Studia Językoznawcze

The occasion for writing this article was the 95th birthday of Professor Andrzej Otfinowski, which fell in December of last year. The purpose of this proposed text is to revisit the syntactic theory developed by the aforementioned linguist in the 1980s and to present it to younger generations of Polish language researchers. A. Otfinowski’s achievements were, and remain, little known in Polish linguistics. The proposal for the description of Polish syntax by a linguist from Bydgoszcz is situated in the trend of generative-transformative grammar, and its essence is the concept of two types of sentence structures: elementary (semantically one-predicate) and complex (semantically at least two-predicate). In connection with this distinction, the detailed issue of distinguishing functional and operational predicatives (constituting elementary structures) vs. causative predicatives (constituting complex structures) is important. A special place in A. Otfinowski’s description of Polish syntax is also occupied by analytical predicates: non-idiomatic ones, composed of a non-predicate element with a formal-modifying function and a predicate exponent, and idiomatic predicates (which are entirely exponents of semantic predicates). The scientist from Bydgoszcz also proposed his theory of operator verbs, which perfom as formal-modifying function in analytical predicates. Consequently, an important place in A. Otfinowski’s transformational theory is occupied by analytical transformations, which transform a sentence structure with a synthetic predicate into a sentence structure with an analytical predicate, and this in turn into a sentence structure with an analytical predicate with a higher degree of analyticity. As a result of A. Otfinowski’s scientific activity, the Bydgoszcz school of syntax was established.