Unfinished “verbization” process: the development of predicative constructions with an adjective of the feminine gender in the 17th and 18th centuries in the light of corpus data

Abstract

The article is devoted to the changes in the Middle Polish syntactic construction in which the predicative function was performed by the nominative, singular, feminine form of the adjective. The research carried out on the corpus data was aimed at tracing the process that led to the transformation of those adjectival forms into defective verbs (verbization). The analysis covers six predicative adjectival forms most popular in the 17th and 18th centuries: MOŻNA ‛it is possible’, NIEMOŻNA ‛it is impossible’, NIEPODOBNA ‛it is impossible’, WIELKA ‛it is great’, PEWNA ‛it is certain’ and SŁUSZNA ‛it is right’. The first three of them changed their grammatical status, whereas for the rest the verbization process stopped. The 2nd half of the 18th century and the 1st half of the 19th century were decisive in this respect.