Polish Descriptive Grammar II 3003-13A2GO

Practice classes in inflectional morphology deal with the following topics:
1. Subject-matter of inflectional morphology. Functions of inflectional constructions (semantic, syntactic). Inflection vs. syntax.
2. Various meanings of the notion of wyraz («word»): słowo (word in the text), forma wyrazowa (word form, grammatical form), leksem (lexeme). Definition of lexeme.
3. Polish systems of dividing lexemes into parts of speech.
4. Controversial issues of lexeme classification (i.a. pronouns, particles, numerals, adverbs).
5. Structure of inflectional constructions: stem, inflectional marker.
6. Synthetic, agglutinative and analytic constructions.
7. Morphonological alternations. Morphonology.
8. Polish as an inflectional language. The problem of homonymy of inflectional forms. The notion of syncretism.
9. The notions of: grammatical category, values of grammatical categories. Criteria of division and typology of grammatical categories. Structure of grammatical categories: marked and unmarked element.
10. Grammatical categories of nouns, and values thereof (functional characteristics). Case. Number. Gender. Gender classification of nouns.
11. Noun declension. Criteria of repartition of common-function endings. Substantival pronouns.
12. Grammatical categories of adjectives, and values thereof (functional characteristics). The problem of degree.
13. Grammatical categories of numerals, and values thereof (functional characteristics). Borders of the class of lexemes. (types of numerals. So-called cardinal and collective numerals, range of usage).
14. Grammatical categories of verbs, and values thereof (functional characteristics: primary and secondary functions). Person, tense, mood, aspect, number, gender. The problem of voice. Regular verbs and predicatives (classification of predicatives).
15. Verbal paradigm. Non-personal forms of verbs and their function. The problem of participles. Rules of participles formation. Aspect vs. inventory of verb forms.

Practice classes in syntax deal with the following topics:

1. Subject-matter of syntax. Utterance vs. sentence, announcement, notification.
2. Analysis of simple sentences according to Klemensiewicz.
3. Obligatory elements of an utterance. The notion of constituent.
4. Immediate constituents analysis. Various types of dependency: the notions of co-ordinateness, subordinateness and inclusion.
5. The notion of syntactic relation: agreement, government. Accommodation. Accommodation properties of lexemes and Word forms. Detailed issues: subject–verb agreement, numeral phrases, prepositions.
6. Connotation. Connotation properties of lexemes an word forms. Structure of sentences. Basic connotation pattern. Sentence schemata.
7. Boundaries of a complex sentence. Semantically complex structures expressed by a simple sentence.
8. Group vs. sentence. Classification of syntactic groups in Polish.
9. Types of paratactic sentences.
10. Types of hypotactic sentences (Klemensiewicz and modern approaches).

Practice classes are accompanied by course lectures in inflectional morphology (winter semester) and syntax (summer semester). The lectures cover the following topics:

Winter semester – INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY
1. Morphology as a branch of linguistics. Morpheme and types of morphemes. Differences between inflectional and derivational morphemes as a basis for the division of morphology into inflection and derivation. Morphological alternations. Morphology vs. lexicology (creation of new lexemes – simple signs) and syntax (creation of sentences – complex signs, cf. Bühler; e Saussure). Lexeme as a collection of word forms. Wyraz «word» as seen from the phonological, orthographic, textual, grammatical and lexical perspective.

2. The notion of grammatical category (various approaches). Inflectional categories (modulus) and classifying categories (selective); semantic and syntactic. The notion of parts of speech. Various criteria of dividing Polish lexemes into parts of speech; practical application of the criteria. Examples of divisions of Polish lexemes into parts of speech: so-called “school approach”, T. Milewski, Z. Saloni, R. Laskowski.

3. Constraints of the “school approach”. Characteristics of individual parts of speech as presented at school.

4. Case (semantic and syntactic approach). The repartition of inflectional endings within the noun and adjective declension. Inflectional characteristics of nouns. Peculiarities in noun declension.

5. Gender in Polish. Gender as classifying (selective) category or as inflectional category (proposals put forward by: S. Szober, W. Doroszewski, Z. Klemensiewicz, W. Mańczak, Z. Saloni).

6. Number as classifying (selective) category and as inflectional category. Pluralia and singularia tantum. The number of adjectives, numerals and pronouns.

7. Verbal categories: person, tense, aspect. Various approaches and controversial issues. The problem of voice (active, passive, reflexive). Examples of neutralization of verbal categories.

8. Forms of verbs. Traditional division into four conjugations. Division of verbs into thematic groups.

9. Uninflected parts of speech – morphological features.

10. Inflectional analysis of utterances – controversial issues.

Summer semester – SYNTAX
1. Syntax within the language system.
a) Subject-matter of syntax.
b) Text, speech act, utterance, sentence.
c) Analysis and synthesis of an utterance.
d) Endocentric and exocentric constructions as an object of syntactic analysis.

2. Semantic structure of an utterance
a) Predicate-argument structure.
b) Referential characteristics.
c) Modality.
d) Theme-rheme structure.
e) Temporal and spatial characteristics.
f) Semantic cohesion exponents.

3. Methods of syntactic research
a) Intuitive method.
b) Formal-logical method (traditional or school approach).
c) Distributional method.
d) Immediate constituents.
e) Transformational method.

4. Syntactic group (phrase)
a) Constituent as the smallest element of syntactic analysis.
b) The core of a syntactic relation.
c) Co-ordinate and subordinate relations.
d) Types of phrases with respect to the constitutive element of a syntactic group (verba, nominal phrase etc.).
e) Analysis into immediate constituents.

5. Connotation and valency
a) The notion of connotation, types thereof.
b) Avalent, monovalent, divalent, trivalent and tetravalent verbs.
c) Minimal phrase.
d) Sentence schemata of the contemporary written Polish.
6. Accommodation
a) The notion of accommodation, types thereof.
b) Accommodation properties of Polish lexemes.
c) Accommodation relations between:
- the subject and the verbal predicate
- the subject and the nominal predicate
- noun and adjective
- noun and numeral

7. Accommodation relations within various syntactic groups
a) analysis of numeral groups;
b) characteristics of prepositional expressions;
c) accommodation within complex sentences;
d) unaccommodated elements.

8. The school approach to simple sentences
a) Constituents and additional syntactic determinants;
b) Syntactic functions (subject, predicate, complement, attribute, adverbial).
c) Agreement, government and adjacency.
d) Graphs of syntactic relations in simple sentences (trees).

9. The school approach to complex sentences
a) S. Szober’s proposals of notation of the results of syntactic analysis;
b) Step-like graphs by Z. Klemensiewicz;
c) Double determinants of connection;
d) Notation of interjections;
e) Notation of participial relative clauses;
f) Utterances impossible to be presented on a step-like graph.

10. Syntactic analysis of utterances – controversial issues.