Why dwóch panów przyszło, but dwaj panowie przyszli and dwie kobiety przyszły? Agreement with Quantified Subjects in Polish versus Russian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian

Abstract

Abstract:In Russian, agreement with quantified subjects varies between plural (= semantic) and singular (= grammatical, default, impersonal) agreement, and there is ample evidence that this variation is governed by semantic and pragmatic factors (such as topicality and animacy of the subject). Although Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian follows stricter normative rules, variation does occur and is motivated similarly to Russian. Polish seems at odds with the paradigm of these languages. First, the grammar of contemporary Polish does not allow for variation in agreement with quantified subjects. Second, semantic agreement is available only with non-virile nouns in paucal numbers, while virile nouns require grammatical agreement (e.g., dwie kobiety przyszłyPL 'two women came' but dwóch mężczyzn przyszłoSG 'two men came'). This paper offers a way to integrate the Polish data into the Russian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian picture by drawing on historical and contemporary empirical evidence. Specifically, it offers a short analysis of variation between the nominative and oblique masculine forms of paucal numbers (dwaj vs. dwóch).