Professor Roman Dyboski as a linguist

The article is a brief overview of the contribution of Prof. Roman Dyboski (1883-1945), a founding father of English studies in Poland, to the description of English grammar. Although Prof. Dyboski’s interests focused mainly on English and American literature and culture, as well as on the history of Great Britain, he raised linguistic problems first in Literatura i język średniowiecznej Anglii (Literature and Language of Mediaeval England) and later in Podręcznik języka angielskiego do nauki samodzielnej i w szkole. Część I - Gramatyka (A Handbook of the English Language for Self-study and for School. Part I – Grammar). Even though the first grammar of English, authored by Julian Antonowicz, appeared in Poland as early as 1788, Dyboski’s handbook (published posthumously in 1946) was an important contribution to the field. Extremely comprehensive, it tackled general characteristics of the English language, the basics of English phonetics (with Dyboski’s own phonetic transcription based on Tytus Benni’s system devised in 1924) and a detailed description of major parts of speech in English. Written in a concise and clear way, rich in anecdotes, the handbook dealt with crucial issues of English grammar. Its appearance met the social needs of the time – the period of World War II marked a growing interest in learning English as a foreign language. The book undoubtedly helped to popularize English in the Polish society, in line with Dyboski’s prophetic claim about the future status of English as a lingua franca. It can only be deplored that the second part of Dyboski’s work was never published.