Bartosz Wiland

The paper investigates the morphosyntax of Polish synthetic comparative adjectives and adverbs. It is argued that we can predict the distribution of different classes of adjectival roots and suffixes if we adopt the idea that both types of morphemes lexicalize syntactic constituents, the central tenet of Nanosyntax. The paper makes a case for two central claims. One is that the syn-sem properties of adjectives can be described with a finegrained syntactic sequence proposed for Slovak in Vanden Wyngaerd et al. (2020). The other one is that the lexical properties of Polish gradable adverbs follow from the syntactic representation of the adverb as properly containing the syntactic representation of the adjective.

Remnant movement, once believed not to be a part of grammar at all, has since become a tool of analyzing phenomena like verb fronting, word order alternations, or covert movement. What has been largely missing from the discussion of remnant movement are the effects a remnant constituent has on the nodes in the clause it has crossed. This paper argues that remnant movement has particular consequences for clausal syntax since it gives rise to crossing and nesting movement dependencies. This point is illustrated on the example of certain robust asymmetries in the Polish OVS syntax. The analysis of Polish OVS sentences has a broader benefit, namely that the proper identification of crossing and nesting paths provides convergent evidence for the existence of remnant movement in the first place.

The traditional description of Polish abstract nouns such as lekkość‘ lightness’or jasność ‘brightness’ holds that they are formed with an adjectival root and the nominalizing suffix -ość. The paper considers an alternative analysis where -o-ść is a complex marker and such nominals go through an adverbial stage in their formation, rendering them [[[ A ] Adv ] N ] structures, a possibility suggested by the fact that the -o itself is an adverbial marker.