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

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everyone and for those who accept it, it has a special interpretation (i.e., the Partitive argument is interpreted quantitatively in the sense of “part of” or “a little”, cf., e.g., Saloni and Swidzinski 1985:145-6, Swan 2002:333, or is “quantitatively indeterminate”, cf. Rozwadowska and Willim 2004:141). Such a partitive/quantificational interpretation seems to be absent in the case of (3a). (11) a. On kupil chleb / chleba. he buy3.SG.M.PAST.PERF breadACC / breadGEN ‘He (has) bought a/the loaf of bread/the bread. / ‘He (has) bought (some) bread.’ b. On kupowal chleb /* chleba. he buy3.SG.M.PAST.IMPERF breadACC /* breadGEN ‘He was buying bread/a/the loaf of bread/the bread.’ To sum up the discussion so far, the GEN in negated existential-locative byc sentences seems to have what might be called “a hermaphroditic nature”. In other words, the GEN in such sentences appears to be a cross between the regular GoN in Polish and the optional Partitive marking of the internal argument. 19 Like the former it is triggered by negation (i.e., it is restricted to negated sentences) and like the latter it is affected by the aspectual properties of the predicate. However, unlike the regular GoN in Polish, the GEN marking in negated (existential)-locative byc sentences does not seem to obey the configurational condition on GoN assignment in Polish. Recall that the rule of GoN in Polish only applies to internal direct arguments of transitive verbs. Thus, it seems that for an internal argument to be GEN marked under negation in Polish, there must be another (external) argument present in the structure. 20 The similarity between the optional Partitive marking, as in (11), and GEN marking in negated (existential)-locative byc sentences, as in (3a), is also far from being perfect. It has been pointed out that the Partitive marked arguments have a special quantificational interpretation which seems to be missing in the case of the GEN marked argument in negated existential-locative byc sentences. What is, however, common to both cases is the fact that aspect seems to matter for the question of the case marking of the nominal argument. Given that the optional Partitive marking, as in (11), seems to ‘He was drinking/drunk (the) tea.’ ‘He drank the tea/some tea.’ 19 See also Witkos (1998:274-5, fn. 38) for some discussion on the nature of GEN in negated (existential)locative sentences in Polish. Unlike in the analysis proposed in this paper, Witkos does not make a connection between the GEN marking of the “subject” NP and the aspectual properties of the predicate in the cases under discussion. 12
e dependent on the perfective aspect, the question arises as to whether the GEN marking in negated (existential)-locative byc sentences could also be viewed as dependent on some perfective properties of the predicate. In order to answer this question, let us look more closely at what aspectual value the verb BE has in Polish (Slavic). 2. The GEN vs. NOM split and aspectual differences between byc and bywac Usually, native speakers of a Slavic language do not have problems with establishing the aspectual value of a given verbal form. Given this, it is very surprising that determining the aspectual value of the verb BE in Slavic turns out to be nontrivial. In fact, there is no agreement in the literature on this point: while some authors, as, e.g., Schoorlemmer (1995), take byt’ ‘to be’ in Russian to be clearly imperfective, other researchers, as, e.g., Franks (1995), Junghanns (1997) 21 or Eriksen (2000), take just the opposite view and claim byt’ to be perfective. There is also a middle position, which takes byt’ to be either aspectually unspecified or compatible with both the perfective and imperfective viewpoints; cf., among others, Matushansky (2001) and Borik (2002). 22 Why is it so difficult to establish the aspectual value of BE in Russian or Polish? The reason for this could be the fact that this verb seems to have both imperfective and perfective properties. On the one hand, like imperfective verbs, it is compatible with durative adverbials like for an hour 23, 24 (cf. (12)), and can appear in the complement position of phase verbs like begin, 20 This point will play an important role in the analysis proposed in section 5. 21 Actually, Junghanns (1997) speaks only about the future auxiliary budet in Russian as a perfective verb. He does not, however, refer to byt’ as perfective in general. It should be noted that the idea that the future budet in Russian is a perfective verb goes back at least as far as Mazon (1914). It is also found in Jakobson (1957), Pettersson (1972), and Chvany (1975). I thank an anonymous reviewer for having pointed this out to me. Chvany (1975:87) (see also Pettersson 1972) assumes that bud- is a lexical verb whose syntax resembles that of the “aspectual” verbs like stat’ ‘to become’ or nacat’ ‘to begin’ in that it takes like the “aspectual” verbs an imperfective complement (see below). She suggests further (p. 90) that bud- behaves like a perfective verb, its acquired future meaning being compatible with contexts of perfectives, i.e., perfective verbs in the nonpast tense are generally interpreted as referring to the future tense. See the discussion below. 22 See also Chvany (1975:88). She points out that “existential byt’ is a verb which is not inherently specified for aspect and thus may be either perfective or imperfective in a given sentence.” 23 The “adverbial modification” test is, in fact, the most extensively used diagnostic for distinguishing telic versus atelic predicates. Telic predicates allow for modification by so-called ‘frame’ adverbials (as, e.g., in an hour), while atelic predicates take duration adverbials (as, e.g., for an hour); cf. (i) (Borik 2002:14). In the existing literature on aspect, one often encounters the view that the perfectivity/imperfectivity distinction can more or less be equated with that of telicity/atelicity, respectively. See, however, Borik (2002) (cf. also Schoorlemmer 1995, Richardson 2003) for a critical discussion of this view. More precisely, Borik 13
Page 1 and 2: Differential subject marking in Pol
Page 3 and 4: that is neither intrinsically telic
Page 5 and 6: ‘John used to come to parties.’
Page 7 and 8: section 4, I will try to answer the
Page 9 and 10: ‘(In this hospital) no patient di
Page 11: waterGEN decrease3.SG.N.PAST.PERF /
Page 15 and 16: (14) a. b. (15) a. OK czytajacIMPER
Page 17 and 18: In fact, there is diachronic eviden
Page 19 and 20: JohnNOM BE3.SG.M.PRES.HABIT at part
Page 21 and 22: of why there should be a correlatio
Page 23 and 24: ywac has to be [+animate] (preferab
Page 25 and 26: prototypical subject (agentivity, v
Page 27 and 28: (32) a. Sera nie bylo w sklepie. (D
Page 29 and 30: NEG BE2.SG.IMP.HABIT as often in ni
Page 31 and 32: (38) a. Bozenki nie bylo wczoraj u
Page 33 and 34: discussion above; a “theme-like
Page 35 and 36: a. przybyly ‘arrived’ b. upadly
Page 37 and 38: able to nominalize into complex eve
Page 39 and 40: GEN marked nominal in (3a) NOM mark
Page 41 and 42: more prominent than an argument whi
Page 43 and 44: some sense “externally” to the
Page 45 and 46: Spec,TP position is concerned, it c
Page 47 and 48: What about negated locative bywac a
Page 49 and 50: In the previous section we arrived
Page 51 and 52: Cetnarowska, B. (2000b). The Unerga
Page 53 and 54: Lakoff, G. (1966). Stative Adjectiv
Page 55: Spencer, A. and M. Zaretskaya (1998

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

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