The present paper is an attempt to apply the Distributed Grammar (DG) theory which includes both the semantic and the pragmatic (meta-informative) level, to a cross-linguistic, comparative analysis of the use of certain aspect forms in Polish and French. Although the opposition of simple and complex forms of the French verb is often interpreted as aspectual, the existence of aspect in French usually taken for granted, and the Imparfait tense (IMP) described as “imperfective”, we propose to revisit the correspondence of IMP and the past forms of Polish Imperfective (IPF) verbs. We shall look particularly closely at cases where the IMP is not a translation equivalent of the Polish IPF, trying to explain these differences referring to both systemic and contextual factors. By reference to the theory of Meta-informative Grounding (MIG), we explain the corresponding uses of the IMP and the IPF by the ontological grounding of situations considered as generic, general, potential or habitual. The other uses of the IPF which do not correspond to the IMP in French can be explained by what we call cognitive and communicative grounding, in other words by the fact that the situation is pictured as known to both the speaker and the hearer or as already mentioned (anaphoric usage). Some other non-corresponding uses of the IPF result from its unmarked character in the Slavic Aspect opposition. Such uses of the IPF (which we call neutral) are motivated by the speaker’s intention to (1) “avoid” a specific meaning carried out by the Perfective (PF), or (2) state nothing but the simple occurring of a situation, or (3) underline the fact that the speaker was certainly not involved in the situation described by the verb.

The two main topics of the paper are VP focus projection and the integration of adjuncts in VPs. First, a few conceptual and empirical questions are raised to Hornstein’s (2009) account of VP focus projection which is based on the “pure Concatenate/dangling off” way of adding adjuncts to a VP. It is argued that an account along these lines may have to recourse to a derivational look-ahead, which is a disadvantage. It is also noted that the “dangling off “ solution proves problematic if adjuncts have to fulfill the function of modifying events. What is more, it is not clear why the integration in a structure, necessary for movement, should be treated as a sufficient condition for focus projection.
Next, the paper offers a short taxonomy of VP-pre-posing types in Polish. They appear to fall in two major categories: (i) VP- pre-posing for focus, and (ii) VP-pre-posing for topic. It is argued that in the former type, representing Focus Fronting (FF), a pre-posed VP is a separate Intonation Phrase, in which, as predicted by Truckenbrodt (2001) and others, the rightmost accented phrase must receive a prominent phrasal stress. Thus, the VP-final main stress on adjuncts is derived from the interplay of syntax and phonology, unlike in Hornstein’s (2009) account. Such a view is supported by the observed cases of VP pre-posing for topic in Polish in which the earlier distribution of stresses within a VP (derived by a Nuclear Stress Rule) is conserved after movement, and no extra phonological stress rule applies.
The second major topic of the paper is the mechanics of adjunct integration in VPs. It is argued that there are two ways in which adjuncts may be added to the structure of a VP; by Concatenate (a default option) or by Merge. The former is only possible if no further instance of Merge is to follow, which is at the completion of vP and CP phases. The less economical Merge option is used when the VP-plus-adjunct undergoes further pre-posing for focus or for topic. Finally, it is shown how the phase-wise derivation may map on the procedure of stress promotion in a structure of a VP. It is argued that adjuncts concatenated to the root, prior to Spell-out, cannot receive an appropriate number of stress grids, and hence cannot carry main VP-stress.

In this paper I discuss Polish data in view of Pesetsky and Torrego’s (2001, 2004, 2007) proposals. The data suggest that the issues are more complex than they appear in English, and that extending the analysis to Polish would require modifications shedding light on the entire proposal. The Polish to-omission asymmetry, the missing that-t effect, distribution of CP arguments, as well as complementation possibilities of nouns and adjectives will be discussed in detail. It will be argued that φ-features must play a role in Agree relations with the Tns probes, contrary to the recent proposals made by the authors.

One of the key operations in valency rearrangement is the formation of mono-argumental predicates from phonologically corresponding/identical bi-argumental predicates. It has been most recently revisited by Junghanns, Fermann and Lenertová (2011), who analyze decausatives in Slavic languages as cases of reflexivization of verbs with non-agentive causers, in the spirit of Koontz-Garboden (2009).We review these formations in Polish and find out that an alysis which is set against more extensive data gives no grounds for a reflexive analysis. We find the data in favor of decausatives showing the presence of the external argument through the appearance of the subject ‘by itself ’ anaphor misjudged as to their grammaticality. This claim is supported with examples from the National Corpus of the Polish Language contending against Jabłońska’s (2007) analysis. The overall picture of the morphological system and language behavior speak against setting apart decausatives with reflexive marking from other unaccusatives in Polish. We disregard the reflexive analysis and adopt the anticausative solution, where the formation of decausatives is not seen as identification of arguments. We see it as a subtraction of VoiceP. This solution assumes one of the structures for decausatives from Alexiadou (2010). The operation is seen as lexical, not syntactic, and in defiance of Koontz-Garboden’s Monotonicity Hypothesis.

This paper discusses the means employed by the Polish verb in order to communicate the meaning of single occurrence (i.e. semelfactivity). An introspective examination of the semelfactive uses of Polish perfective verbs with the suffix –ną-, the inchoative and resultative (“purely aspectual”) prefixes za- and s-/z- as well as the prefixes expressing subjective evaluation of single acts is carried out from the perspective of the cluster model of aspect (proposed for Russian by Janda 2007). The possibility of applying to Polish Dickey and Janda’s (2009) allomorphy hypothesis, which states that in Russian semelfactivity is expressed by both the suffix –nu- and the prefix s-, is considered. It is shown that even though the cluster approach to aspect offers an attractive, user-friendly method of talking about semelfactivity, numerous problems posed by the Polish semelfactive data require adjustments of the model’s implicational hierarchy. The allomorphy hypothesis is less motivated in Polish than in Russian for a Polish category of s- prefixed semelfactives is harder to isolate.

Gussmann (2007) put forward a morpho-phonological analysis of Polish palatalizations which is an alternative to traditional re-write rules promoting abstractness in phonology. The aim of this article is to turn Gussmann’s descriptive tool into a coherent theory. In order to do that I propose a set of premises that regulate the working of the component of morpho-phonology. Among these premises the Minimalist Hypothesis (Kaye 1992) and the Locality Principle occupy the most prominent position. The former says that all morpho-phonological replacements work whenever their conditions are met (no (counter)bleeding or counterfeeding is possible), whereas the latter limits the scope of morpho-phonological replacements to nodes entering the relation of concatenation (Embick 2010). The last part of the article is devoted to the cases that apparently violate the Minimalist Hypothesis. These are the replacements that Gussmann (2007) subsumes under the label P(alatalization) R(eplacement) 7. The article shows that the problematic replacements presented as PR7 may be convincingly analysed as root-specific and thus do not constitute counterexamples to the Minimalist Hypothesis.

This pilot study attempts to examine the potential of selected corpus linguistics and computational stylistics methods in the investigation of translation universals in translational literary Polish.More specifically, the study deals with T-universals (after Chesterman 2004), which are also referred to as intralingual translation universals (Grabowski 2011), with emphasis on core patterns of lexical use, as proposed by Laviosa (1998, 2002), and the leveling-out hypothesis, as proposed by Baker (1996). To that end, the custom-designed corpora,with approximately 500,000 tokens each, of contemporary translational and non-translational literary Polish were compiled. The results of the study reveal that on the whole translated texts are more varied lexically and have more repetitions and lower lexical variety among top-frequency words than non-translated Polish texts. On the other hand, the study shows that non-translational texts have higher lexical variety among bottom-frequency words, where usually one can find author-specific and creative vocabulary. The results of multivariate methods (Principal Components Analysis and Cluster Analysis) confirm the leveling-out hypothesis that translations are more alike as compared with native texts.