Bożena Cetnarowska

In this paper I will examine N+N juxtapositions in Polish, such as kobieta anioł (woman angel) ‘an angel of a woman’, praca marzenie (job dream) ‘dream job’, dziecko geniusz (child genius) ‘prodigy child’ and kierowca cham (driver lout) ‘a lout of a driver’. I will demonstrate that they exhibit properties of expressive combinations, as discussed for English by Potts (2007) and for German by Meibauer (2013). It will be proposed that Polish expressive N+N juxtapositions under analysis fall into two groups. Juxtapositions belonging to the first group, e.g. kierowca cham ‘a lout of a driver’, behave like coordinate compound-like units. Juxtapositions which form the second group of expressive complexes, such as kobieta anioł ‘an angel of a woman’ and praca marzenie ‘dream job’, can be treated as attributive-appositive (ATAP) combinations (in Scalise and Bisetto’s 2009 classification). The occurrence of a cline between coordinate and attributive multi-word units is postulated.

This paper examines expressive sentences in Polish, such as Idiota, nie kierowca! (lit. idiot, not driver) ‘an idiot of a driver’ and Potwór, nie matka! (lit. monster, not mother) ‘a monster of a mother’. Variants of the “X, not Y” construction, its optional and obligatory elements are identifi ed. Differences are emphasised between the emphatic “X, not Y construction” and non-emphatic negative copular clauses. Moreover, relatedness is discussed between expressive NN juxtapositions, such as kierowca idiota (lit. driver idiot) ‘an idiot of a driver’ or matka potwór (lit. mother monster) ‘a monster of a mother’, and the “X, not Y” construction. Semantic-structural types of expressive NN juxtapositions are considered, following the cross-linguistic classification of multiword units proposed by Scalise and Bisetto (2009). The reversibility of NN juxtapositions is taken into account as well. The question is addressed which types of juxtapositions allow their constituents to appear in the “X, not Y” construction.