On the presence of vP in the structure of -liwy adjectives in Polish

Abstract

The subject matter of this paper is the morphosyntax of deverbal -liwy adjectives in Polish (e.g., dociekliwy ‘inquisitive’, szkodliwy ‘harmful’, łamliwy ‘brittle’). Specifically, the study aims to determine whether -liwy adjectives are built on a verb in the morphosyntactic sense, that is, whether they contain the functional vP head in their structure. The paper analyzes -liwy adjectives derived from roots that can produce transitive verbs, showing that they project both the internal and the external argument (although the presence of the agent is not universal). Adjectives derived from roots giving rise to uncausative verbs are also discussed, with the conclusion that their character is eventive but not agentive. A number of -liwy adjectives are also shown to be idiosyncratic, with the aP spelled out by the suffix merged directly to the root. To account for this variation, the paper proposes that deverbal -liwy adjectives come in three categories, depending on the selectional choice of the suffix.