224 Bożena Cetnarowska
(3) a. Ten fizyk jest młody
this physicist is young
‘This physicist is young’
b. bardzo młody fizyk
very young physicist
‘a very young physicist’
c. młodość fizyka
youth physicist.gen
‘the physicist’s young age (or the physicist’s youth)’
Fairly frequently, one adjectival form exhibits two usages, i.e. it can occur either as a
qualifying or a classifying attribute. This is true both of denominal and non-derived
adjectives, as is shown below.^3
(4) a. aktor komiczny
actor comical
‘an actor who can be classified as a comedy actor’
b. komiczny aktor
comical actor
‘an actor who is amusing and comic’
(5) a. film fantastyczny
film fantastic
‘a science-fiction (or fantasy) film’
b. fantastyczny film
fantastic film
‘a fantastic (superb) film’
(6) a. foka szara
seal grey
‘a/the grey seal (as a species or a representative of the species)’
b. szara foka
grey seal
‘a seal which happens to be grey’
There have been attempts to express the contrast between these two types of adjectives
as a difference in their syntactic derivation.
Rutkowski & Progovac (2005) propose that classifying adjectives are merged in
the position of the specifier of NP and then the head N moves to a functional projec-
tion above NP.- Further examples are provided, among others, by Willim (2000), Szymańska (2000),
Rutkowski & Progovac (2005), Cetnarowska, Pysz & Trugman (2011a, 2011b), and
Cetnarowska & Trugman (2012).