The structure of null subject DPs and agreement in Polish impersonal constructions 145
restrictive than others. Namely, deictic temporal/locative adverbials appear to be able
to restrict the interpretation from generic to arbitrary whereas expressions such as w
Średniowieczu ‘in the Middle Ages’, w 1984 ‘in 1984’, rano ‘in the morning’ do not seem
to be able to restrict the interpretation in this way.
As far as deictic adverbs, such as dzisiaj ‘today’, wczoraj ‘yesterday’, tutaj ‘here’,
etc. are concerned, there are two possible analyses of these in the literature. They can
be analysed either as circumstantial adverbs merged in the VP or adverbs of setting
merged in the topic position inside the CP, as in Cinque (1988). Here I will argue that
they should be analysed as the latter and group them together with Maienborn’s (2001)
frame-setting adverbials. Consider the following sentences:
(26) a. W Paryżu kupuję dużo butòw.
in Paris buy.pres 1 sg a-lot-of shoes
‘In Paris I buy a lot of shoes.’
b. Wczoraj na świecie kupiono dużo butòw.
yesterday on world bought a-lot-of shoes
‘Yesterday around the world people bought a lot of shoes.’
c. Wczoraj tutaj kupiono dużo butòw.
yesterday here bought a-lot-of shoes
‘Yesterday [some people/they] bought a lot of shoes.’
d. Pracuje się ciężko.
work.pres 3 sg się hard
‘[One/People in general (excluding the speaker)] work(s) hard.’
e. W Paryżu sprzedaje się dużo butòw.
in Paris sell.pres 3 sg się a-lot-of shoes
‘In Paris [some people/they] sell(s) a lot of shoes.’
In (26a), ΛA will bind the feature [speaker] and [minimal] so the pronoun will sur-
face as 1st person singular. In the example in (26b) the null pronoun is interpreted as
generic exclusive which means that neither the [speaker] nor the [hearer] features are
bound, and the adverbial binds the [generic] subfeature of the [non-specific] feature
and as a result the pronoun refers to people living around the world. Thus what we
get is a generic exclusive reading. In (26c), deictic expressions which here are con-
sidered to be frame-setting modifiers; i.e. wczoraj ‘yesterday’ and tutaj ‘here’ merely
constrain the space and time of the eventuality but do not quantify over it. Here again
the [speaker] and the [hearer] features cannot be bound due to the nature of the sub-
ject pronoun in the –NO/–TO construction (see the discussion below). In (26d), on
the other hand, when ΛA and ΛP bind the [speaker] and the [hearer] features respec-
tively, and the generic operator binds the [generic] subfeature of the [non-specific]
feature, what we get is a generic inclusive reading, equivalent to that of the English pro-
noun one. When, however, only the feature [generic] in the feature geometry is bound
whereas the features [speaker] and [hearer] are not, the resultant interpretation is that