68 Anna Bondaruk
Since it is not the main concern of this paper to analyse the structure and deriva-
tion of predicational and specificational clauses in Polish, in this section we will only
outline the structural analysis of sentences of this type without commenting on all the
details of this analysis (for a detailed study of these two sentence types cf. Bondaruk
2013 a, b).
We assume that both predicational to być clauses and the specificational ones have
the following underlying structure, partly adopted from Citko (2008).^9(i) Wróg swojegoi sąsiada to było [każde
enemy.nom own.gen neighbour cop was every
państwo w Europie]i
c ount r y.nom in Europe
‘*The enemy of its neighbour was every country in Europe.’
As far as extraction is concerned, it is possible to extract from the post-copular element
provided the extracted material lands to the right of the inverted predicate, not to its left, as
the contrast between (ii) and (iii) makes it clear:
(ii) Jak myślisz przyczyna zamieszek
what think. 2 sg cause riots.gen
o czymi to był artykuł ti?
about what cop was article
‘*What do you think the cause of the riots was an article about?’
(iii) *Jak myślisz o czymi przyczyna zamieszek
what think.2sg about what cause riots.gen
to był artykuł ti?
cop was article
‘*What do you think the cause of the riots was an article about?’
The extracted wh-phrase occupies a [Spec, FocP] position and since the focus follows the
topic (cf. Rizzi 1997), it is natural to conclude from the fact that the inverted predicate must
precede, not follow, the wh-phrase, that it sits in [Spec, TopP], not in [Spec, TP]. Although
native speaker’s judgements concerning the grammaticality of sentences such as (i)-(iii) vary,
there are some for whom these sentences are (at least marginally) acceptable.- DP is used here to stand for any type of nominal expression and bears no theoretical
significance.