Przymiotnik określony w języku polskim, cechy gramatyczne i semantyczne
The Polish Adjective określony ‘definite’, Its Grammatical and Semantic Features

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses grammatical and semantic features of the adjective określony ‘definite’ in contemporary Polish. The adjective in question is compared, on the one hand, with a homonymic participle, and on the other hand, with some other adjectives semantically related to it, e.g., dany ‘given’, wiadomy ‘known, obvious’, znany ‘well-known’. The word określony as an adjective occurs primarily in anteposition to the noun as its attribute, whereas the participle określony occurs mainly in the predicative position, which means that it stands in postposition to the noun. The participle represents a bi-valent predicate. The adjective określony is similar in its semantic function to a pronoun, yet unlike the latter, it is unmarked regarding referential quantification. My central hypothesis is the following: the adjective określony is a metatextual expression. It implies several semantic components, among others: ‘I can say more about X’ [‘mogę powiedzieć więcej o X’], ‘I don’t say what sort of object X is but I think you know that’ [‘nie mówię, jakiego rodzaju obiektem jest X, ale sądzę, że ty wiesz’], ‘X is not [just] any object’ [‘X nie jest dowolny’]. The notions mentioned above are discussed in the paper.

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