Polish equatives as symmetrical structures 75
of DP be 3rd person”. When applied to Polish copular clauses, Richards’ formulation
of the PCC implies that the pre-copular DPs in to-predicational clauses must be 3rd
person only. In the literature, it has been demonstrated that the PCC seems to hold in
a broad range of structures, including: (1) dative experiencer structures with an abso-
lutive theme in Basque (Rezac 2008); (2) Icelandic applicative unaccusatives (Boeckx
2000 ; Anagnostopoulou 2003); (3) ay-inversion and long distance extraction in Taga-
log (Richards 2005); (4) some Spanish constructions with dative experiencer subjects
and nominative objects (Rivero 2004); and (5) English existential expletive structures
(Richards 2008).
In line with Bondaruk (2012, 2013b), I take the PCC to be an instance of Multiple
Agree (cf. Hiraiwa 2002), where one probe targets two (or more) goals. In the case of
predicational clauses such as (20) and (21), the multiple probe is T which targets two
goals, i.e. both the subject and the predicate. Following Rezac (2008), Bondaruk (2012,
2013b) argues that in to-predicational clauses T probes separately for person on the
one hand, and number and gender on the other, which is schematised in (24) below.
(24) T DP1 DP2
*1st/2nd person, ok 3rd person, number, gender
3rd person, number,
gender
The analysis outlined in (24) predicts that whenever the two DPs on both sides of the
copula differ in the person feature, a mismatch arises in the person feature of T and
one of the DPs, which results in a crash and is responsible for the PCC effect. The
details of this account are not essential for the discussion carried out in this paper
and therefore will not be further elaborated on. However, the mechanism of Multiple
Agree, underlying the PCC-effect, is crucial for the further argumentation and will
play a decisive role in determining the structural analysis for equatives presented
further in the paper.
In contradistinction to to-predicational sentences, equative copular sentences
with the pronominal copula to in Polish, are not subject to the person restriction just
described. This is illustrated in (25) and (26), where the pre-copular element is, respec-
tively, 1st or 2nd person.
(25) Ja to ty.
I.nom cop you.nom
‘I am you.’
(26) Wy to my.
you.pl.nom cop we.nom
‘You are we.’