Przyczyny i skutki zmian składniowych polskich czasowników
The causes and the results of the syntactic changes of Polish verbs

Summary/Abstract: The introduction discusses the problems associated with the establishment of the cause-and-effect relationship; the convoluted chain of causes and results, including conditions, is illustrated by the example of the verb {konać} ‘to die, pass away.’ Being aware of the mutual determination of the cause and result, the author later takes into consideration the cause and the result they deem the most important. The composition of the text reflects the author’s attitude toward the relation between semantics and syntax of verbs. The changes of syntax may not affect the meaning; in this context one may speak about restricting variantivity (e.g. {karać kogo z czego/ w czym/ za co/ prze(z) co} ‘to punish sb for doing sth’, with only the phrase za co being used contemporarily). The second type of the changes of valency is correlated with the change of meaning. The demonstrated changes stemming from the nature of event-based arguments involve the specialization of a certain type of argument leading either to its incorporation (cf. the former {bluźnić Polskę, rozumowi, nauce, prawdzie, prawu, powagom;} today {bluźnić} with the incorporated elements Boga, świętości), or to the inclusion of one of the arguments of an event to the valency-based model, e.g. {żądać cierpienia} (x Ѵ Z) → ‘to demand something from someone’: X Ѵ Z y). The author does not intend to furnish a description of syntactic changes within a given temporal frame but to make an attempt at understanding the mechanism of syntactic changes.

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