FAQ

The Rise of an Indefinite Article in Polish: An Appraisal of Its Grammaticalisation Stage (Part 1)

Publication date: 29.06.2018

Studies in Polish Linguistics, Volume 13 (2018), Vol. 13, Issue 2, pp. 93 - 121

https://doi.org/10.4467/23005920SPL.18.005.8744

Authors

,
Krzysztof Hwaszcz
University of Wrocław, plac Uniwersytecki 1, 50-137 Wrocław, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2136-5001 Orcid
All publications →
Hanna Kędzierska
Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław
All publications →

Titles

The Rise of an Indefinite Article in Polish: An Appraisal of Its Grammaticalisation Stage (Part 1)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to assess the change of Polish numeral jeden ‘one’ into an indefinite marker in the view of the grammaticalization theory. Although Slavic languages are principally believed not to possess articles, certain usages of one (e.g., in Bulgarian and Macedonian) demonstrate the same features as the ones ascribed to the usages of indefinite articles in non-Slavic languages, such as English, German or Italian. Language contact of article-possessing languages is often claimed to enhance the grammaticalisation process of an indefinite article (Heine and Kuteva 2006). This type of grammaticalisation is said to follow five distinctive stages: (i) numeral, (ii) presentative marker, (iii) specific marker, (iv) non-specific marker and (v) generalized article (e.g., Givón 1981, Heine 1997). We assessed that in the case of Polish, the grammaticalisation stage is that of a specific marker, with some occasional uses leaning towards the non-specific marker stage. The conclusion was supported by the results of 53 native speakers’ judgments as well as the diagnostic tests based on relevant literature.

References

Download references

Abush Dorit (1994). The scope of indefinites. Natural Language Semantics 2(2), 83−135.

Adger David (2003). Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Aikhenvald Alexandra Y., Dixon Robert Malcolm W. (eds.) (2003). Studies in Evidentiality (Typological Studies in Language 54). Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Bańko Mirosław (2000). Inny słownik języka polskiego. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Bázlik Miroslav (1991). Some notes on English and Slovak personal pronouns. Brno Studies in English 40, 25−34.

Beblavy Miroslav, Fabo Brian, Lenaerts Karolien (2016). The importance of foreign language skills in the labour markets of Central and Eastern Europe: an assessment based on data from online job portals. CEPS Special Report 129.

Belaj Branimir, Matovac Darko (2015). On article-like use of indefinite determiners jedan and neki in Croatian and other Slavic languages. Suvremena lingvistika 79(1), 1−20.

Borthen Kaja (2003). Norwegian Bare Singulars. Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, PhD dissertation.

Boškovič Željko (2007). On the locality and motivation of move and agree: An even more minimal theory. Linguistic Inquiry 38(4), 589−644.

Boškovič Željko (2009a). More on the no-DP analysis of article-less languages. Studia Linguistica 63, 187−203.

Boškovič Željko (2009b). The NP/DP analysis of Slovenian. In Proceedings of the University of Novi Sad Workshop on Generative Syntax 1. Ljiljana Subotić (ed.), 53−73. Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet u Novom Sadu.

Bybee Joan L. (2002). Cognitive processes in grammaticalisation. In The New Psychology of Language (Vol. II). Michael Tomasello (ed.), 145−167. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.

Chierchia Gennaro (1998). Plurality of mass nouns and the notion of ‘semantic parameter’. In Events in Grammar. Susan Rothstein (ed.), 53-103. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Chomsky Noam (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky Noam (2000). Minimalist inquiries: the framework. In Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honour of Howard Lasnik. Roger Martin, David Michaels and Juan Uriagereka (eds.), 89–115. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chung Sandra, Ladusaw William (2003). Restriction and saturation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Danielewiczowa Magdalena (2007). Przymiotniki nieprzymiotniki. O pewnym Niezwykłym typie wyrażeń w języku polskim. Zbornik Matice Srpske Za Slavistiku 71−72, 223−236.

Dayal Veneeta (2004). Number marking and (in)definiteness in kind terms. Linguistics and Philosophy 27(4), 393−450.

Doroszewski Witold (1958). Słownik języka polskiego. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Dubisz Stanisław (2008). Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Embick David, Noyer Rolf (2001). Movement operations after syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 32(4), 555–595.

Farkas Donka F., de Swart Henriëtte (2003). The Semantics of Incorporation: From Argument Structure to Discourse Transparency. Stanford: CSLI.

Franks Steven (2000). The internal structure of Slavic NPs, with special reference to Bulgarian. In Generative Linguistics in Poland 2 (Syntax and Morphology) (Proceedings of the GLIP-2 Conference). Adam Przepiórkowski and Piotr Barański (eds.), 53−70. Warsaw: Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences.

Friedman Victor A. (2002). The Romani indefinite article in its historical and areal context. In Was ich noch sagen wollte… A multilingual Festschrift for Norbert Boretzky on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Birgit Igla and Thomas Stolz (eds.), 287−301. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Geist Ljudmila (2011). Bulgarian ‘edin’: The rise of an indefinite article. In Formal Description of Slavic Languages: The Ninth Conference. Proceedings of FDSL 9. Uwe Junghanns, Dorothee Fehrmann, Denisa Lenertová and Hagen Pitsch (eds.), 125–148. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Givón Thomas (1981). On the development of the numeral ‘one’ as an indefinite marker. Folia Linguistica Historica 2(1), 35–53.

Gorishneva Elena (2013). Bare vs. non-bare nouns: Two kinds of indefinites in Bulgarian. In New perspectives on bare noun phrases in Romance and beyond. Johannes Kebatek and Albert Wall (eds.), 301–328. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

Grzegorczykowa Renata (2001). Wprowadzenie do semantyki językoznawczej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Halpern Aaron (1995). On the Placement and Morphology of Clitics. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Heine Bernd (1997). Cognitive Foundations of Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Heine Bernd, Claudi Ulrike, Hünnemeyer Friederike (1991). Grammaticalisation: A Conceptual Framework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Heine Bernd, Kuteva Tania (2006). The Changing Languages of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Heine Bernd, Mechtild Reh (1984). Grammaticalisation and Reanalysis in African Languages. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.

Hlavsa Zdeněk (1975). Denotace objektu a její prostředky v současné češtiné. Prague: Academia.

Hwaszcz Krzysztof, Kędzierska Hanna (to appear). The rise of an indefinite article in Polish: An appraisal of its grammaticalisation stage (Part 2). Studies in Polish Linguistics 13(3).

Janus Daniel, Przepiórkowski Adam (2007). Poliqarp 1.0: Some technical aspects of a linguistic search engine for large corpora. In The proceedings of Practical Applications in Language and Computers PALC 2005. Jacek Waliński, Krzysztof Kredens and Stanisław Góźdź-Roszkowski (eds.). Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang.

Lubańska Maja (2009). On the emergence of the indefinite article in Polish. In Pase Papers 2008. Studies in Language and Methodology of Teaching Foreign Languages. Marek Kuźniak and Bożena Rozwadowska (eds.), 63−78. Wrocław, Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT.

Lyons Christopher (1999). Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pereltsvaig Asya (2013). Noun phrase structure in article-less Slavic languages: DP or not DP? Language and Linguistic Compass 7(3), 201−219.

Poldauf Ivan (1969). The so-called medio-passive in English. Prague Studies in English 13, 15–34.

Progovac Ljiljana (1998). Determiner phrase in a language without determiners. Journal of Linguistics 34(1), 165–179.

Runić Marija, Juh Matej (2017). The numeral ‘en’ revisited. Poster session presented at the conference Formal Description of Slavic Languages 12.5. Slovenia: Nova Gorica, December 9, 2017.

Saloni Zygmunt (1974a). Klasyfikacja gramatyczna leksemów polskich. Język polski 54(1), 3−13.

Saloni Zygmunt (1974b). Klasyfikacja gramatyczna leksemów polskich. Język polski 54(2), 93−101.

Schroeder Christoph (2011). Articles and article systems in some areas of Europe. In Pragmatic Organization of Discourse in the Languages of Europe. Vol. 8 of Empirical Approaches to Language Typology. Giuliano Bernini and Marcia L. Schwartz (eds.), 545−611. Berlin and Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.

Stojanov Stojan (1980). Gramatičeskata kategorija opredelenost v bălgarski ezik (členuvane na imenata). Sofija: Narodna prosveta.

Šmelev Aleksej (2002). Russkij jazyk i vnejazykovaja dejstvitel’nost’. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury.

Szwedek Aleksander (1973). A note on the relation between the article in English and word order in Polish. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 2, 213-220.

Topolińska Zuzanna (1981). Remarks on the Slavic noun phrase. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk.

van Gelderen Elly (2011). The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and the Language Faculty. New York: Oxford University Press.

Weiss Daniel (2004). The rise of an indefinite article: The case of Macedonian ‘eden’. In What makes grammaticalisation: A look from its fringes and its components. Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Björn Wiemer (eds.), 139−165. Berlin and Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.

Wetzel Linda (2009). Types and Tokens: On Abstract Objects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Zeijlstra Hedde (2012). There is only one way to agree. The Linguistic Review 29(3), 491–539.

Information

Information: Studies in Polish Linguistics, Volume 13 (2018), Vol. 13, Issue 2, pp. 93 - 121

Article type: Original article

Titles:

English:

The Rise of an Indefinite Article in Polish: An Appraisal of Its Grammaticalisation Stage (Part 1)

Authors

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2136-5001

Krzysztof Hwaszcz
University of Wrocław, plac Uniwersytecki 1, 50-137 Wrocław, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2136-5001 Orcid
All publications →

University of Wrocław, plac Uniwersytecki 1, 50-137 Wrocław, Poland

Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław

Published at: 29.06.2018

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND  licence icon

Percentage share of authors:

Krzysztof Hwaszcz (Author) - 50%
Hanna Kędzierska (Author) - 50%

Article corrections:

-

Publication languages:

English