A note on the Genitive of Quantification in Polish and derivational phases

Abstract

The major objective of this article is to discuss the status of nominal projections in Polish within the phase theory, with a special reference to the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC) (Chomsky 2000, 2001). Throughout the paper, it is argued that certain case marking properties internal to Polish QPs showing the Genitive of Quantification in particular, indicate that they do not observe the PIC in that the NP-complement domain to Q in [QP Q [NP]] is still available for operations of narrow syntax at the derivational stage when the verbal projection is formed. In consequence, the transfer of the NP-complement domain to Q to PF/LF is delayed. Moreover, an attempt is made to show, on the basis of binding facts and extraction, that internal structure of Polish nominals including possessives does not exactly follow the proposals made in Bošković (2005, 2009, 2013, 2014) for analogous Serbo-Croatian cases. Instead, it is proposed that Polish nominals feature a more complex architecture typical of a subclass of SC nominals, namely higher numerals. Crucially, Polish nominals are more complex than an NP with multiple levels of adjunction.