258 Artur Bartnik
(29) Podobno Józio Cz. jest “także” homoseksualistą
supposedly Józio Cz. is ‘also’ gay
i stąd jego ta przyjaźń z młodym Rudnickim.
and thus his this friendship with young Rudnicki
‘Supposedly, Józio Cz. is ‘also’ gay and thus this friendship with the young
Rudnicki’
(IJPPAN_k123346, Maria Dąbrowska 2009: 13, ‘Dzienniki tom 3 cz 1’)(30) Czy pan się swoją tą wiedzą
whether you (sir) RFL your own this knowledge
z kimś dzielił?
with somebody shared.past 3 sg
‘have you shared your knowledge with somebody?’
(IPIPAN_7121003000021, commission of inquiry, 2nd of April 2003, the
Chancellery of the Sejm)
There are a few observations to be made with respect to the figures and examples above.
First, the possessive-determiner pattern is severely restricted in Polish. In the face of
a relatively large corpus, the number of tokens in Polish is very small. This is very dif-
ferent from what we find in Old English, where possessive-determiner combinations
are even more common than the reverse order. Second, the combinations are possible
only with ten, ta, to. Therefore, sequences such as *mój tamten ‘my that’, *twój tamten
‘your that’ are ruled out. Possibly, this is a universal restriction that only certain types of
determiners can appear in such constructions, as supported by Old English data. Third,
in Old English possessive-determiner patterns had to appear with adjectives. In Polish
there is no such obligation but the sequences are restricted in another way. The exam-
ples that we found appear most commonly in spoken and informal registers or types
of texts that resemble spoken language such as transcripts (cf. Examples (25) and (30)).
Topolińska (1984) treats possessive-determiner constructions as sequences with
an inverted order in which elements from group I such as ten, ta, to swap their place
with elements from group II such as possessives mój, twój ‘my, your’, though, as we
have already mentioned, she does not explicitly quote such examples (instead she
gives examples with adjectives, residents of group II). She argues that these combina-
tions are used for emphasis or for anaphoric reasons. Indeed, when we consider Polish
examples, it seems that what is stressed is the first element in the noun phrase, i. e.
the possessive. The emphasis can also be achieved graphically by separation of a given
chunk or element by punctuation (cf. Topolińska 1984: 386). Consider:
(31) Poznaj Ingę, moją tę narzeczoną
meet Inga.sg.acc.f my.sg.acc.f this.sg.acc.f fiancée.sg.acc.f
‘meet Inga, my fiancée’
(PWN_2002000000144, Janusz Głowacki 1997: 1, ‘Rose Café i inne
opowieści’)