Funktionen attributiver Adjektive im Polnischen: Zwei Prototypenmodelle.

Clasmeier, Christina

Abstract

In Polish, the qualifying or classifying function of an attributive adjective is known to influence word order in the noun phrase. Based on Krasnowolski (1909) it is generally assumed that qualifying adjectives precede their nouns whereas classifying ones follow them. However, linguistic analyses indicate that difficulties arise with the semantically based definition of the terms “qualifying” and “classifying” as well as with the rule formulated by Krasnowolski. Therefore, this paper presents an alternative approach to the binary distinction between the two adjectival functions. I suggest capturing them by prototype models, which can account for typical as well as less typical instantiations. To this purpose, I add morphological and syntactic features to Krasnowolskis primarily semantic definition. Furthermore, the differentiation of more or less prototypical qualifying or classifying adjectival functions is expected to correlate with lower or higher variability of word order in the respective noun phrase, as observed by corpus analyses.