Determiners and possessives in Old English and Polish 261
(37) Moja sąsiadka, ta
my.sg.nom.f neighbour.sg.nom.f this.sg.nom.f
gruba, wybiega z pokoju
fat.sg.nom.f flounce.pres 1 sg from room
‘my fat neighbour flounces out of the room’
(PWN_3102000000008, Andrzej Bobkowski 1957: 38, ‘Szkice
piórkiem:(Francja 1940–1944))
An interesting point is that the frequency of non-adjacent sequences found in this
section is not the same in both languages. While in Old English discontinuous deter-
miner-possessive and possessive-determiner patterns are consistently less numerous
than their continuous counterparts, in Polish it is more complicated. Specifically, dis-
continuous combinations in which determiners follow possessives (Example (37)) are
more common than sequences in which possessives immediately precede determin-
ers. For example, the continuous sequence mój ten ‘my this.sg.nom.m’ is found only
in 6 cases, while its discontinuous equivalent in 18 cases. Similarly, there are only 4
examples of moja ta ‘my this sg.nom.f’, whereas the number of such sequences rises to
21 instances when discontinuous patterns are considered. By contrast, discontinuous
determiner-possessive patterns found in (35) above are less common than those in
which possessives immediately follow determiners. For instance, while the continu-
ous form ten mój ‘my this.sg.nom.m’ is found in almost 450 cases, the discontinuous
pattern (ten...mój) yields slightly more than 50 clear cases.
The facts presented in this section further support the claim that the two orders
show different restrictions in both languages. In Old English more important is the
grammatical restriction, that is the presence of the adjective because continuous
patterns are always more common than discontinuous ones. In Polish, there are
no grammatical restrictions but the occurrence of particular sequences depends
on the order of the elements in this sequence: while continuous possessive-deter-
miner patterns are less common than their discontinuous equivalents, continuous
determiner-possessive patterns are much more frequent than their discontinuous
counterparts.
- A note on the grammatical status of ten, ta, to and se, seo þæt
In the previous sections we have used a comparative perspective to reveal different
properties of both orders of determiners and possessives in the noun phrase. We have
seen that the restrictions imposed by the languages are not the same. Another advan-
tage of a comparative approach is that it can tell us something about the status of