Review of the Book: Leszek Bednarczuk, Anna Bochnakowa, Stanisław Widłak, Przemysław Dębowiak, Iwona Piechnik (eds.) "Linguistique Romane et linguistique Indo-Européene: Melanges offerts à Witold Mańczak à l’occasion de son 90e anniversaire" [Romance and Indo-European Linguistics: A Festschrift in Honor of Prof. Witold Mańczak on the Occasion of His Ninetieth Birthday]. Kraków 2014: Polska Akademia Umiejętności and Instytut Filologii Romańskiej Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. ISBN: 978-83-7676-185-5, 487 pages

In this review we provide an evaluation of the Festschrift honoring the occasion of Prof. Witold Mańczak’s ninetieth birthday. We start by sketching general characteristics of the book, emphasizing the wide range of tributary topics covered, as well as the range of languages of contributions, reflecting the many areas where the Professor’s work impacted the language sciences. Then we focus on one of the most controversial claims advocated by the Festschrifee, which has spawned a lot research and findings, namely, the importance of the frequency of occurrence of a given linguistic item. We argue that this claim should be considered against the wider background of the Natural Linguistics paradigm. Finally, we review and synopsize the content, which we proposed to group into the following thematic realms: (i) Etymology / language contact; (ii) Language change, theory and history of language; (iii) Syntax/semantics; (iv) Contemporary language usage / sociolinguistics; (v) Lexicography / translation studies. The article ends with the general recommendation of the monograph to a broad readership.