228 Bożena Cetnarowska
The rightmost post-head CA can alternatively surface in the pre-head position and the
resulting CA-N-CA order is regarded as more symmetrical and “more balanced” (as
observed in Gębka-Wolak 2000: 135).^5(14) a. galowy mundur strażacki
parade.adj uniform fireman.adj
‘a parade uniform for firemen’
b. ogólnopolska prasa codzienna
all-Polish press everyday.adj
‘national daily press’
c. polska literatura współczesna
Polish literature contemporary
‘contemporary Polish literature’
d. stalowe drzwi przeciwpożarowe
steel.adj door antifire.adj
‘steel fire doors’The pre-nominal position of a CA is desirable also when there is another type of a
postmodifier following the head noun, e.g. a GenP or a PP.(15) a. stalowe drzwi banków
steel.adj doors banks.gen
‘steel doors of (the) banks’
b. stalowe drzwi z judaszem
steel.adj doors with spyhole.inst
‘steel door(s) with a spyhole’Moreover, even a single classifying adjective in a noun phrase can vary between the
pre-nominal and post-nominal position, as exemplified in (16)–(18) (see Willim 2000,
2001 for more examples and discussion).- Reviewer 2 remarks that phrases of the type CA-N-CA are rather uncommon in the Na-
tional Corpus of Polish (NKJP). This is to be expected, since noun phrases with multiple
classifying adjectives denote subkinds of established categories, thus they are more complex
cognitively than phrases with a single classifying adjective (I owe this observation to Denis
Bouchard, p.c.).
A search within the balanced subcorpus of NKJP (carried out by me on 26th September
- provided 23 instances of CA+N stalowe drzwi (steel.adj doors) ‘steel door(s)’ (some
of them accompanied by post-head PPs or participial clauses) and only one instance of this
sequence followed by yet another CA, i.e. stalowe drzwi przeciwpożarowe (CA+N+CA) ‘steel
fire door(s)’ (quoted in (14d)).