Polish Predicational Clauses with the Preposition z ‘of’
Polish Predicational Clauses with the Preposition z ‘of’

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims at providing a syntactic analysis of one minor type of predicational clauses in Polish in which the logical subject figures as a complement of the preposition z ‘of’, whereas the predicate is marked for the nominative case. The theoretical model used here is the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (2000, 2001, 2008). Z-predicational sentences have not been systematically analysed so far and the only available analysis, that of Hentschel (2001), concentrates on determining the restrictions on the type of the PP complement and the nominative DP as well as on discovering the grammatical subject of this type of sentence. It is argued in the paper that the prepositional complement in the clauses under consideration tends to be definite and referential, while the nominative DP must always be indefinite and non-referential. Based on agreement and control, it has been demonstrated that it is the nominative DP that acts as a grammatical subject in this type of copular clauses. Moreover, this DP is always targeted for Agree by T and ends up in the canonical subject position, i.e. Spec, TP. Whenever the PP precedes the subject, it is topicalised and hence moved to Spec, CP. The different positions of the PP and the DP with respect to each other underline their different information structure in the given sentences.

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