COŚ TU NIE PASUJE? O NOWYCH UŻYCIACH CZASOWNIKA PASOWAĆ
Something Does Not Fit Here? On New Uses of the Verb pasować (Fit)

Summary/Abstract: The subject of the description in the article is constructions including forms of the verb PASOWAĆ (fit) connected with an infinitive. Ability to connect with an infinitive is an innovation, still unrecognized in dictionaries, yet, quite numerous in contemporary Polish texts, especially on the internet. The aim of the research is to characterize inflectional and syntactic qualities of the unit PASOWAĆ, as well as to find out if its new uses can be interpreted as one of the units described in dictionaries, which developed its syntactic ability to connect or whether a new lexeme needs to be distinguished. Grammatical description is accompanied by remarks on the meaning of the unit. The analysis is conducted according to methods created by Polish structuralism. The research leads to the conclusion that, in contemporary Polish texts, one can identify occurrences of a form belonging to two verbal lexemes PASOWAĆ followed by an infinitive. The first lexeme, marked as PASOWAĆ, is the proper verb, synonymous to the unit ODPOWIADAĆ (suit), see: pasuje mi/odpowiada mi przyjść o piątej (it suits me fine to come at five). The infinitive following PASOWAĆ" is a positional equivalent of a noun in the first declination case, i.e. receives the position of a sentence subject. The second lexeme, marked as PASOWAĆ", is an improper verb, and its meaning comes close to the meaning of the verbs NALEŻEĆ, TRZEBA (have to, should). In the forms of the verb PASOWAĆ", the infinitive is equivalent to a clause with the connector ¿eby (so that).

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