnischen no

The article deals with the problem of the pragmatic equivalence between the German particle ja and the Polish particle no; in other words, with the correspondence as well as the divergence of the usage of the particles in the same sentential and situational context. The function and category of these particles as modal particles is considered with reference to the semantic equivalence, comprising the invariant meaning of these particles in their different syntactic functions. The analysis shows that the lack of pragmatic equivalence may result from the difference in the positions of these particles in the sentence and from the function of the position in both languages, which is related to the fact that Polish is a non-positional language in contrast to German.