Differential subject marking in Polish: The case of Genitive vs ...

logiczny), as opposed to grammatical subject (see Przepiórkowski 1999:129-30 and the
references cited there). 14 However, in such cases – unlike in the case of existential-locative byc –
the GEN marking is not affected by negation; compare (8a) to (8b).
(8) a. Ubylo wody w rzece.
decrease3.SG.N.PAST waterGEN in river
‘There was less water in the river.’
b. Nie ubylo wody w rzece.
NEG decrease3.SG.N.PAST waterGEN in river
‘There was not less water in the river.’
In addition, unlike what we observe in cases like (3) above, the GEN marking of the nominal
argument in (8) does not seem to be affected by the aspectual properties of the predicate; cf. (9).
Note that the same is true for GoN (cf. (10)): independently of the aspectual properties of the
predicate, and, more importantly, even of the habitual reading in (10c), the direct object of a
negated transitive verb is marked for GEN in Polish. 15, 16
(9) Wody ubylo / ubywalo w rzece.
‘He wasn’t reading magazines when she entered the room.’
14 According to Witkos (1998:252), verbs of appearance, referring to gradual appearance or disappearance of
their arguments, “check the Partitive GEN on their solitary arguments, which from the perspective of the
thematic relations seem to be ‘affected’ Patients.” He calls such verbs “partitive unaccusatives”. Partitive
unaccusatives are – according to Witkos (1998:253) – endowed with the (Partitive) GEN feature in their
lexical specifications. Following Lasnik (1995), he further assumes that the Partitive (GEN) case is assigned
structurally. In other words, the Partitive GEN is treated by Witkos (1998) as a lexically determined case
“which is stru ctural in the sense that it is assigned in some functional projection rather than within the lexical
projection of the verb” (ibid., 257). See also Przepiórkowski (1999:129-131) for discussion on this point and
some evidence in favor of the Partitive GEN being a structural case in Polish.
15 As expected, the grammaticality status of sentences like (7b) does not depend on the aspectual properties of
the predicate. A GEN-marked NP is not accepted in such cases independently of whether the unaccusative
verb is perfective or imperfective; cf. (i).
(i) * (W tym szpitalu) [zadnego pacjenta] nie umarlo / nie umieralo.
(in this hospital) [no patient]GEN.M.SG NEG died3.SG.N.PERF / NEG died3.SG.N.IMPERF
16 Aspect in Polish (like in other Slavic languages) is a morphological category of the verb, i.e., most verbs are
morphologically marked either for being perfective or imperfective (see footnote 4). It should be noted,
however, that the aspectual marking in Polish (Slavic) is a very complex issue. As Franks (1995:282, fn. 16)
points out, “there is no unique marker of perfective or imperfective, nor are the various morphological
indicators of Russian [Polish] aspect uniquely prefixal or suffixal, and some verbs are biaspectual, while
others may lack either one or the other aspectual form.” See Borik (2002) and Mlynarczyk (2004) for a more
recent discussion of these issues in Russian and Polish, respectively.
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