On pre-nominal classifying adjectives in Polish 241
of topic-comment and/or focus-ground articulation (discussed, among others, by
Lambrecht 1994, Vallduví & Engdahl 1996).^22
The pre-nominal position of a classifying modifier in Polish allows the speaker
to emphasize a given attributive adjective, and compare it with another classify-
ing or qualifying adjective. A plausible and natural way to pronounce the sentence
given in (34a) (which is taken from a written corpus, i.e. NKJP) is to place con-
trastive stresses on the adjectives naturalny ‘natural’ and sztuczny ‘artificial’. The
adjectives in question can then be recognized as contrastive foci, since they bear
pitch accents and contradict each other. In the case of examples (34b) and (34c)
the two pre-nominal adjectives are not contradictory and, although prominent, are
not felicitous with the pitch accent pronunciation. They are more likely to be inter-
preted as contrastive topics, which mark a shift from one subject-matter (i.e. one
event) to another.^23
(34) a. Śmiejemy się z mężem, że
laugh.1pl rfl with husband.inst that
kiedyś w każdym domu krówka
once in every house.loc c ow.dim.
była i do ogrodu naturalny
was.3sg.f and for garden.gen natural
nawóz, a teraz wszędzie
fertilizer but now everywhere
jest telewizor i sztuczny nawóz.
is TV-set and artificial fertilizer
‘My husband and I joke that previously there was a cow in every
homestead, and a natural fertilizer for the garden, while now there is a
TV-set and an artificial fertilizer everywhere.’
b. Drogowe wypadki, płonące trawy i las
road.adj accidents burning grasses and forest
‘road accidents, grass fires and a (burning) forest’
- A topic can be defined as the point of departure of the utterance (or ‘what the sentence
is about’) and it often expresses old information, shared by the speaker and the hearer. Focus
is the part of the sentence which expresses the most important and new information (not
presupposed and not shared by the speaker and the hearer) (see Vallduvi & Engdahl 1996). - Such an interpretation is possible if one postulates topic-comment articulation within a
noun phrase (and not only at the sentential level), as proposed by, among others, Aboh et al.
(2010).