Verbification of Feminine Forms of Adjectives Można ‘Posible ’, Niemożna ‘Imposible ’ and Niepodobna ‘Imposible ’ – Corpus -Based Aproach

Abstract

Abstract The article is devoted to the process taking place in the Middle Polish period, which led to the transformation of nominative, singular, feminine forms of three adjectives (można ‘possible’, niemożna ‘impossible’ and niepodobna ‘impossible’) into verbal lexemes (the so-called predicatives). In this respect, the predicative uses of these forms in the texts collected in the Electronic Corpus of 17th- and 18th-century Polish Texts (up to 1772) were investigated. The progressive verbification of adjectival forms was considered to be indicated by three changes in the constructions where these forms played the role of a predicate: supersession of connections with feminine verb forms by connections with neuter forms, limiting the connections with verbs to the auxiliary verb być ‘to be’, and disappearance of connections with the personal form of the verb być in the present tense. The research results show that both forms acquired the two most important features characteristic for predicatives during the 17th century. The third of the analysed properties characterizes the form można/niemożna from the second half of the 19th century, and the process of its acquisition by the form niepodobna has not ended yet.