The rise of the WZIĄĆ (TAKE) Serial Verb Construction in Polish

  • Alexander Andrason Faculty of Humanities, University of Cape Town, South Africa
  • Małgorzata Gębka-Wolak Department of Polish Language, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland https://orcid.org/
  • Andrzej Moroz Department of Polish Language, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland https://orcid.org/
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5842/65-1-967
Keywords: Serial verb constructions, take verbs, grammaticalization, Polish

Abstract

The present study is dedicated to the emergence of an asymmetrical serial verb construction (SVC) with the verb wziąć in Polish. By making use of a dynamic prototype-driven approach to linguistic categorization and by reviewing the historical corpora that range from the first Old Polish texts in the 14th c. until the end of the New Polish period in 1939, the authors conclude that the wziąć SVC has resulted from the fusion of the original conjunctively coordinated (CC) clauses. Although two types of clause-fusion mechanisms have operated during the grammaticalization of the wziąć SVCs, their contribution to this process has been dissimilar. The evolution from the syndetic CC with the coordinator i to the wziąć SVC via a pseudo-coordinated (PC) stage (i.e., the wziąć-i PC) has constituted a faster and stronger drift, while the more direct evolution originating in the asyndetic CC with wziąć has been slower and less pervasive.

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Published
2022-12-31
How to Cite
Andrason, A., Gębka-Wolak, M., & Moroz, A. (2022). The rise of the WZIĄĆ (TAKE) Serial Verb Construction in Polish. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 65(1), 11-36. https://doi.org/10.5842/65-1-967
Issue
Vol. 65 (2022): The rise and fall of Serial Verb Constructions
Section
Part 1: Diachronic evidence

Copyright (c) 2022 Alexander Andrason, Małgorzata Gębka-Wolak, Andrzej Moroz

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