Are Dispositional Adjectives a Case of Transposition? – Semantic Effects of -liw(y) Attachment to Verbal Bases in Polish
Are Dispositional Adjectives a Case of Transposition? – Semantic Effects of -liw(y) Attachment to Verbal Bases in Polish

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents the constraints on the formation of dispositional adjectives in Polish marked with the suffix -liw(y) and situates the process in a larger-scale picture of the entire class of deverbal adjectivizations. Derivatives with dispositional semantics are argued to be a subclass of Subject adjectivizations/potential adjectives since both are one-participant eventualities, the sole participant being mapped onto the subject position of the main verb. The difference between dispositional and potential semantics is not categorical but a matter of degree. The domain of this process includes intransitive verbs of communication and emission, reflexively marked intransitive verbs referring to emotional states (deponents), (reflexively marked) decausatives, verbs denoting psychological/emotional/mental experiences which syntactically may be transitive but can be viewed as one-participant internal eventualities, non-prototypical transitive verbs which take genitive- and dative-marked objects and verbal roots which alternate between transitive and middle semantics. The dispositional semantics of the adjective depends on the personal/animate or inanimate nature of the participant involved in the eventuality. Thus, it rests with the base (or partly with the nominal argument) and is not supplied by the suffix.

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