On the changing grammatical status of the Polish proximal demonstrative ten

Abstract

This article presents quantitative data regarding the frequency of use of the Polish proximal demonstrative ten ‘this’, which shows signs of becoming an article (Bartnik 2015). The Polish language does not have articles; however, it allows for structures in which the demonstrative occurs in the same contexts as the definite article of English in order to place emphasis on the following noun. The material analysed for the purposes of this paper includes 15 hours of live football commentaries and focuses on 7 patterns of use of the demonstrative. The study also attempts to determine whether or not the frequency of use of the function word is correlated with the level of education of the speaker. In order to achieve the goal, the patterns of use by professional sports journalists and former footballers are compared. The results suggest that, indeed, the demonstrative frequently occurs in contexts where it is unnecessary. The most frequent example involves the phrase ta piłka ‘the ball’, where the noun can be regarded as a unique referent in the context of a football game. Pragmatically speaking, from the perspective of the Polish language, if someone says ta piłka ‘the ball’ while commenting on a game, the demonstrative is redundant as only one ball can be used during a match. Importantly, a definite article must be present in such contexts in the English language, which has a strong influence on Polish. Given that the phenomenon described in the article appears to be a contact-induced change in progress, the theoretical framework of Usage-Based Linguistics is used here to account for it.