Chapter 7. Polish że ‘that’ as an elaboration marker

Abstract

This chapter discusses a colloquial spoken use of the Polish subordinating conjunction że (lit. ‘that’) as an elaboration marker. Mainly, we argue that że has a core meaning of elaboration spanning a continuum of context-dependent discourse slots. One extreme end of it sees the canonical complementizer tasks, the other one sees the elaboration marker uses operating on the plane of discourse and spoken dialogic interaction. Much of the chapter demonstrates the contrasts between the two types. Additionally, the Polish pattern is reviewed against a cross-linguistic background of elaboration markers in discourse/text as well as a more fine-grained overview of forms signalling both elaboration (in discourse) and complementation (in clause-combining syntax).