Advances in the Syntax of DPs - Structure, agreement, and case

(ff) #1

Determiners and possessives in Old English and Polish 249


cross-linguistically, the reverse order is relatively unknown and is not found in many
languages. Fortunately, some Slavic languages, among them Polish, and Old English are
those that allow this pattern. A comparative perspective will enable us to broaden our
knowledge of the properties of possessive-determiner combinations and to determine
restrictions operating in them. These restrictions must be different as the obligatory
status of adjectives in the possessive-determiner pattern seems to be rather unusual
typologically and should not be expected to occur in Polish, either.
Genealogically unrelated languages are worth investigating as this can reveal facts
that would otherwise remain hidden. For example, Borsley & Roberts (1996) com-
pare Welsh with Semitic (Arabic and Hebrew) to show striking similarities in the clitic
systems of these completely unrelated languages.
In our case, the comparative approach is revealing concerning the status of deter-
miners. In particular, Allen (2006) argues that Old English determiners, when pre-
ceded by possessives function as definite articles rather than demonstrative pronouns,
parallel to what we can find in Old Norse. This is connected with the fact that an adjec-
tive phrase might project its own projection, hosting a determiner in the function of
a definite article (see Giusti 1997). In the course of time English indeed developed a
discrete definite article perhaps under the influence of Old Norse, which already had
one (see Millar 2000).
We would like to extend this analysis to Polish and suggest that ten, ta, to behave
like a definite article in certain contexts even though adjectives are not obligatory
in possessive-determiner patterns in Polish. This is perhaps a universal restriction
imposed on determiners when immediately preceded by possessives in the noun
phrase. Polish, of course, has not yet developed a fully-fledged definite article but is
on its way to do so perhaps under the influence of English, which heavily affects Pol-
ish lexical as well as grammatical system (see Mańczak-Wohlfeld 1993; Otwinowska-
Kasztelanic 2000; Arabski 2006: 16–17). Such facts can only be revealed when we
adopt a comparative perspective.
Now let us turn to the first variant in which determiners precede possessives.



  1. Variant I: Determiner-Possessive


The determiner-possessive construction is found in many languages, though its status
does not seem to be the same. For instance, in Romance languages like Italian and
Spanish such combinations are quite normal and sometimes even obligatory, as the
lack of one element may result in ungrammaticality, as shown in (3) and (4) below:


(3) la sua casa
the.sg.f her.sg.f house.sg.f
‘her house’

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