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

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BE is unusual in yet another respect: unlike most other verbs, BE in Polish (also in Russian) has a separate iterative/habitual paradigm; see Table 2. 28, 29 Table 2: Aspectual forms of BE ASPECT ITERATIVE bywac IMPERF?/PERF? byc FUTURE bedzie bywac 30 bedzie PRESENT bywa jest PAST bywal/-a/-o byl/-a/-o Judging from the diagnostics mentioned above, the iterative bywac is clearly imperfective. Like imperfective verbs, (i) it can appear in the complement position of a phase verb like begin or cease (recall (13)) (cf. (21a)), (ii) it allows for a present participle (the -ac form) but disallows a perfect participle (the -wszy form) (recall (14)) (cf. (21b)), (iii) the present tense form of bywac, unlike perfective verbs, does not have future time interpretation (recall (18)) (cf. (21c)), and (iv) it can follow the auxiliary in the periphrastic future forms (cf. (21d)) (recall (19)). 31 (21) a. Jan przestal bywac na przyjeciach. b. JohnNOM stopped BEINF.HABIT at parties ‘John stopped coming to parties.’ OK bywajac ‘being from time to time’ *bywawszy (intended: ‘having been from time to time’) c. Jan bywa na przyjeciach. 28 Normally, it is just an imperfective form that is used to express an iterative meaning of a given verb; cf. (i). (i) Jan czesto chodzil na przyjecia John often go3.SG.M.PAST.IMPERF to parties ‘John often went to parties.’ 29 In more general studies of verbal aspect (e.g., Comrie 1976), “the habitual” is analyzed as a subcategory of imperfective aspect. See, however, Brinton (1987) for the suggestion that for English at least, habitual aspect seems more aligned with perfective aspect than with imperfective aspect. See also Smith (1997:33-35) for a general discussion. 30 bedzie bywac is a periphrastic future form; see (21d). 31 As far as the first diagnostic is concerned, there seems to be some imcompatibility between the inherently durative semantics of the adverb and the inherent iterativity/habituality of the predicate; cf. (i). (i) ? Jan bywal na przyjeciach przez cale dnie. JohnNOM BE3.SG.M.PAST.HABIT at parties for whole days 18
JohnNOM BE3.SG.M.PRES.HABIT at parties ‘John goes (from time to time) to parties.’ (*‘John will go (from time to time) to parties.’) d. Jan bedzie bywac na przyjeciach. JohnNOM be3.SG.PRES BEINF.HABIT at parties ‘John will go (from time to time) to parties.’ To sum up the discussion in this section, while bywac is clearly an imperfective verb, byc seems to have both imperfective and perfective features and therefore it is difficult to establish its aspectual value. This conflict could be resolved, as suggested by Franks (1995:283, fn. 24), “with a proper understanding of the relationship between grammatical aspect and extensional aspect. Roughly speaking, the imperfective extensional properties of byt’ [‘to be’] derive from its intensional stativity, despite the fact that it is grammatically perfective.” Unfortunately, Franks is not very clear on this point, but what this is intended to mean is (most probably) the following: byt’ in Russian (and for that matter also byc in Polish) has the semantics of a stative verb. That is, from the point of view of its semantic/lexical aspect (i.e., ‘situational aspect’ or ‘situation type’; see footnote 4), it refers to situations which hold for a moment or an interval, i.e., which have the temporal features [Static] and [Durative] (Smith 1997:32). States are types of situations which do not evolve over time (states simply are). Unlike events, which are dynamic situations requiring a constant input of energy to maintain them (since they occur in successive stages which are located at different moments), “states consist of an undifferentiated period, and continue unless something happens to change them” (Smith 1997:36). Or to phrase it in Comrie’s words: dynamic situations but not states have to continually be “subject to a new input of energy” to maintain them (Comrie 1976:49). Moreover, unlike events, which are discrete, bounded entities, states are cumulative and unbounded: “They have a uniform part structure, as shown by the fact that the sub-interval property holds of them,” which means that when a state holds for an interval it holds for every sub-interval of that interval (Smith 1997:36, 32). This stative semantics is naturally compatible with the imperfective viewpoint since the imperfective viewpoint presents part of a situation, with no information about its endpoint. 32 In other words, when an Lit: ‘John used to be at parties for days.’ 32 Smith (1997:36) states that “the global class of stative sentences includes all sentences with the imperfective viewpoint.” 19
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 and 12: waterGEN decrease3.SG.N.PAST.PERF /
Page 13 and 14: e dependent on the perfective aspec
Page 15 and 16: (14) a. b. (15) a. OK czytajacIMPER
Page 17: In fact, there is diachronic eviden
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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