Polish Conditionals between Auxiliary Verb Constructions and Simple Verb Constructions

Beata Trawiński

Abstract


This paper investigates the distribution of Polish conditional constructions formed with by, focusing on the alternation between auxiliary verb constructions (AVCs) and simple verb constructions (SVCs). To test the hypothesis that Polish conditionals are shifting from auxiliary-based toward more tightly integrated verbal realizations, the study examines a UD-annotated corpus of over 300 million tokens. The results show a clear dominance of SVCs, providing strong empirical support for an ongoing constructional shift. However, the alternation is not uniform across the verbal lexicon: SVCs strongly favor modal verbs and the verb być ‚be‘, whereas AVCs remain associated with lexical main verbs. These asymmetries suggest a process of lexically stratified morphosyntactic change, shaped by modality, finiteness, and register variation.


Keywords


Polish conditional; lexical diffusion; morphosyntactic variation

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2026.50.3.40-61
Date of publication: 2026-10-30 11:37:53
Date of submission: 2026-04-15 19:06:08


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