Die Wortart Artikel in allgemeinen zweisprachigen Wörterbüchern

Although the lexicographical description of individual parts of speech is often discussed in metalexicographical literature, the article is rarely given attention. This paper analyses how articles are described in selected German-Polish dictionaries. The description of articles in dictionaries for the language pair German as an article language – Polish as an article-less language requires a different approach than the lexicographical treatment of parts of speech that occur in both languages. The analysis shows that the description of the articles is very different in terms of the overall conception of the article entries, i.e. the choice of items, the number of items and their form. It also turns out that most of the dictionaries analysed failed in their article descriptions, which is disappointing not only from a metalexicographical perspective, but above all from the learner’s perspective.