The use of formal syntax to describe Middle Polish sentences like "Słuszna wiedzieć" – possibilities and limitations

Abstract

This article contains a formal description of Middle Polish syntactic constructions, in which a certain event is predicated using singular feminine nominative adjective forms (referred to as PŻP forms). The author focuses on the designation of the sentence-forming element in the constructions under study, and the question of whether various phrases naming the event to which the predicate refers can be interpreted as the grammatical subject. Applying the formal syntactic apparatus to the constructions under study allows for the description of various types of PŻP sentences as realizations of a single syntactic pattern.