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Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, Vol. 65, 2022, 11-36
doi: 10.5842/65-1-967
The rise of the WZIĄĆ (TAKE) Serial Verb Construction in Polish
Alexander Andrason
Faculty of Humanities, University of Cape Town, South Africa
E-mail: aleksand@hi.is
Małgorzata Gębka-Wolak
Department of Polish Language, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland
E-mail: mge@umk.pl
Andrzej Moroz
Department of Polish Language, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland
E-mail: amoroz@umk.pl
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.
Keywords: Serial verb constructions; take verbs; grammaticalization; Polish
1. Introduction
The present article studies the emergence of a serialized construction built around the minor
(and construction-first, i.e., V1) verb wziąć lit. ‘take’ in Polish. Specifically, we verify whether
this serial verb construction (SVC) results from the fusion of conjunctive coordinated (CC)
clauses, syndetic and/or asyndetic, which constitute the two most likely scenarios that have
been hypothesized in scholarly literature (Andrason 2018a; 2018a; 2019b). To do so, we trace
the attestations of the various constructions built around the verb wziąć – whether coordinated
(syndetic and asyndetic), pseudo-coordinated (the so-called wziąć-i PC, lit. ‘take and’), or
serialized (the wziąć SVC) – from the earliest texts in the 14th. c. until the end of the so-called
12 Andrason, Gębka-Wolak & Moroz
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New Polish period in 1939. In our analysis we make use of a dynamic, prototype-driven
approach to linguistic categorization (Andrason 2016a) and thus the three categories
distinguished, i.e., conjunctive coordination, pseudo-coordination, and serial verb construction
(Haspelmath 2004; 2007; Aikhenvald 2006; 2011; 2018; Dixon 2006; and Andrason 2018a;
2019a; 2019b).
In order to achieve our goal, we structure the article in the following manner: in section 2, we
familiarize the reader with the previous hypotheses regarding the origin of the wziąć SVC and
explain the theoretical framework underlying our research. In section 3, we introduce original
diachronic evidence. In section 4, we evaluate this evidence within the adopted framework and
answer the research question. Section 5 concludes the study.
2. Background
2.1 Literature review
The origin of the wziąć SVC has not been researched in detail.1 The only studies that overtly
deal with this issue draw their conclusions from a diachronic interpretation of synchronic data
(Andrason 2018a; 2019a) by making use of a method commonly referred to as ‘dynamization
of synchrony’ (cf. Croft 2003; Haspelmath 2003). Additionally, possible sources of the wziąć
SVC may be inferred by analogy to the origins proposed in a study dedicated to another, more
or less related, construction: the pójść SVC (Andrason 2018b). As is the case of research on
the wziąć SVC itself, the study discussing this other construction fails to support its hypotheses
with direct diachronic data, instead drawing on synchronic evidence (Andrason 2018b).
In the concluding parts of his articles dedicated to the wziąć SVC (2018a) and the wziąć-i PC
(2019a), Andrason proposes the following: the wziąć SVC derives from the wziąć-i PC, which
itself descends from a genuine syndetic CC pattern with the verb wziąć used as the predicate
in the first conjunct clause (Andrason 2019a:185-186; see also Andrason 2018a:606; 622-623).
Andrason supports his proposal by four, closely related arguments: the synchronous presence
of the three construction types built around the verb wziąć in modern Polish (i.e., CC, PC, and
SVC; Andrason 2018a; 2019a); the “plottability” of these three variants into a coherent
semantic map and the widely accepted diachronic foundation of such maps (cf. Haspelmath
2003; Janda 2015; Andrason 2016a); the soundness of the diachronic path regulating the life
of coordination-based SVCs proposed in typological studies, according to which the map of
the three wziąć constructions has been plotted (cf. Aikhenvald 2011; 2018; see section 2.2
below); and the robust, cross-linguistically pervasive principles of grammaticalization that
explain the changes observed in the constructions located in different sections of this map (cf.
Hopper & Traugott 2003). Under this proposal, a bi-verbal, bi-event, bi-clausal, and bi-
predicative structure – i.e., two clauses coordinated by a canonical coordinator i ‘and’ – has
enhanced its cohesiveness by acquiring a mono-event, mono-predicative, and mono-clausal
1 However, the research on the bi-verbal constructions with the verb wziąć (including the wziąć SVC), especially
with regard to the semantic-pragmatic characteristics of their imperative variants, has a long tradition in Polish,
as illustrated by the following works presented by Bąba & Mikołajczyk (1974), Perczyńska (1975), Bartmiński
(1978), Śledź (2001), Królak & Rudnicka (2006), Komorowska (2008), Góralczyk (2010), Gębka-Wolak (2012),
Bańko (2012), and Zinken (2013). For a more detailed review of these studies and their respective analyses of the
patterns built around the verb wziąć, consult Andrason (2018a; 2019a). Concerning the equivalents of the wziąć
PC and SVC, in other Slavonic languages, especially Russian, i.e., the so-called “vzjat’ constructions” (Weiss
2007), consult Fortuin (2000), Kor Chahine (2007), Weiss (2003; 2007; 2008; 2012), and Nau et al. (2019).
Regarding serial and/or double verb constructions in Russian more generally, see also Weiss (2000; 2012; 2013a;
2013b).
The WZIĄĆ Serial Verb Construction in Polish 13
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profile (Andrason 2019a:186). As the element i has been preserved, although not as a
coordinator but rather as a “dummy” junction, the resulting structure is a PC.2 Subsequently,
with the further increase of cohesiveness and the loss of the juncture i, the construction has
acquired the status of a canonical SVC (for details see Andrason 2018a:606, 611, 622-623;
2019a:184-186).
An alternative origin of serial verbs in Polish is suggested by Andrason (2018b) in relation to
the pójść SVC, i.e., a serializing pattern built around the perfective verb pójść ‘go’ as its minor
verb. By extension, this hypothesis could also apply to the wziąć SVC. To be exact, the pójść
SVC may have originated from an asyndetic CC structure. It would thus derive from
constructions in which the first conjunct, i.e., the one containing the verb pójść, was followed
by the second verbal conjunct without the intermediacy of any linking element (Andrason
2018b:41-43). Of course, the pseudo-coordinated variant (i.e., the pójść-i PC) would, as in the
proposal discussed in the paragraphs above, descend from the syndetic CC with i. As was the
case of the wziąć SVC, Andrason arrives at his hypothesis by drawing on the dynamic map of
the constructions built around the verb pójść (i.e., the pójść SVC, pójść-i PC, and genuine CC
with pójść) and thus variation in uses and forms attested synchronically in modern Polish.3
Additionally, in his 2019 study, in two footnotes at the end of the article, Andrason considers
another scenario, namely the development of the wziąć-i PC from the wziąć SVC through the
introduction of the junction i by analogy to other pseudo-coordinated constructions built around
motion verbs. This scenario, however, is, in Andrason’s (2019a:186) view, implausible. First,
it would violate the principle of unidirectionality of grammaticalization: that is, a construction
that corresponds to a more advanced grammaticalization stage (SVC) – both morphologically
and syntactically – would give rise to a construction reflecting a lesser extent of
grammaticalization (PC). Second, the hypothesized evolution would violate the connectivity
principle of the synchronic mapping: at certain times in the history of the wziąć constructions,
the variants compatible with the initial stage (CC) and the final stage (SVC) would have been
grammatical and productive, whereas the variant corresponding to the intermediate stage (PC)
would have been ungrammatical. Third, the PC and the SVC built around the verb wziąć are
the most common and the most grammaticalized among all types of pseudo-coordinated and
serialized constructions found in Polish (see Andrason 2018a; 2018b; Gębka-Wolak & Moroz
2021). Therefore, “it is unlikely that the juncture-free patterns would develop a juncture under
the pressure of other, less common, less productive, and more restricted serializing patterns”
(Andrason 2019a:186).
To conclude, out of the three hypotheses presented above, only the first two are, in our view,
plausible. Both imply a clause-fusion mechanism as the source of verbal serialization: (a)
syndetic CC with wziąć in the first clause and the coordinator i linking two verbal conjuncts
→ wziąć-i PC → wziąć SVC; (b) asyndetic CC with wziąć in the first clause → wziąć SVC.
Our study will determine whether the wziąć SVC has indeed emerged from clause fusion and
which one – if any – of the two specific clause-fusion mechanisms proposed is more probable
in light of direct diachronic evidence. However, before presenting the results of our empirical
research, we will explain in detail the framework that underlies our study.
2 Within the dynamic prototype-approach adopted by Andrason, pseudo-coordination is viewed as a non-canonical
SVC (Andrason 2018a; 2019a).
3 Similarities between Polish SVCs built around the verb pójść and other motion verbs, on the one hand, and
juxtaposition and thus asyndetic coordination, on the other hand, are also noted by Gębka-Wolak & Moroz (2021).
For more detailed analyses of serializing and/or pseudo-coordinated patterns built around motion verbs in Polish
consult Gębka-Wolak (2011:68-71; 2012:61), Gębka-Wolak & Moroz (2017; 2012), Andrason (2018b).
14 Andrason, Gębka-Wolak & Moroz
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2.2 Framework
As explained in the introduction section, in order to determine the source of the wziąć SVC
and, in particular, to verify whether this grammatical structure results from clause fusion, we
will trace the attestations of the various constructions built around the verb wziąć – whether
coordinated (syndetic and asyndetic), pseudo-coordinated, or serialized – in the available
Polish texts, from the Old Polish period in the 14th. c. until the end of the so-called New Polish
period in 1939. The critical task in our empirical research thus consists of classifying the
various uses of wziąć as instantiations of one of the three aforementioned construction types.
In this classification, we use a prototype-driven approach to linguistic categorization.
Accordingly, we understand each of the three categories as networks of more or less canonical
members organized around ideal prototypes. The prototype itself – the conceptual nucleus of
each category – is defined cumulatively as a set of cross-linguistically common and cognitively
salient properties.
With regard to the prototype of (clausal) CC, the works presented by Johannessen (1998),
Haspelmath (2004; 2007), and Andrason (2019a; 2019b) suggest the following: semantically,
CC is a relatively straightforward combination of the formative parts, its meaning thus being
compositional; the conjunctive coordinator used has a force equivalent to the operator ∧ in
Classical Logic and ∩ in Set Theory; conjuncts are separated intonationally (e.g. by a break,
pause, or contouring); the verbs found in each conjunct exhibits their own and potentially
distinct argument structure – this means that each conjoined verb may project its own subject
and object(s) and that the adjuncts used may operate over a single verbal conjunct only; the
verbs used in the conjuncts express independent events (e.g. consecutive or simultaneous) that
need not temporally and spatially overlap – as a result, the verbs can host different, even
opposite, TAM markers (this separate eventhood of each verb may be made overt with
operators of time, space, manner/means, and instrument binding each verb individually); the
conjuncts may have distinct polarity values and, when negated, each of them is marked by its
own negative morpheme; the order of the conjuncts may be reversed “with no implications for
the truth conditions of the sentence” (Andrason 2019a:166);4 the extraction of the argument or
adjunct elements governed by the second conjunct and their placement in front of the first
conjunct is ungrammatical unless these elements are also governed by the verb used in this first
clause; conjuncts may be modified by the quantifier ‘both’ and/or coordinated bi-syndetically,
conveying the sense equivalent to ‘both…and’ in English; when the CC sequence consists of
more than two conjuncts, “all coordinators can be omitted with the exception of the last one”
(ibid.); lastly, it is syntactically possible to replace the coordinator used in the construction by
other coordinators found in the same language, whether conjunctive, disjunctive, or
contrastive. The prototype of asyndetic CC exhibits identical properties with the exception of
those related to the coordinator, since this element is absent.
With regard to the SVC prototype, the seminal books and chapters authored by Aikhenvald
(2006; 2011; 2018), as well as works published by Muysken & Veenstra (1994), Dixon (2006),
Bisang (2009), and Andrason (2018a; 2019a), allow us to discern the following key properties:
similar to CCs, an SVC makes use of two finite verbs that can be employed as independent
lexical verbs outside the SVC itself;5 however, in contrast to CC, an SVC is not a direct
combination of the two verbs used but instead exhibits its own constructional meaning; the two
4 The regular exception is a consecutive type of coordination.
5 SVCs may also consist of more than two verbs (Aikhenvald 2006; 2018).
The WZIĄĆ Serial Verb Construction in Polish 15
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verbs are not linked by markers of syntactic dependency – this thus precludes the use of
conjunctive coordinators; the verbs are not marked by intonational phrasing and are not
separated by pause and/or contouring; duplicate roles that would be projected by each verb
separately are disallowed – instead, the construction exhibits a unitary argument structure, the
verbs sharing their external (subject) and/or internal (objects) arguments, as well as all the
adjuncts; the construction expresses a unitary event – the two verbs fail to be marked for
incompatible TAM categories, instead being jointly bounded by the operators of time, space,
manner/means, and instrument; polarity operates over the entire SVC rather than over a verb
individually – therefore, a single negator is sufficient to negate the entire construction; the order
of the verbs may not be reversed; the extraction of any argument or adjunct and their placement
in front of the first verb is grammatical; two verbs occupy an adjacent position.6
As discussed by Johannessen (1998), De Vos (2004; 2005), Andrason (2019a), and Giusti, Di
Caro & Ross (2022), the prototype of PC exhibits features associated with both the prototype
of CCs and that of an SVC. One the one hand, PC complies with most properties typical of
SVCs enumerated above with one important exception: PC contains an element that is identical
(or highly similar) to a conjunctive coordinator used in genuine CC structures in the language.
This property formally approximates PC to CC. However, contrary to CC, the linking element
found in PC does not function similarly to the operators ∧ or ∩. It is rather a “dummy” or
“empty” marker – the so-called junction or linker. Therefore, in further contrast with CC, the
verbs used in PC cannot be modified by the quantifier ‘both’, nor can they convey the sense
equivalent to ‘both…and’ if the first verb is headed by a genuine conjunctive coordinator.7
To summarize: (a) prototypical CC is a bi-event, bi-predicative, and bi-clausal; (b) prototypical
PC and SVC are both mono-event, mono-predicative, and mono-clausal; (c) prototypical PC
contains a junction formally identical to a conjunctive coordinator found in CC but absent in
SVCs. Although the three prototypes may be instantiated in specific languages in a canonical
manner, i.e., by constructions that comply with them fully, very often this compliance is partial.
Indeed, many language-specific constructions exhibit intermediate and, thus, fuzzy profiles.
Such intermediate profiles exhibited by instantiations of the three categories are
comprehensible, in fact expected and necessary, if the three prototypes are understood as stages
located along a single grammaticalization path – the clause-fusion path.
As proposed by Aikhenvald (2018:195), one of the main mechanisms leading to SVCs is clause
fusion, whereby bi-clausal verbal structures gradually acquire a mono-clausal status.8 This
typically involves the elimination of elements that have originally marked one of the verbal
clauses as dependent on the other (ibid. 197, 199). Such dependency markers may be
subordinizers, converbal suffixes, or other (inflectional) morphemes, as well as coordinating
conjunctions – the most relevant for our study (ibid. 196, 199, 299). Accordingly, some SVCs
emerge from original bi-clausal CC structures in which the two conjunct clauses were linked
syndetically, i.e., by a conjunctive coordinator. Before becoming canonical SVCs, these bi-
verbal sequences pass through the stage of PC (Bowern 2008:169; Hilpert & Koops 2008). At
this stage, the original coordinator, the “erstwhile marker of dependency between two verbs”
(Aikhenvald 2018:199), no longer indicates dependency but is rather used as “a ‘dummy’
6 The contiguity of the two verbs is not included as a prototypical feature is some studies as it is often violated in
SVCs attested across languages.
7 Of course, PC violates many other prototypical features of CC, since it complies with several properties typical
of SVCs.
8 The two other possible scenarios leading to SVCs are verbal modification and concurrent grammaticalization
(Aikhenvald 2018).
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linker” or “pure construction marker” (ibid.) – a pseudo-coordinator.9 As the development
advances, the pseudo-coordinating junction tends to be reduced phonologically and
semantically, ultimately being lost entirely. That is, its form may be radically distinct from the
coordinator used in canonical CC (from which it has evolved) and/or the use of the original
coordinator is no longer attested outside the bi-verbal (PC) construction itself (where it is, of
course, no longer employed as a coordinator sensu stricto) (ibid.).10 This development is
represented graphically below:
CC PC SVC
bi-verbal bi-verbal bi-verbal
bi-clausal mono-clausal mono-clausal
bi-event mono-event mono-event
conjunctive coordinator pseudo-coordinator no junction11
Figure 1: Clause-fusion emergence of SVCs – syndetic scenario (adapted from Aikhenvald
2018:199; Andrason 2019a:185)
The clause-fusion mechanism proposed by Aikhenvald (2018) also makes room for a
developmental scenario in which SVCs emerge from juxtaposition, including asyndetic CC,
instead of the syndetic type discussed above (see Bowern 2008:171; Bisang 2009:802, 809;
Palancar 2012:28).12 The development of SVCs from asyndetic CC patterns follows virtually
the same rules as the evolution originating from syndetic CC. The only significant exception
is the cluster of changes that affect overt dependency markers, in particular conjunctive
coordinators and thus the absence of the stage of PC (see Figure 2 below). Nevertheless, as in
the evolution discussed above and as is typical of all grammaticalization processes, the
progression along the path – again involving the change from bi-clausality and bi-eventhood
to mono-clausality and mono-eventhood – is gradual and allows for a gamut of intermediate
and fuzzy stages and thus constructions.
CC SVC
bi-verbal bi-verbal
bi-clausal mono-clausal
bi-event mono-event
Figure 2: A clause-fusion emergence of SVCs – an asyndetic scenario (adapted from Bisang
2009:809; Palancar 2012:28)
9 This type of development has been attested in English and Romance languages (see Aikhenvald 2018:199 citing
Visser 1969:1399).
10 In these two cases, a construction could be viewed as less canonical PC, inversely closer to an SVC, albeit still
exhibiting a non-canonical serializing profile.
11 The loss of a pseudo-coordinator implies an intermediate stage of a reduced junction.
12 Juxtaposition may exhibit semantic and syntactic properties more typical of coordination or, inversely,
subordination, thus yielding a gradual coordination-subordination scale (see Hoeksema & Napoli 1993; Palancar
2012).
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3. Evidence
3.1 Empirical research
As is typical of all studies that concern earlier stages of a language, one cannot make use of
their own linguistic competence but is instead limited to the examination of historical and/or
diachronic corpora.13 Due to the fragmentary and scattered nature of the historical material of
the Polish language currently available, we adopted a deductive (rather than inductive) and
heterogenous (rather than homogenous) procedure during our empirical historical-diachronic-
corpus research. We did not start from observations and subsequently, through induction,
formulated some generalizations but rather tested the hypotheses developed deductively (see
section 2) and looked for a set of expected phenomena (cf. Kleszczowa 1991:91-92).
Furthermore, we used dissimilar methods for searches effected in different corpora from
different time periods instead of examining a single comprehensive corpus in a unitary manner.
The main idea guiding this non-uniform empirical work was twofold. We aimed to find all
possible cases of SVCs and PCs with the verb wziąć from the time of the earliest records of the
Polish language in the 14th c. to the end of the New Polish period in 1939 (which coincides
with the beginning of World War II). Alternatively, in case of the absence of wziąć SVCs and
PCs in corpora from earlier stages of the history of the Polish language, we aimed to find the
most similar constructions, namely, asyndetic and syndetic coordinated constructions in which
the verb wziąć and another verb appear in the adjacent clauses and are inflected in the same
tense, aspect, and mood (TAM) categories as well as person and number. Therefore, although
our corpora and search methods were heterogenous, the syntax of questions used in searches
was highly similar. That is, different search engines (see below) were programmed to retrieve
sequences composed of two verbs, the first of which was one of the forms of the lexeme wziąć.
Both verbs were expected to be inflected in the same tense, aspect, or mood, specifically:
imperative, past tense, non-past tense (i.e., perfective present, which functions as a future tense
in Polish), and infinitive.14 We also accepted three types of linear arrangements: one
contiguous, whereby V1 and V2 appear next to each other, and two non-contiguous,
specifically, those where V1 and V2 are separated by one and two segments.15 We allowed V1
and V2 to be separated by a conjunction (whether true or empty), comma, and other
orthographic symbols, as well as combinations of all such “separatrices”.
Traditionally, a historical corpus was an analogue collection of texts from which the researcher
would manually extract examples relevant to their lexico-grammatical analysis. Currently, an
increasing number of historical texts and, thus, corpora are being digitalized and made
available in the form of electronic repositories with texts annotated and prepared for, more or
less sophisticated, searches. Despite this, no comprehensive historical-diachronic electronic
corpus of Polish has been developed thus far – there is no corpus of Old and pre-Modern Polish
digital texts that would comply with representativity requirements and, at same time, allow for
automated searches. This stems from two main reasons. First, the above-mentioned scarcity of
extant linguistic material. Second, the changing rules of spelling conventions and grammar
systems found in the various corpora already available, which render the transcription of texts
– necessary for their digitalization – extremely difficult, time consuming, and costly (Górski,
13 A historical corpus is a corpus that represents a certain time in the history of a language; a diachronic corpus is
a series of such historical corpora (Górski, Król & Eder 2019:14).
14 These are categories compatible with the wziąć SVC in modern Polish (Andrason 2018a).
15 We have disregarded separations larger than two segments as the probability of encountering relevant
constructions was very low.
18 Andrason, Gębka-Wolak & Moroz
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Król & Eder 2019: 12-14). Overall, we have made use of the following corpora in our empirical
research, here arranged chronologically: Digital Corpus of Old Polish Text till 1500
(https://ijp.pan.pl/publikacje-i-materialy/zasoby/korpus-tekstow-staropolskich), Corpus of
16th c. Old Polish and a digital repository of texts from the so-called canonical sources of the
Dictionary of Polish of the 16th c. (https://spxvi.edu.pl/korpus/teksty), Corpus of Polish Texts
from the 17th and 18th c. (https://korba.edu.pl), usually referred to as the Baroque corpus
“KorBa”, as well as the National Corpus of the Polish Language (http://nkjp.pl), which, albeit
essentially a contemporary corpus (20th and 21st c.), also contains some older sources. The
above corpora, available to all researchers, have been complemented with our own original
corpus prepared from digitalized 19th and pre-war 20th c. texts.
Contrary to their chronology and the order presented above, in our empirical research, we
proceeded from corpora that are more contemporary to those that are gradually more remote
from today’s Polish, i.e., from the 21st-20th c., through the 19th-early 20th c., 17th-18th c., and
16th c., until the 14th-15th c.
The starting point of our research was the corpus of modern Polish, mainly from the 21st and
20th c. To extract the wziąć SVC and PC, we used two automatized search engines: Poliqarp
(http://nkjp.pl/poliqarp), which operates over the National Corpus of the Polish Language
(Przepiórkowski, Bańko, Górski & Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2012) and Monco
(http://monco.frazeo.pl), which operates over RSS channels made available by more than 1500
news services (Pęzik 2020:134). The main advantage of these two search engines is their ability
to work on an immense number of texts. Poliqarp searches a database containing 2 milliard
segments, while Monco searches 7 milliard segments. Both search engines include texts of
considerable stylistic variability, which increases the probability of encountering relevant
constructions, in our case, an SVC and PC with wziąć. Both engines also have a sophisticated
search syntax, which enabled us to design relatively precise searches. The review of
contemporary Polish language through Poliqarp and Monco yielded a database of a few
hundred examples containing the expected SVC or PC. The evaluation of these examples –
with regard to both their form and meaning – provided the basis for designing searches on the
corpora from the earlier epochs.
To search potential cases of SVCs and PCs with wziąć in the Polish of the 19th and the early
20th c., we developed two original corpora: a corpus that includes digitalized works of literary
texts available in open access within the frame of Wolne Lektury (https://wolnelektury.pl/) and
a corpus containing stylistic texts compiled with the search engine FBL Risercz (Graliński &
Liberek 2019), which allowed us to limit the material available on the Internet to the time
relevant for our study (i.e. 19th and early 20th c.). Both corpora have been annotated
grammatically in an automated manner and subsequently searched with the aid of the search
engine Korpusomat (https://korpusomat.pl) (Kieraś, Kobyliński & Ogrodniczuk 2018). An
important advantage of this application is its ability to work on individual sources of texts, the
use of an annotation system that is compatible with the system employed in the National
Corpus of the Polish Language, and, consequently, a similar syntax of searches, which allows
for trans-corpus comparisons of the obtained results. Despite the usefulness of the two
abovementioned historical corpora and the results they generated, both of them exhibit
important limitations. First, because of the texts used, neither of these corpora complies with
representativity requirements (Górski & Łaziński 2012). Second, the set of lexico-grammatical
segments that could be searched automatically was limited. Third, due to a lower number of
texts included than is the case of NKJP or Monco, the overall number of the collected examples
was much lower than is the case of modern Polish corpora discussed in the previous paragraph.
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Consequently, while the presence or absence of the wziąć SVC and PC in modern corpora and
their frequency constitute significant pieces of information because of the size and
representativity of these corpora, in the case of the corpora from the 19th and early 20th c., this
same presence or absence, and any frequencies, must be treated in terms of probability.
Examples from the 17th and 18th c. have been extracted from the Corpus of Polish Texts of the
17th and 18th c. with aid of the search engine Korba (https://korba.edu.pl/) (Gruszczyński,
Adamiec & Ogrodniczuk 2013). As in the case of the previous analysis, to ensure relative
commensuration of the obtained results, we used an annotation system and searching
procedures that were compatible with the annotations and searches made in the National
Corpus of the Polish Language. In addition to the limitations explained in the paragraph above,
which characterize our original 19th and early 20th c. corpora, the lexico-grammatical
terminology used in the engine Korba (designed to search the 17-18th c. texts) and the possible
query syntax are less sophisticated than is the case of Poliqarp, Monco, and Korpusomat
mentioned above.16
The material allowing for searching for the relevant constructions with wziąć in the 16th c. was
obtained from the Corpus of 16th c. Old Polish (https://spxvi.edu.pl/korpus/teksty/). This
corpus has two important limitations, on top of the limitations exhibited by the historical
corpora mentioned thus far. Although the Corpus of 16th c. Old Polish contains texts that form
the basis of the Dictionary of 16th c. Polish, the corpus itself remains in a preliminary phase of
development, which means that the number of available texts is very restricted. Furthermore,
because of the stylistic character of the texts included in this corpus, our searches had a lexeme-
base form instead of grammar-based searches that were typical during our work on corpora
mentioned previously. As a result, the selection of examples that were subject to further
analysis was semi-automated and semi-manual. That is, from the set of examples generated by
automated searches containing a specified segment (i.e., wziąć) rather than a sequence of
segments (an SVC, PC, or CC), we selected those in which said segment would constitute part
of a larger structure – a SVC, a PC, or a coordinated construction. At this stage, we also
performed manual searches in analogue texts (i.e., those that had not been digitalized yet) that
were made available to us by the editors of the Dictionary of 16th c. Polish.
At the end of our empirical research, we conducted searches on texts from 14th and 15th c.
available in the Digital Corpus of Old Polish Text till 1500 (https://ijp.pan.pl/publikacje-i-
materialy/zasoby/korpus-tekstow-staropolskich). This corpus is parsed grammatically, which
allowed an automated search with the Korpusomat engine.
Once identified through syntax-driven searches (see above), the bi-verbal sequences with wziąć
have been examined as potential representatives of the categories of PC, SVC, and CC
(syndetic or asyndetic). The inclusion of an example into the PC and SVC categories has
primarily been achieved by means of semantic factors, namely: (a) the (more or less patent)
mono-event interpretation of a given sequence and, related to it, (b) the use of the verb wziąć
in senses that diverge from its literal meaning ‘take’. In such cases, rather than expressing two
separate events (simultaneous or consecutive), the bi-verbal structures with wziąć (with or
without lexemes that are homophonous with coordinators) express a single (or “compact”)
event and exhibit a constructional meaning of “emotional emphasis” (Andrason 2018a:607) –
i.e., intensity, insistence, immediacy, impatience, irritation, criticism – surprise, spontaneity,
and/or effortlessness (Góralczyk 2010; Zinken 2013; Andrason 2018a:607-610). Since our
16 The size of the 17-18th c. corpus is also smaller than the 19th-early 20th corpora mentioned above.
20 Andrason, Gębka-Wolak & Moroz
http://spilplus.journals.ac.za
study focuses on formal aspects, we will not provide a detailed semantic analysis of the cited
examples.
3.2 Findings
The records from before the 19th century attest to 32 cases of the use of the verb wziąć in
constructions with other verbs: 2 in the 15th c., 8x in the 16th c., 17x in the 17th c., and 5x in the
18th c. No clear cases of SVCs and PCs – whether canonical or less canonical – are attested.
Instead, wziąć appears in a variety of bi-clausal CC constructions.17
The two cases of bi-verbal structures with wziąć attested in the 15th c. instantiate a syndetic CC
pattern with an overt coordinator i (see 1.a-b below). Orthographic separatrices are not used
between the two verbs. 18
(1) a. Gdy komu jimienie i goście jego k temu go <w>wiążą, a jigra albo przejigra, a
ten to żałuje i on <to> zna, iż wziął [take.PAST.SG.M] i wwiązał [acquire_
property_officially.PAST.SG.M], kto to albo jako mają sędzić (Ortyle
Maciejowskiego 42r, 1401-1500)
b. Tedy z tego pokolenia wiele mężczyzn i młodych i starych przyszło, każdy
nosząc laskę w ręku podług przykazania i podali je biskupowi, a on wziął
[take.PAST.SG.M] i naznamienował [mark.PAST.SG.M] każdego i postawił podle
ołtarza (Rozmyślanie przemyskie 30, 2nd half of the 15th c.)
In the 16th c., two main types of constructions with wziąć are attested, all of them CCs, syndetic
and asyndetic. Syndetic CC constructions are more common than asyndetic ones. The former
are found 6 times, while the latter appear only twice. Two overt coordinators are used, namely,
i (see wzyął […] y włożył ‘took […] and put in’ in (2.a)) and a (see weźmie a rozważy ‘will take
(in his head) and consider’ in (2.b)). The use of i is more common (4x) than that of a (2x). In
the two asyndetic examples, the verbal clauses are juxtaposed with no orthographic separatrices
such as commas, semi-colons, or hyphens (see wzyął […] vkazał ‘took (it) showed’ in (2.a)).
(2) a. Przynieſli tedy s káżdego narodu po rozdze y Aaron z narodu Lewi náznácżone
piſmem ktore wzyął [take.PAST.SG.M]19 Moiżeſz y włożył [put.PAST.3sg.m] do
domu Bożego/ á drugiego dniá wzyął ie vkazał ludu (Marcin Bielski, Kronika,
1564)
b. … ono wszytko sobie w głowę weźmie [take.FUT.3SG] a rozważy
[consider.FUT.3SG] zaraz osądzi iż… (Górnicki, Dworzanin, 1566)
17 The adopted methodology of searches has not revealed bi-verbal structures containing wziąć in the corpus from
the 14th c. methods. (There may, however, be examples involving bi-verbal structure built around the (finite forms
of) wziąć when the separation between the two verbs exceeds two segments.) There are also cases of bi-verbal
sequences with wziąć in court oaths (‘roty’) from the 14th and 15th centuries. Due to technical problems, roty have not
been included in our corpus (see Section 4).
18 It should be noted that the punctuation of the texts from the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries is relatively
unstable. This stems from the lack of orthographic canon and the fact that such orthographic rules were still in the
process of development. Therefore, the significance of punctuation for the interpretation of the examples from
those periods should be considered with much caution (example (5) is a case in point).
19 In the numbered examples, we will only gloss the two verbs that form the relevant constructions, i.e., CC, PC,
and SVC. The spelling used in our examples reflects the spelling found in the corpora from which these examples
have been extracted.
The WZIĄĆ Serial Verb Construction in Polish 21
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A similar situation is revealed by texts from the 17th c. That is, SVCs and PCs with wziąć are
unattested. Only CC constructions are found. Among them, syndetic CC constructions with i
are the most common, being attested 9 times (see weźmiesz i uwarzysz ‘you will take and cook’
in (3.a)). In contrast, the coordinator a only features once (see weźmi a odnieś ‘take and return’
in (3.b)). This means that the preference for i rather than a has intensified. This is consistent
with the gradual loss of a coordinating function by a and its grammaticalization into an
adversative-contrastive connector (see Andrason 2020). Asyndetic examples of coordinated
constructions with wziąć are also attested, specifically, in 7 cases (see wziąć przeprosić ‘take
(as the master) and ask for forgiveness’ in (3.c)). As in the 16th c., two clauses may be
juxtaposed without any orthographic sign. However, they may also be separated by a comma
or other graphic devices (e.g., <*> or </>).
(3) a. Barana też poświącania weźmiesz [take.FUT.2SG] i uwarzysz [cook.FUT.2SG]
mięso jego na miejscu świętem (Biblia Gdańska, 1632)
b. a proszek ten weźmi [take.IMP.SG] a odnieś [return.IMP.SG] (Kalnofojski,
Teratourgema, 1638)
c. Ja radzę Króla Polskiego za Pana wziąć [take.INF] przeprosić
[ask_for_forgiveness.INF] (Nowiny z Moskwy, 1634)
In the 18th c., again, only CC constructions with wziąć, both syndetic and asyndetic, are found.
Syndetic CC constructions with a are unattested. CC constructions with i are found 3 times
(see wziął i złupił ‘he took and plundered’ in (4.a)). Asyndetic CC constructions occur twice.
In the two cases attested, a comma is used to separate the juxtaposed clauses (see weźcie,
wrzućcie ich ‘take and throw them’ in (4.b)).
(4) a. Moskiewski najechał Litwę, i Miasto bogate Nowogród W. wziął
[take.PAST.3SG.M] i złupił [plunder.PAST.3SG.M] (Łubieński, Historya polska,
1763)
b. Weźcie [take.IMP.PL], wrzućcie [throw.IMP.PL] ich w ogień, żywo niech się
pieką (Radziwiłłowa, Sędzia bez rozsądku, 1754)
Although, as demonstrated above, no example found up to the 18th c. can be classified as an
SVC or PC, a few uses of the verb wziąć in CC constructions exhibit a certain affinity with
SVCs or PCs and may be understood as starting points for the emergence of these two
categories in the later centuries. The three most exemplary cases are: wzyął ie vkazał ludu (2.a),
miasto […] wziął i złupił (4.a), and weźcie, wrzućcie ich w ogień (4.b). It is true that, in these
examples, wziąć maintains its literal sense ‘take’ and the two verbs most likely express two
independent events. Nevertheless, the pattern [wziąć (i) V2] employed lends itself to certain
more compact constructional interpretations. This stems from the following features exhibited
by the wziąć CC used in these examples: the TAM inflections of the two verbs coincide; the
subject referent is identical; the two verbs share an object which is expressed only once and
operates overtly in the entire construction, occupying a construction-initial (4.a), -final (4.b),
or -medial position (2.a); even if consecutive, the two events occur immediately one after
another and, crucially, form a holistic semantic unit, i.e., presenting a written text, plundering
a town, and throwing men into fire – in other words, the verb wziąć contributes rather
minimally to the sequential eventhood of the construction, in each case, the main event is the
event expressed by V2.20
20 Therefore, if the three examples are pronounced in a more conjunctive manner – e.g., with no pause or
contouring – they could be interpreted by modern Polish speakers as perhaps less canonical types of SVCs or PCs.
22 Andrason, Gębka-Wolak & Moroz
http://spilplus.journals.ac.za
A similar case, which almost naturally lends itself to further grammaticalization towards a PC
and (if the linker is omitted) an SVC, is the earliest example attested in the corpus from the
19th c. (see 5 below), dated from 1856. In this example, the construction with wziąć exhibits
properties that relate it to both CC and PC. On the one hand, the verb wziąć, inflected in the 1st
sg. future wezmę, may be understood literally, i.e. ‘I will take’, since a barrel of honey
(miodu beczka) must be taken in one’s hands before one may drink from it. Accordingly, the
bi-verbal construction is interpreted as the coordination of two clauses that express two
consecutive events. On the other hand, as the TAM and subject and object referents of the two
verbs coincide and the critical event is not taking the receptacle but drinking from it (wypiję ‘I
will drink’), a more constructional reading, slightly closer to PC is, at least, theoretically
possible. This is even more likely because the preposed object miodu beczka, which operates
over the entire construction (wezmę i wypiję), is separated by a comma from the bi-verbal
sequence, thus suggesting a more compact interpretation of this collocation.21 To conclude, in
this example and the three examples discussed in the previous paragraph, albeit not lost, the
literal meaning of wziąć is weakened and its relevance to the overall eventhood of the
construction is compromised.
(5) Ja miodu beczkę, wezmę [take.FU˜T.1SG] i wypiję [drink.FUT.1SG], a wy Ziemie
i, grody, perły, złoto: (Łętowski, Jadwiga, żona Jagiełły, 1856, p. 111)
The first instances of constructions with wziąć that are not CCs but constitute genuine cases of
PC or SVC come from the second half of the 19th c. To be exact, a text from 1861 attests to an
SVC – wezmę zaprobuję ‘I will (take) try’ (see 6 below). In this example, V1 wziąć and the
other verb, i.e., V2 zaprobować ‘try’ (an equivalent of Modern Polish spróbować) appear
contiguously and are not separated by any orthographic sign, e.g., a comma. Crucially, the verb
wziąć does not convey its literal meaning ‘take’ nor does it introduce an independent event,
whether the first in a sequence or simultaneous with another event, contrary to all the examples
of wziąć constructions analyzed above. Rather, the 1st p.sg. future wezmę modifies the event
expressed by the verb zaprobowuje ‘I will try’ – it communicates insistence and/or defiance
with regard to the intention of writing a comedy (zaprobuję…napiszę komedyę).
(6) Myślę, no co szkodzi, wezmę [take.FUT.1SG] zaprobuję [take.FUT.1SG]
…zacznę sobie te, jak one?... napiszę komedyę?!... Zacznę pisać tak komedye z
życia Ukrainy (Gazeta Warszawska, 1861, p. 6)
Two other constructional examples that are dated from that same decade are even more critical.
In 1867, a metalinguistic note published in the newspaper Kurier Warszawski records two PC
constructions with wziąć: wziął i zaśpiewał ‘he (took and) sang’ and wziąłem i siadłem ‘I (took
and) sat down’ (see 6 below). The author of this note comments on a particular usage in
contemporary spoken Polish and observes that many people (wiele osób) employ the verb
wziąć in front of another verb which expresses the event which they are, were, or will be
performing. This suggests that, as is typical of PCs and SVCs, the verb wziąć does not express
a separate event but rather modifies the event conveyed by the other verb – the major verb in
the construction – in some manner. Indeed, in both uses in (7), the bi-verbal constructions likely
express single events related to singing and sitting down, respectively. Accordingly, in those
examples, the verb wziąć cannot be interpreted literally as a full verb but rather adds some
21 As mentioned in footnote 18 above, the presence or absence of commas in example 5 should be taken with
caution. Indeed, the punctuation of Łętowski’s tragedy is very odd with commas being used excessively, even in
places where they are certainly not required by syntax and/or prosody.
The WZIĄĆ Serial Verb Construction in Polish 23
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modal nuances, which due to the lack of context cannot be specified.22 Crucially, the two
examples of the mono-event, mono-clausal, and mono-predicative usage of a bi-verbal
construction with wziąć that are cited by the author, make use of the linker i and thus attest to
a PC. Inversely, a serializing pattern (i.e., an SVC), in which the i linker would be absent, is
not mentioned.
(7) Wiele osób mają zwyczaj przed słowem wyrażającem swoją lub czyją
czynność, dodawać słowo: brać, wziąśc, mówią np. wziął [take.PAST.3SG.M] i
zaśpiewał [sing.PAST.3SG.M]: biorę i wychodzę; wziąłem [take.PAST.1SG.M] i
siadłem [sit.down.PAST.1SG.M] i t.d. (Kurier Warszawski, 1867, p. 4)
Overall, excluding the ambiguous example (6), there are 24 possible cases of SVC and PC
constructions with wziąć in the 19th c. Among all of them, 20 cases (see (7) and (8.a-r) below)
exhibit the linker i (lit. ‘and’) and thus attest to a PC pattern. In most cases, the PC construction
used is intransitive, e.g., wzięła i zwiędła ‘she withered’ (8.b), wzięła i sfiksowała ‘she got
crazy’ (8.e), wziął i wyjechał ‘he left’ (8.f), wziął i popłynął ‘he drifted away’ (7.g), wezmę i
ucieknę ‘I will escape’ (8.h); see also wziąłem i siadłem ‘I sat down’ and wziął i zaśpiewał ‘he
sang’ (8.b). Transitive uses with objects operating over the entire wziąć-i PC are also attested,
e.g., wezmę i nadam konstytucję ‘I will give the constitution’ (8.c); wziął i zaczął […] chodzić
‘he started visiting’ (8.i), wezmę i opiszę prześladowanie ‘I will describe persecutions’ (8.n),
wziął i wysadził mnie ‘he dropped me off’ (8.o), and wzięły i obdarły […] liście ‘they stripped
off the leaves’ (8.p). Sometimes, the transitive object seems to be unexpressed: wzięli i
pozwolili ‘they allowed (it)’ in (8.j) and wzięła i podrzuciła ‘she flipped (it)’ (8.k). The use of
reflexive verbs as V2 is also attested, e.g., wziął i ożenił się ‘he got married’ (8.a, 8.l, 8.s),
wezmę i powieszę się ‘I will hang myself’ (8.d), wzięła i zamknęła się ‘she closed herself’ (8.m),
and się wziął i zlitował ‘he had mercy’ (8.r). In this last example, the reflexive pronoun się,
which is originally provided by the argument structure of V2, i.e., zlitować się ‘have mercy’
appears in front of V1 wziąć. This overtly indicates that the bi-verbal sequence is understood
in a mono-event, mono-predicative, and mono-clausal manner (see Andrason 2020). It should
also be noted that the 19th c. PCs with wziąć attest to a variety of subjects (i.e., 1st (e.g., 8.c)
and 3rd (e.g., 8.a); singular masculine (e.g., 8.a) and singular feminine (e.g., 8.b); human-
masculine plural (8.j) and non-human-masculine plural (8.p)) and TAM categories (i.e., future
(e.g., 8.b) and past (e.g., 8.a)).
(8) a. Pan Nosko był impetyczny człek, zobaczył, że piękna… a nie można było tylko
się ożenić, wziął [take.PAST.3SG.M] i ożenił [marry.PAST.3SG.M] się [REFL].
Dziewczyna z miasta … a gdy za męża szła… rozumniejsza była od tego co ją
brał… (Kraszewski, Macocha, 1883)
b. Zresztą, nie o rozsądek tam chodziło, ale o miłość wiejskiego pastuszka do
brzeziny polnej, która po jego śmierci „wzięła [take.PAST.3SG.F] i zwiędła
[wither.PAST.3SG.F]”, według słów tych smutnych pieśni. (Sienkiewicz, Na
marne, 1872)
c. Nie uda się to! Oto wezmę [take.FUT.1SG] — i nadam [give.FUT.1SG]
konstytucję?... Kazał napisać konstytucję — ogłosił (Nowy Czas, 1877, p. 44)
d. tak ja już nie wytrzymam, liaz kozio śmierć; wezmę [take.FUT.1SG] i powieszę
[hang.FUT.1SG] się [REFL] na górze, niocii zło bierze swego. (Tygodnik
Ilustrowany, 1883, p. 5)
22 The verb wziąć in wziął i zaśpiewał cannot be interpreted literally because it is impossible to take something
and sing it. Similarly, wziąć in wziąłem i siadłem cannot be read literally because siąść ‘sit down’ is an intransitive
verb incompatible with any object, which is always implicit in the literal meaning of wziąć ‘take’.
24 Andrason, Gębka-Wolak & Moroz
http://spilplus.journals.ac.za
e. W izbie zapanowała chwilowa cisza, poczém ślepa baba opowieść swą
kończyła. — A Prokopicha sołdatka z żalu po swoim nieboraczku synaczku
wzięła [take.PAST.3SG.F] i sfiksowała [get_crazy.PAST.3SG.F]. (Orzeszkowa,
Dziurdziowie, 1885)
f. Karol prawie codzień do niej przychodził; w niedziele i święta na spacery i do
teatru ją prowadził. Było tak miesięcy kilka, aż tu, buch! Wziął
[take.PAST.3SG.M] i wyjechał [leave.PAST.3SG.M]; z panem tym, u którego
służył, do dalekiego wielkiego miasta wyjechał. (Orzeszkowa, Cham, 1888)
g. Wczoraj w wieczór wyprałam, a dziś dlatego wstałam tak raniutko, aby je w
rzece wypłókać. Aż tu masz! jeden wziął [take.PAST.3SG.M] i popłynął
[swim.PAST.3SG.M]! W czółnie, na wąskiej ławce siedząc, słuchał jej mowy
szybkiej, żywej, w której wyrazy zdawały się ścigać i tłoczyć ze sobą.
(Orzeszkowa, Cham, 1888)
h. Kiedy jemu wolno mnie bić, to mnie wolno wszystko robić. Żebym Daniłka nie
żałowała, to bym znów uciekła. Ale może i ucieknę! Ot, wezmę [take.FUT.1SG]
i ucieknę [escape.FUT.1SG]! — A Chtawjan? — ozwał się gruby, ochrypły głos,
z kupy łachmanów wychodzący. (Orzeszkowa, Cham, 1888)
i. Jak przyjechał już tutaj, to zaraz na wogzalu mówi do mnie: „Powiem tobie, że
tylko co tam z nudy nie umarłem.” Otóż z nudy wziął [take.PAST.3SG.M] i zaczął
[start.PAST.3SG.M] do różnych tam dawniejszych swoich znajomych chodzić.
(Orzeszkowa, Jędza, 1899)
j. rodzice nie pozwalali jej za rzemieślnika wychodzić… Ale ona powiedziała, że
jeżeli nie pozwolą, to ona otruje się, więc wzięli [take.PAST.3PL.HM] i pozwolili
[allow.PAST.3PL.HM]. To wszystko pani Ginejkowej opowiadała jedna pani, co
przyjechała z tamtych stron. (Orzeszkowa, Jędza, 1899)
k. Ale cóż to jest?.. — A no... wzięła [take.PAST.3SG.F] i podrzuciła
[flip.PAST.3SG.F] (Głos Narodu, 1894, p. 4)
l. „Ruch w przestrzeni”, wielki „społecznik”, zaczynający wiecznie pisać wstępne
artykuły, których dokończyć nie pozwalał mu brak potrzebnych po temu
książek, nagle i niespodziewanie „wziął” [take.PAST.3SG.M] i ożenił
[marry.PAST.3SG.M] się [REFL] z ubogą jak mysz kościelna emancypantką.
(Żeromski, Siłaczka, 1895)
m. Ach, jakżeś ty mię oszukała, Iruś! Ja naprawdę, naprawdę myślałam, że ty już
śpisz… Wzięła [take.PAST.3SG.F] i zamknęła [lock.PAST.3SG.F] się [REFL]na
klucz w naszym pokoju. Stukam, stukam, nic! (Orzeszkowa, Australczyk, 1896)
n. Ale człowiek, który sobie mówi: ja wezmę [take.FUT.1SG] i opiszę
[describe.FUT.1SG] prześladowanie chrześcijan przez Nerona, ten się zrywa na
rzecz. (Sienkiewicz, Quo vadis, 1896)
o. …wziął [take.PAST.3SG.M] i wysadził [drop.PAST.3SG.M] mnie na stacji. Tamci
moi przyjaciele nie przyjechali. (Mucha, 1899, p. 7)
p. Ten biurger miał calutki front domu pokryty. Przyszedł Franek z Karolą, wzięły
[take.PAST.3PL.NHM] i obdarły [take.PAST.3PL.NHM] wszystkie liście,
powyrywały badyle ze ziemi. (Żeromski, Ludzie bezdomni, 1900)
r. Nieraz leżała tam jakaś bezdomna położnica, nad którą ktoś się [REFL] wziął
[take.PAST.3SG.M] i zlitował [have_mercy.PAST.3SG.M] — jakiś parobek
folwarczny chory na kolki albo jakie dziecko z ospą… (Żeromski, Ludzie
bezdomni, 1900)
s. aż nareszcie nie mogąc znieść tego, ażeby mu inna panna podawała pieczeń,
wziął [take.PAST.3SG.M] i ożenił [marry.PAST.3SG.M] się [REFL] z panną
Eufrozyną (Brewijarzyk tercyjarski, 1878)
The WZIĄĆ Serial Verb Construction in Polish 25
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In contrast, corpora from the 19th c. only attest to 4 examples (see 6 and 9.a-c) of SVCs built
around the minor verb wziąć, in which the linker i is absent. One of them is inherently
intransitive: wzięły, zawróciły ‘they turned back’ (9.a). One makes use of the ethical dative:
wzięła, poszła sobie ‘she left’ (9.b). One exhibits an overt transitive object: wziął, sam zabił
[…] kurczę in (9.c). And in one, the object is unexpressed: wezmę zaprobuję ‘I will try’ (6).
Out of the four examples, three wziąć SVCs appear in sequences consisting of three (9.a-b) or
four (9.c) verbs (including the verb wziąć). It should also be noted that in these three examples
(9.a-c), V1 and V2 are separated by a comma. This may suggest a lesser extent of phonological
contiguity – perhaps a slight pause between V1 and V2 – and thus a slightly less canonical
profile of these SVCs. In contrast, in (6) analyzed previously, no orthographic separatrix is
present. As the PC constructions discussed in the paragraph above, SVCs with wziąć are
compatible with various types of subjects (i.e., 1st (see 6) and 3rd (9.a-c) singular; masculine
(9.c) and feminine (9.b) singular; non-human-masculine plural (9.a)) and TAM categories (i.e.,
future (6) and past (9.a.-c)).
(9) a. Jak słonko weszło, kazał em mojej dziewusze popaść koniska nade drogą, tu,
gdzie ugór. A te hycle wzięły [take.PAST.3PL.NHM], zawróciły
[turn_back.PAST.3PL.NHM] i poszły w pszenicę. Może nie uszczypały jednej
trawki, kiej przyszedł fornal i zajął ich. (Prus, Anielka, 1880)
b. „No, no! — myślę sobie — nic dziwnego, że sama nie wie, jak do niego
przyozdobić się i ustroić!” Aż tu wzięła [take.PAST.3SG.F], poszła
[go.PAST.3SG.F] sobie [EDAT] i na pół dnia zginęła. Gdzie ty ginęłaś? Czy znów
tam? (Orzeszkowa, Nad Niemnem, 1888)
c. Któregoś tu dnia nasza kucharka poszła na jarmark, bo to już teraz każdy robi,
co mu się żywnie podoba, to on wziął [take.PAST.3SG.M], sam zabił,
[kill.PAST.3SG.M] oprawił i upiekł mi kurczę na rożnie. (Żeromski, Ludzie
bezdomni, 1900)
The corpus from the pre-war 20th c. attests to 14 instances of mono-event, mono-predicative,
and mono-clausal bi-verbal patterns with wziąć. Again, the majority of such constructions are
PCs with the linker i (12x). These constructions may be intransitive: wziął i umarł ‘he died’
(9.f), wezmę i pojadę ‘I will go’ (10.h), and weź i przeczytaj ‘read!’ (10.b), or – more commonly
– transitive: weźmie i wykrzywi […] żelazo ‘he will bend iron’ (10.a), wzięła i wygoniła […]
panny ‘she chased away the girls’ (10.c), weźmie i coś zepsuje ‘she will break down something’
(10.d), wezmę i wyślę cię ‘I will send you’ (10.g), wezmę i sprzedam […] butelkę ‘I will sell
the bottle’ (10.i), wezmę i […] zarżnę człowieka ‘I will slaughter the man’ (10.j), and wezmę i
obtłukę […] rękę ‘I will break the hand’ (10.l). In one case, a predicative complement is used:
wezmę i zostanę szoferem ‘I will become a driver’ (10.e). In another single case, the wziąć-i
PC construction is reflexive: się wziąć i powiesić ‘to kill oneself’ (10.k). As in (8.r), the
reflexive marker się occupies a construction-initial position, i.e., in front of V1 wziąć rather
than V2 powiesić by the valence of which it is required (cf. powiesić się ‘hang oneself’). In the
20th c., we find the first negative use of the wziąć-i PC. Significantly, the negator is used twice,
with each verb separately, i.e., nie wezmę i nie zarżnę ‘I will not slaughter’ (lit. I will not take,
and I will not slaughter’) (10.j). This suggests a less advanced stage of the grammaticalization
of a negative bi-verbal sequence into a genuine SVC, and thus its less canonical profile. Similar
to the examples from the 19th c., a variety of subject types (i.e., 1st (e.g., 10.e), 2nd (10.b), and
3rd (e.g., 10.c); masculine (10.f) and feminine (10.c) singular), and TAM categories (i.e., past
(e.g., 10.c), future (e.g., 10.e), imperative (10.b), and infinitive (10.k)) are attested.
26 Andrason, Gębka-Wolak & Moroz
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(10) a. Twarz jego zrobiła się harda, zastygła, skrzywiona od jakiegoś uśmiechu, co tę
twarz miłą, dobrą i miękką wykrzywił, podobnie — ot, jak kowal weźmie
[take.FUT.3SG] i wykrzywi [bend.FUT.3SG] w ogniu raz na zawsze miękkie
żelazo w krzywy hak. (Żeromski, Echa leśne, 1905)
b. […] katolickich katechizmach nauka o przyszłem życiu inaczej podana – weź
[take.IMP.SG] i przeczytaj [read.IMP.SG]. Drógą twoją pomyłkę trudniej mi
będzie sprostować […] (Sienkiewicz, W pustyni i w puszczy, 1911)
c. Nie tutaj umarł? — Nie, gdzieś ta daleko pomarli… — A cóż mówicie, że na
Majdanie nie ma nikogo? — Prawdę mówię — nie ma. Dziedziczka wzięła
[take.PAST.3SG.F] i wygoniła [chase.PAST.3PSG.F] te ta wszystkie panny,
odebrała ogrody i sprzedaje toto na działki. (Żeromski, Dzieje grzechu, 1908)
d. Ale to taki światowy człowiek, taki wielki pan… gdzie my go umieścimy? Jak
przyjmiemy? Ta Maryanna jest dobrą kucharką, ale często weźmie
[take.FUT.3SG] i coś zepsuje [brak.FUT.3SG] … (Orzeszkowa, Bracia, 1909)
e. Jak się do reszty rozgniewam na cały świat, wezmę [take.FUT.1SG] i zostanę
[become.FUT.1SG] szoferem. (Przegląd Wieczorny, 1924, 115, p. 4)
f. —— zwyczajnie l.. Co? Ignac Końskier wziął [take.PAST.3SG.M] i umarł
[take.PAST.3SG.M]? Uj, bidnk, kto mónł myśleć, że […] (Wolne Żarty, 1925, p.
453)
g. jednak drugie głupstwo: — A ja, rozumiesz, wezmę [take.FUT.1SG] i wyślę
[send.FUT.1SG] cię na pierwszą linję! (Dźwignia, 1928, p. 222)
h. A kto WJ1 — powiada — może ia teraz wezmę [take.FUT.1SG] i pojadę
[go.FUT.1SG] d[o] małego Sownarkomu na skargę. (Robotnik Śląski, 1932, p.
207)
i. Ponieważ Morelowie są tak biedni, -więc wezmę [take.FUT.1SG] i sprzedam
[sell.FUT.1SG] im butelkę mojej wody za pół ceny. (Wieczorny Kurjer
Grodzieński, 1932, p. 4)
j. Panie sędzio, przecież dla pańskiej przyjemności nie wezmę [take.FUT.1SG] i
nie zarżnę [slauther.FUT.1SG] człowieka. (Mucha, 1932, p. 5)
k. Noga drze od podagry, tylko się [REFL] wziąć [take.INF] i powiesić [hang.INF].
(Mucha, 1933, p. 3)
l. Co za niedorzeczność! Ot, wezmę [take.FUT.1SG] i obtłukę [break.FUT.1SG]
waszemu bogu rękę […] (Dołega-Mostowicz, Bracia Dalcz i s-ka, 1937)
While a PC with wziąć is common in the pre-war period, there are only two cases in which
mono-event, mono-predicative, and mono-clausal constructions with wziąć do not make use of
the linker i and instantiate an SVC. One of these examples involves the ethical dative: weź,
wypij sobie ‘drink!’ (11.a). The other involves a transitive object: weź, przeczytaj ten papier
‘read this document’ (11.b). In both cases, a comma separates the minor verb wziąć from the
major verbs wypić ‘drink’ and przeczytać ‘read’. As previously, this suggests a phonological
detachment and thus a less canonical profile of SVCs. Contrary to the variation of subjects and
TAM categories used in PC constructions with wziąć from this period, wziąć SVCs only attest
to 2nd person singular subjects and imperatives. This apparent lack of diversity is most likely
due to the overall scarcity of the attested examples (compare with the diversity of subjects and
TAM categories observed in the 19th c. as discussed above).
(11) a. u japońskiego pancernika, pozbądźcie się ciężaru dwudziestki. — Weź,
[take.IMP.SG] wypij [take.IMP.SG] sobie [EDAT]... — Zuch przejezdny! Idź
sobie. (Słowo Polskie, 1904, p. 4)
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b. Dziś ten skarb niezmierny w całości należy do ciebie. Weź [take.IMP.SG],
przeczytaj [take.IMP.SG] ten papier. (Ilustrowany Kuryer Codzienny, 1930, p.
14)
Overall, since the appearance of PCs and SVCs with wziąć in the sixties of the 19th c. until the
end of the New Polish period in 1939, PC patterns are significantly more common than SVC
ones. Similarly, the wziąć-i PC attests to a more diverse repertoire of uses: it allows for the
placement of the reflexive marker się in a construction-initial position, i.e., before V1, although
it is originally projected by the valency of V2 and is compatible with negative polarity. The
wziąć SVC does not attest to these uses. Moreover, the serializing pattern with wziąć tends to
separate V1 from V2 by a comma suggesting some degree of phonological detachment and, at
least in the 19th c., usually appears in sequences of three verbs the last of which is headed by
the true coordinator i. Before the second half of the 19th c., only CCs with wziąć are attested.
Significantly, before the emergence of the PC and SVC wziąć patterns, syndetic CCs with
wziąć as V1, formally more akin to PC, are also more common than asyndetic ones. In syndetic
patterns, the presence of the linker i is more frequent than that of a, the use of which ceases in
the 17th c. The entirety of the quantitative evidence resulting from our empirical study is
tabulated below:
15th 16th 17th 18th 19th
20th
(till 1939)
non-CC
with
wziąć
all
0
0
0
0
24
14
PC
0
0
0
0
20
12
SVC
0
0
0
0
4
2
CC
with
wziąć
all
2
8
17
5
syndetic
all
2
6
10
3
i linker
2
4
9
3
a linker
0
2
1
0
asyndetic
0
2
7
2
Table 1: SVCs and PCs with wziąć and their CC predecessors23
4. Discussion
In light of the evidence presented in section 3, we can now answer our research question. The
SVC with wziąć most probably results from a clause-fusion mechanism, which, as explained
in section 2, is one of the three grammatical pathways towards verbal serialization (cf.
Aikhenvald 2018). To be exact, mono-event, mono-clausal, and mono-predicative bi-verbal
structures built around the minor and first verb wziąć seem to have emerged from original bi-
clausal CC structures in which the first conjunct clause contained the full verb wziąć while the
latter contained another full verb inflected in the same TAM, person, and number. Inversely,
our research does not provide evidence that two other possible sources of SVCs, namely verbal
modification or concurrent grammaticalization (Aikhenvald 2018), may have contributed to
the formation of the wziąć SVC.
23 The grey color indicates that we did not search CCs in 19th and 20th c. as, in these periods, both PCs and SVCs
are already attested.
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Out of the two hypothetical scenarios possible in case of clause-fusion mechanisms – i.e., from
syndetic CC with the coordinator i to a wziąć SVC via a wziąć-i PC or from asyndetic CC
directly to a wziąć SVC – the evolution through a PC stage seems to have constituted the
principal and stronger drift. This means that syndetic CC is a more likely source of wziąć SVCs
than asyndetic CC and/or that the stabilization of wziąć SVCs in Polish is mainly due to the
grammaticalization of a syndetic CC pattern and its gradual serialization via a PC stage. This
may be postulated given the two clusters of reasons: one cluster concerns the properties of the
wziąć-i PC and wziąć SVC in the 19th and 20th c., whereas the other cluster concerns the
properties exhibited by CCs containing the verb wziąć at earlier developmental stages.
With regard to the properties exhibited by the wziąć-i PC and wziąć SVC the following should
be noted: The grammaticalization of the wziąć-i PC advanced faster than was the case of the
wziąć SVC. This is visible through dissimilar quantitative and qualitative properties of these
two constructions. Quantitatively, both in the 19th and the first four decades of the 20th c.,
wziąć-i PCs are roughly five times more frequent than wziąć SVCs. Qualitatively, the wziąć-i
PC exhibits stronger constructional properties than the wziąć SVC, i.e., it allows for more
diverse and more “compact” patterns such as the construction-initial placement of the reflexive
pronoun się (attested in the 19th c.) and negative polarity (attested in the 20th c.). In contrast,
these two types of uses are unattested by the wziąć SVC, which furthermore tends to exhibit a
comma between the verb wziąć and V2, suggesting some degree of phonological detachment
and thus less advanced or pre-canonical profile. Additionally, most instances of wziąć SVCs
attested in the 19th c. corpora appear in cases where the wziąć + V2 sequence is followed by a
third verb headed by a coordinator i. Accordingly, those wziąć SVCs have most likely emerged
to the loss of the lexeme i that was placed between V1 wziąć and V2 that was eliminated due to
the presence of another i linking V3 to the V1-V2 sequence. That is, in Polish, sequences V1 i
V2 i V3 tend to be replaced by sequences V1 (,) V2 i V3. As a result, these SVCs with wziąć
would have derived from wziąć-i PCs. Lastly and most critically, the note from 1867 that
overtly recognizes the constructional and non-coordinated use of wziąć in bi-verbal but mono-
event constructions, only makes reference to the wziąć-i PC. In other words, by the mid-19th
c., wziąć-i PC had already been profoundly grammaticalized in spoken language. Linker-free
wziąć SVCs are not mentioned and their exact grammaticalization stage in the spoken language
of that period is thus unknown.24
With regard to the properties exhibited by CCs with wziąć in the pre-19th c. corpora, syndetic
CC patterns seem to have been more propitious for grammaticalization into mono-event, mono-
predicative, and mono-clausal structures than asyndetic CC patterns. Again, this is visible in
dissimilar quantitative and qualitative profiles exhibited by these two types of CCs. Syndetic
CCs, in particular those with the coordinator i, are more frequent than asyndetic ones in the
15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th c. Furthermore, among all CCs that exhibit a more advanced profile
whereby the event conveyed by V2 is much more critical for the entire situation than the event
conveyed by V1 wziąć – and thus lend themselves to extensions towards mono-eventhood,
mono-predicativity, and mono-clausality – syndetic patterns with i are more common than
asyndetic ones.
The argument above, which demonstrates the faster grammaticalization of the wziąć-i PC than
that of the wziąć SVC, may be complemented by two further synchronic and diachronic
observations. In colloquial Polish, CCs have apparently always been predominantly formed
24 It should however be noted that the first SVC with wziąć is attested a few years earlier (1861) than a PC (1867).
We do not see these 6 years of difference as significant. This more likely stems from the scarcity of historical
material that is available (see the discussion of limitations further below in this section).
The WZIĄĆ Serial Verb Construction in Polish 29
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with an overt coordinator, especially i, rather than in an asyndetic manner through
juxtaposition. As grammaticalization processes tend to originate in frequent patterns –
frequency constituting both their cause and effect – it is more likely that the grammaticalization
of bi-event, bi-predicative and bi-clausal constructions with wziąć into more compact, mono-
event, mono-predicative, and mono-clausal constructions originated in more common patterns,
i.e., syndetic CC with i. Furthermore, the lexeme i has always been highly polysemous in Polish
and commonly participated in various grammaticalization processes that have led to the
development of a wide range of constructions (for the analysis of the various uses of i in Polish,
synchronically and/or diachronically, see Patejuk & Przepiórkowski 2012; Przepiórkowski &
Patejuk 2014; Patejuk 2015; Andrason 2016b; 2017). Its presence in a putative wziąć i CC
pattern would have created further favorable ground for grammaticalization because the
construction would contain two constant elements (i.e., wziąć and i) rather than a single one
(i.e., the verb wziąć).25 Across languages, more robust patterns are more (easily)
grammaticalizable than those that are less robust.
If our conclusion is correct and the wziąć-i PC was grammaticalized first and more intensively
than the wziąć SVC, the highly common use of linker-free SVCs in the second half of the 20th
c. and in the 21st c. – to the extent that it is equally or more common than the wziąć-i PC
(Andrason 2018a; Nau et al. 2019) – would be a subsequent development. This increase in the
grammaticalization of the wziąć SVC would likely have resulted from the elimination of i – a
process which itself may have occurred due to two reasons. First, it may have resulted from
morphological or phonological reduction typical of more advanced stages of
grammaticalization, in our case, of the wziąć-i PC. This is consistent with the fact that in
modern Polish, the element i in wziąć-i PCs is typically phonologically more reduced and
weaker than the genuine coordinator i (Andrason 2019a). Second, this gradual weakening and
ultimate elimination of i must have increased the overall number of linker-free bi-verbal mono-
event, mono-predicative, and mono-clausal constructions with wziąć. Accordingly, by analogy,
at least some, initially less common, wziąć SVCs may have replaced the “catastrophically”
more common wziąć-i PCs.
Overall, even though our study suggests the evolution from the wziąć-i CC to the wziąć SVC
via the wziąć-i PC, the actual development has most likely been messier. That is, although
wziąć-i PC is a faster emerging construction than the wziąć SVC, and the change from wziąć-i
CC (i.e., syndetic CC with wziąć and i) to wziąć-i PC has constituted a stronger evolutionary
drift than the grammaticalization of the wziąć SVC from asyndetic CC with wziąć – which
points to an overall wziąć-i CC → wziąć-i PC → wziąć SVC evolutionary sequence – this
development has also (probably from its very origin) been accompanied by the development
of wziąć CC (i.e., asyndetic CC with wziąć) → wziąć SVC. Although slower and less potent,
this drift may have played some role in the loss of the linker and the evolution of the wziąć-i
PC into the wziąć SVC. Thus, both types of clause-fusion have most likely operated during the
entire grammaticalization process of the wziąć SVC. Such messiness is typical of
grammaticalization phenomena in general, especially if a single target construction has evolved
from two similar inputs, as is the case of the wziąć SVC.
In addition to answering the research question, the provided evidence allows us to formulate
certain important generalizations. First, our study suggests that the first attested step in the
25 It should be noted that, at least, since the 16th c., wziąć has been used in a range of senses in constructions with
nouns and verbs, e.g., infinitives. This broad semantic potential of the verb wziąć and the compatibility with both
literal/concrete and extended/more abstract or grammatical meanings has very probably created a favorable
ground for the use of the verb wziąć in constructions that have evolved into the wziąć-i PC and wziąć SVC.
30 Andrason, Gębka-Wolak & Moroz
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development of CC constructions with wziąć – whether syndetic or asyndetic – may have
involved the emergence of a semantic imbalance between the events expressed by V1 (wziąć)
and V2. While, in a canonical CC pattern, the event of each clause is equally critical for a
particular situation (e.g., Jem i czytam ‘I eat and read’) in less canonical CC patterns, the key
event is conveyed by V2, while the relevance of the event expressed by wziąć is secondary.
Furthermore, according to our data, such input CC constructions were transitive with a shared
object that was expressed only once, either before V1, after V2, or between the two verbs, and
seems to belong to both verbs simultaneously. Second, the historical evidence presented allows
us to propose an intermediary stage between asyndetic CC and the SVC, namely that of an
empty or pseudo-comma. That is, similar to the empty linker or pseudo-coordinator – which is
formally related to the coordinator from which it derives – an empty or pseudo-comma is a
phonological comma rather than a syntactic one, even though “deriving” from the former.
Accordingly, instead of separating verbal clauses as is typical of asyndetic CC (e.g., Je, pije
‘He eats, drinks’), this type of comma does not mark new clauses but indicates that the two
verbs, now forming a single clause, are phonologically separated by a pause of, at least,
minimal duration.
The fact that the first instances of the serializing patterns with wziąć – both PC and SVC – are
attested in the 19th c. opens a possibility of language-external influence. Since the late 18th c.
(to be exact, in three stages, i.e., in 1772, 1793, and 1795) till the end of World War I in 1918,
the Polish territory was partitioned by Prussia, the Austrian(-Hungarian) Empire, and Russia.
Crucially, in the 19th c., the PC construction with the verb vzjat’ – a cognate of wziąć – was
quite widespread in Russian, as is evidenced by the Russian National Corpus
(www.ruscorpora.ru). In contrast, German – whether in Prussia or Austria – did not include an
equivalent construction in its verbal repertory. Interestingly, in 45,5% of our examples, the
influence of Russian is highly possible: the author lived in the Russian partition of Poland or
the source (i.e., a particular journal) was published in the territory incorporated into the Russian
Empire. In 42,5%, such influence cannot be ruled out, although it cannot clearly be
demonstrated either. Nevertheless, in 12%, Russian influence is virtually impossible: the
source of these examples was published in the Austrian or Prussian partition. Given this last
observation, as well as given that the use of ‘take’-verbs in PCs and SVCs is typologically
highly common – being widely attested in Indo-European languages of Europe (e.g., English,
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Greek, Albanian,
Lithuanian, Latvian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian) and languages from other phyla (also those
spoken in Europe, e.g. Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish, and Sami; see Coseriu 1966; Aikhenvald
2006; Zinken 2013; Nau et al. 2019) – the emergence and grammaticalization of the PC and
SVC with wziąć may be to (a considerable extent) a language-internal phenomenon. The
presence of similar constructions in Russian may, however, have created a favorable ground
for this process. This view concords with the conclusion reached by Nau et al. (2019:290)
according to whom “the constructions [with ‘take’ in Baltic and Slavic] have been developing
[…] mostly language-internally, and that similarities across languages are connected to general
factors rather than to […] mutual influences.” Nevertheless (pace Weiss 2012), the areal
properties of bi-verbal ‘take’ constructions in Eastern Europe (Polish, Russian, Ukrainian,
Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian) and Scandinavia (Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, and
Danish) should not be underestimated.
Although we have fulfilled our research plan – we have answered our research question and
determined the most likely origin of the wziąć SVC in Polish – our conclusions may not be
taken incautiously. Their limitations must be acknowledged. First, as has already been
mentioned in section 3, due to the scarcity of the available material and examples, the
The WZIĄĆ Serial Verb Construction in Polish 31
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generalizations on which these data draw and thus our conclusions can only be approximate.
(For instance, while our evidence demonstrates that the wziąć PC has been fully
grammaticalized in spoken Polish since at least the mid-19th c., the actual time of its
grammaticalization may have been earlier.) Second, colloquial Polish, and thus the variety of
Polish in which the grammaticalization of the wziąć-i PC and wziąć SVC must have occurred
first – indeed, both constructions are still more typical features of spoken and dialectal Polish
than the standard written language even though they appear in some literature – is poorly
represented in the historical corpora analyzed. This means that the possibility of encountering
the relevant PC and serialized constructions is lower and does not, most likely, correspond with
what typified the spoken Polish language of these periods. Third, in texts from pre-19th c.
corpora, punctuation is variable (sometimes even erratic) as the orthographic rules were still
being crystalized. Thus, the relevance of punctuation for the inclusion (or exclusion) of the
examples dated from those periods into the CC, PC, and SVC categories should be considered
with much caution.
In light of the above limitations – especially the second one – a new avenue of further research
may be proposed, namely, a study of court oaths (roty sądowe) recorded since the 14th c. This
type of historical material, which reflects more closely the spoken Polish language and its
dialectal usage, may provide a unique opportunity to detect earlier cases of the wziąć-i PC and
wziąć SVC than those revealed in the present study. Indeed, if any texts, these texts should
attest to the first instances of both constructions with wziąć in Polish. As the online corpus of
such court oaths has recently been made available (https://rotha.ehum.psnc.pl/), we plan to embark
on this research venture in the near future.
5. Conclusion
The present article studied the emergence of an SVC with wziąć in Polish by making use of a
dynamic prototype-driven approach to linguistic categorization and by reviewing the historical
corpora from the first texts available in the14th c. until the end of the New Polish period in
1939. The evidence suggests that the wziąć SVC has resulted from clause-fusion mechanisms
of which the evolution from the syndetic CC with the coordinator i to a wziąć SVC via a wziąć-
i PC seems to have constituted the principal and stronger drift than the more direct evolution
originating in the asyndetic CC with wziąć. Although our research points to syndetic CC
patterns with i as the main source of the wziąć SVC (through the stage of the wziąć-i PC),
asyndetic CC patterns may have also played some role in this development. Overall, the
evolution of the wziąć SVCs and its profound grammaticalization in modern Polish has,
probably from its incipient stages, been a messy bi-source phenomenon.
Abbreviations
CC – conjunctive coordination; EDAT – ethical dative pronoun (sobie); F – feminine; FUT –
future tense; HM – human-masculine; IMP – imperative; INF – infinitive; M – masculine;
NHM – non-human-masculine; PAST – past tense; PC – pseudo-coordination; PL – plural;
REFL – reflexive pronoun (się); SG – singular; SVC – serial verb constructions; TAM – tense,
aspect, mood.
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