The first part of the paper constitutes an analysis of the term “transitory category” as presented by Adam Heinz, and a justification of the view that there is a need to eliminate the term from the metalanguage of syntax. The second part of the paper is a reconstruction of the reasoning mechanism Adam Heinz developed in order to postulate the existence of a transitory category between the complement and the adverbial. The last part of the text shows an effective method of analysing relations between parts of the sentence without a necessity to use the term “transitory category”.

Professor Adam Heinz worked at Pedagogical University of Cracow between 1959 and 1970. He taught different classes: Latin and Greek, as well as Old Church Slavonic language. He also conducted a master’s thesis seminar and lectures on general linguistics.

His students will remember him as an extraordinarily conscientious lecturer and an erudite scholar having versatile knowledge, but also as a demanding examiner.

Adam Heinz (1914–1984) was an academic whose field of study encompassed – to use the term employed by Walter Porzig (1950) – das Wunder der Sprache (the wonder that is language). His most extensive work entitled Dzieje językoznawstwa w zarysie (An outline of the history of linguistics) has, despite its 36 years, still maintained its popularity amongst linguists. Adam Heinz as one of the most eminent Polish structuralist was to remain critical in relation to both formal and functional structuralism. In subscribing to linguistic autonomy he would quote Wittgenstein’s words Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt (The limits of my language means the limits of my world.). His academic output is a long way from the tiresome monotony of immanent structuralism; for he grasped as if en passent the difference between lies (deceit) and Newspeak. Professor Adam Heinz, in referencing painting, unofficially divided linguists into miniaturists, landscapists and abstractionists. He himself was an extraordinary miniaturist and landscapist.