On pre-nominal classifying adjectives in Polish 235
b. zręczny chirurg
skillful surgeon
‘skillful surgeon’
(28) a. przyszły prezydent
future president
‘future president’
b. była żona
former wife
‘ex-wife’
Classifying adjectives in Polish usually follow the head nouns (as was demonstrated in
Section 2). In such a position they are expected to modify the whole of the [N+Num]
complex. In order to predict that post-nominal CAs modify the N alone (in a whole-
to-whole manner), Cetnarowska, Pysz and Trugman (2011a,b) propose that post-head
CAs merge with non-atomized nouns. Semantic Number is later assigned to the whole
N+CA complex predicate, referred to as a ‘tight unit’ by CPT (2011a,b), e.g. [foka
szara]N in (29a), or [mundur strażacki]N in (29b).
(29) a. foka szara
seal grey
‘a grey seal’
b. mundur strażacki
uniform fireman.adj
‘a fireman’s uniform’
c. samochód ciężarowy
car cargo.adj
‘a truck’
d. kolega szkolny
mate school.adj
‘a schoolmate’
It is argued for by Cetnarowska & Trugman (2012) that tight units denote sets of
individuals which have the property of being N and being Adj, although they do not
need to be intersective proper, as they are often non-entailing.^12 When classifying
adjectives occur in the pre-head position, they modify a part of the [N+Num] complex
but establish a whole-to-whole relation with a N, as in (30).
- As is pointed out by Cetnarowska & Trugman (2012), panda wielka ‘giant panda’ is not
necessarily big. Similarly, not all individuals referred to as foki szare ‘grey seals’ are grey, since
the pups have white fur while older males have dark (nearly black) fur.