English-Polish Contrastive Grammar 7
NP: Structural contrasts
Word order
The basic word-order in the English NP is as follows ( the star after a term means `any number of'):
(Detve) (Quantifier) (AdjP* ) N PP*/Clause
the three fat cats of Mary's/on the roof
these two beautiful, intelligent Spanish girls in the picture
the false belief that the world is flat
The basic word-order in Polish is the same, except that a lexical genitive/possessive phrase follows rather than precedes the head noun and adjective modifiers occur both pre- and postnominally in Polish in reflection of their semantic status, as discussed below.
Lexical genitives in English and Polish NPs
In Polish, the genitive case-marked dependent of the noun normally follows the noun when it is a lexical NP (sometimes even two such dependents can follow the noun):
ta ostatnia powieść Pilcha : Pilch's latest novel
tłumaczenie wiersza Szymborskiej Barańczaka : Barańczak's translation of Szymborska's poem'
In English, nominal dependents marked with the clitic precede the noun:
the city's destruction : *?miasta zburzenie
Premodifiers
In Polish, the elements that precede the noun all agree with it in case and gender and many also in number. In English, only some determinatives are number-sensitive (e.g. this new book vs. these new books):
(Dem./indefinite pronoun/possessive adj.) (Quantifier) (descriptive Adj*) N
te/jakieś/pewne/moje trzy mądre psy
In English, an adjectival modifier preceding the noun cannot itself be postmodified or complemented. There is no such restriction in Polish:
a man proud of his success/*a proud of his success man
człowiek dumny ze swych osiągnięć/dumny ze swych osiągnięć człowiek
a bag full of sweets/*a full of sweets bag
torebka pełna cukierków/pełna cukierków torebka
Postmodifiers and complements
Postmodifiers include PPs and clauses in both languages. In Polish, the noun is followed by a classificatory adjective modifier. Certain adjectives can also follow nouns in English and in such a case they are analysed as predicative rather than attributive. In contrast to Polish, English nouns are preceded rather than followed by classificatory adjectives, e.g. nuclear physics, country music, vegetarian food :
Polish
N (classifying Adj) PP/Clause
restauracja wegetariańska na ul. Floriańskiej
propozycja, żeby odwołać kuratora
English: postnominal adjective modifier
the people present/responsible
Revision (1)
Fill each of the blanks with an appropriate linguistic term so as to make a true statement:
The reclassification of a noun like beer used in the plural (e.g. Two beers, please!) indicates a change from a noun denoting .............................. to a noun denoting ............................... .
Nouns like honesty, energy and progress are........................................ nouns. In English such nouns do not normally have number contrast.
Nouns like scissors and trousers are classified as.........................................nouns.
Nouns like team, government and family are referred to as ........................................... .
A(n).................................. adjective is one following a copula verb.
The genitive in the student from London's friends is referred to as ...................................... .
The morphological process accompanying borrowing that is involved in borrowings like dżinsy and komandosi is referred to as ..................................... .
The morphological process involved in the formation of kiełbacha based on kiełbasa is known as ................................................. .
The Polish Tok szoł can be classified as............................................as far as the medium through which it has entered Polish is concerned.
The process responsible for the change of the vowel phoneme in feed (derived from food) is known as...............................................
Befsztyk is an example of a(n)............................... English borrowing into Polish.
The morphological process deriving znajomy (N) from znajomy (Adj) is referred to as ........................................ .
In We had lots of sea and sun, sea and sun are used as ..........................................nouns .
The inflectional pattern/paradigm that is based on the category of case is called ................................................ ..
The semantic relationship between the English word eventually and the Polish ewentualnie is classified as .......................................... .
Indicate if the following are true or false by filling T or F, respectively in the brackets provided. If you answer F, correct the sentence so that it expresses a true generalization:
[ ] Systematic comparisons between languages came into being at the beginning of 20th century.
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[ ] The division of languages into those with a dominant vocalic system and those with a dominant consonantal system illustrates a typological difference between languages.
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[ ] In a language with agglutinative morphology, a word typically consists of more than one morpheme. The boundaries between morphemes are not clear-cut and morphemes usually do not have invariant shapes.
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[ ] Infixation is equally unproductive in English and Polish.
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[ ] Most English borrowings into Polish are nouns.
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[ ] English does not have agglutinative morphology.
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[ ] The Polish happy end is an example of an English loanword/borrowing.
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[ ] All sound-alikes and look-alikes in English and Polish are false friends.
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[ ] The semantic relation between the members of the pair of false friends parasol in English and parasol in Polish is exclusiveness.
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[ ] With respect to inflection, English and Polish have exactly the same types of affixes.
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