Determiners and possessives in Old English and Polish 259
As shown by (31), possessive-determiner sequences can be appositive in nature.
Turning to anaphoric contexts, we observe a frequent use of ten, though normally
its use in the noun phrase is not obligatory. In our combinations we also find ana-
phoric uses of ten. One example is given below:
(32) Miałam jakąś nadzieję,
have.past 1 sg.f some.sg.acc.f hope.sg.acc.f,
pamiętam, że któryś z nich musi być dobry [...]
remember.pres 1 sg that one of them must be good [...]
A oni od razu wyczuli moją
but they immediately sense.past 3 pl mysg.acc.f
tę nadzieję na ich dobroć
this.sg.acc.f hope.sg.acc.f for their goodness
‘I was hoping, I remember, that one of them must be good [...]
but they immediately sensed my hope for their goodness’
(IJPPAN_k123072, Tamara Bołdak-Janowska 1998: 2, ‘Rytmy polskie i
niepolskie: opowiadań naiwnych ciąg dalszy’)
To sum up this section of the paper, we can see that there are some similarities and
differences between possessive-determiner constructions in Old English and Polish.
First, these combinations are restricted, though the nature of these restrictions is dif-
ferent. In Old English they were used only with adjectives, while in Polish they are
limited quantitatively and used only in informal Polish. Only certain types of deter-
miners are used in these constructions in Polish, Old English and, possibly, in any
language allowing such patterns. In both languages the sequence seems to represent
a marked order: while in Old English the adjective seems to be emphasised (cf. Allen
2006 : 159), in Polish the possessive is stressed. Apposition and separating certain ele-
ments by punctuation in Polish also suggest emphasis.
Now let us turn to a consideration of sequences in which determiners and posses-
sives appear in non-adjacent configurations.
- Possessives and determiners in non-adjacent configurations
As already signalled by the Greek examples in (17) and (18), possessives and deter-
miners can appear in non-adjacent configurations. In this section we want to show
further differences between variants I and II in Polish and Old English in the light of
non-adjacent sequences of possessives and determiners.
Recall that we ascribed a special status to adjectives in possessive-determiner
sequences in Old English. In non-adjacent configurations their complement status
seems to be supported by the following example: