Determiners and possessives in Old English and Polish 253
are amply represented in the corpora in unmarked word order, which suggests that
they are natural constructions in these languages. It is difficult to notice any grammati-
cal restrictions that would limit the distribution of these sequences.
- Variant II: Possessive-Determiner
Possessive-determiner constructions are less known in the literature and are often
treated as variants of determiner-possessive combinations. One language that we can
mention in this context is Modern Greek:
(17) to oreo mou to vivlio
the good my the book
‘my good book’
(Giusti 1997: I)
(18) *mou to oreo to vivlio
my the good the book
‘my good book’
As noted by Giusti (1997), such constructions are only possible when to does not
immediately follow mou (cf. Section 4 on discontinuous constructions). Thus the situ-
ation is slightly different from what we can observe in Old English and Polish examples
given below.
Old English possessive-determiner sequences have not been analysed in the
literature with the exception of Allen (2006) and Bartnik (2007), who have shown
that they have interesting properties that are very different from the reverse order.
Allen (2006), for instance, noticed that variant II is a native construction found more
commonly than variant I in a variety of texts. In her texts Allen (2006) found 215
examples of a determiner following a possessive in the noun phrase. Bartnik (2007)
found 326 examples of this combination in his corpus research. Some examples are
given below:
(19) He sealde his þone reada
he give.past 3 sg his the.sg.acc.m red.sg.acc.m
gim, þæt wæs his þæt
gem.sg.acc.m that was his that.sg.nom.n
halige blod
holy.sg.nom.n blood.sg.n.nom
‘He gave his red gem that was his holy blood.’
(coblick,HomU18[BlHom_1]:9.125.121)