Can Polish -no/-to Demote Discourse-Prominent Referents? Corpus Data vs. Acceptability

Abstract

Most human impersonal constructions can either refer to demoted referents or demote a previously discourse-prominent referent. According to Bunčić (2019), however, the Polish ‑no/‑to construction cannot be used to demote a topical referent. This paper reports the results of a corpus study and two acceptability judgement tests. While the corpus data indicate that the construction is indeed avoided in this context, the acceptability judgement tests show that the construction is not rated worse in this context than in others. Clearly, ‑no/‑to after a coreferential noun phrase is a case of a completely acceptable expression that nonetheless is avoided in favour of other expressions in language practice.

Keywords

• discourse prominence
• impersonal constructions
• human impersonal pronouns
• acceptability
• frequency
• givenness