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From Gdansk to Erlangen -
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Complete Freedom to Research
Ewa Dąbrowska still relishes the series of coincidences that sparked her interest in cognitive linguistics.
Dąbrowska holds the professorship for cognitive linguistics at FAU Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (University of Erlangen– Nuremberg). The chair was established in 2018 in conjunction with the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship she was awarded by the foundation. That coveted distinction – part of a larger project to attract leading researchers to universities in Germany – goes to just a few scholars a year.
Dąbrowska mostly grew up in communist Poland, in Gdańsk, but she also lived with her family in the United States for four years. As a schoolgirl in Baltimore, where her father worked for Polish Ocean Lines, she not only learned English but also “fell in love” with Spanish. Those early experiences ignited a passion for language that shaped the rest of her life.
For a Polish youngster, the experience offered a rare chance to see the West up close. Living in the US toward the end of the Cold War from 1975 to 1979, she was struck by both America’s wealth and its poverty. She was also exposed to the bizarre and sometimes hostile ideas her American peers had about life behind the Iron Curtain.
Returning to Poland at 16, Dąbrowska initially planned to study math or computer science at university. But when a friend suggested she enter an academic English language contest, Dąbrowska just happened to win first prize. That inspired her to enroll in English linguistics at the University of Gdańsk, where she began her studies in 1982.
The decisive coincidence came while she was an undergraduate. Glancing at a class schedule one day, she noticed a lecture for something called cognitive linguistics. It was slated to take place right after her class in second-year syntax in the same hall. Intrigued by a topic she had never heard of, she decided to stick around and listen.
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That lecture turned out to be a critique of Noam Chomsky’s theory of “universal grammar.” According to the concept, humans – regardless of what language they speak – are born with a genetic blueprint for grammar in their brains. This is what enables them to learn the language of their community. This allows them to acquire language as children. It was the early 1980s, and “UG” was dominant in many linguistics departments at the time. As Dąbrowska delved deeper into this school of thought, however, she found herself increasingly exasperated by the lack of supporting evidence.
“Traditional linguistics was dominated by these ‘great minds’ – usually men – having clever ideas, writing them down and developing theories,” she says. “But it wasn’t empirical. There was a lot of theorizing, but very little hypothesis testing.”
Dąbrowska was meanwhile also seeing her country transformed by the Solidarity movement but also by the period of martial law of the early 1980s. The end of 1989 brought the exciting, sometimes painful introduction of the free market. “When the market economy was introduced, everybody was enthusiastic,” she remembers. “But then came this bitter disappointment. Now we have goods in the shops, but we haven’t got the money to buy them. Isn’t that unfair?”
Frustrated by the relative isolation of Polish academia, Dąbrowska headed to the United Kingdom in 1993 to continue her studies. She earned her MPhil in Scotland the next year, completed her doctorate back in Gdańsk in 1995, and spent the next two decades at various British universities. While teaching at Northumbria University in 2014, she was invited to a conference on Chomskyan linguistics. She delivered a highly critical lecture: “What Exactly is Universal Grammar, and Has Anyone Seen It?” It caused an uproar, even before publication.
Ewa Dąbrowska still relishes the series of coincidences that sparked her interest in cognitive linguistics.
Dąbrowska holds the professorship for cognitive linguistics at FAU Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (University of Erlangen– Nuremberg). The chair was established in 2018 in conjunction with the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship she was awarded by the foundation. That coveted distinction – part of a larger project to attract leading researchers to universities in Germany – goes to just a few scholars a year.
