Determiners and possessives in Old English and Polish 251
(10) ac he teah forð þa his ealdan wrenceas.
but he brought forth the.pl.acc his old.pl.acc tricks.pl.acc
‘but he brought forth his old tricks’
(cochronE,ChronE_[Plummer]:1003.6.1640)
Examples (8)–(10) show that determiner-possessive patterns are part and parcel of Old
English grammar: examples (8) and (10) are Latin translations or the source is uncer-
tain, while (9) is native. What is important is that the determiners in these examples
belong to two different paradigms. In (8) ða is a member of the se, seo, þæt paradigm,
whereas ðas in (9) belongs to the þes, þis, þēos paradigm. Also, as shown by (10), the
construction can be accompanied by adjectives. The importance of the last two points
will become clear when we discuss possessive-determiner constructions in Section 3.
In Polish determiner-possessive combinations are also possible, though tradi-
tional grammars do not devote much attention to this problem, if they mention it at
all. A detailed description of possible combinations in the noun phrase in contempo-
rary Polish is found in Topolińska (1984). She notes that there are three main slots
within the DP. The first one is occupied, among other reference markers, by ten, ta, to
and tamten, tamta, tamto. These elements are mutually exclusive. Possessives occupy a
slot closer to the head. Interestingly, since determiners and possessives belong to two
different slots their co-occurrence in principle should not be ruled out. However, it is
very hard to find examples that would clearly illustrate this possibility. One example
found in the book is given in (11):
(11) tych pięć takich moich
these.pl.gen five such.pl.gen my.pl.gen
drewnianych krzesełek
wooden.pl.gen chairs.pl.gen
‘these five of such wooden chairs of mine’
(Topolińska 1984: 374)
However, as we can see, example (11) is slightly different from the examples above, as
the italicized elements are also accompanied by other constituents and they are not
adjacent (see also Section 4).
Swan (2002: 172) reports that “Ten/ta/to often occurs as a specifier with other
adjectives and with certain other pronominal adjectives”.^3 This is shown in (12):
(12) Zaskakuje mnie ta jego nieuczciwość.
surprise me that his lack of integrity
‘That lack of his integrity surprises me’
(Swan 2002: 172)
- He uses the term ‘pronominal adjectives’ to refer to possessive pronouns.