Polish grammar
Encyclopedia
The grammar
of the Polish language
is characterized by a high degree of inflection, and has relatively free word order
, although the dominant arrangement is subject–verb–object (SVO). There are no articles
, and there is frequent dropping of subject pronouns
. Distinctive features include the different treatment of masculine personal nouns in the plural, and the complex grammar of numeral
s and quantifiers.
s which apply across the Polish inflectional system, affecting the morphology of nouns, adjectives, verbs and other parts of speech. Some of these result from the restricted distribution of the vowels i and y, and from the voicing rules for consonant in clusters and at the end of words. Otherwise the main changes are:
Details of these changes are given in the Regular alternation section of the article on Polish morphology.
system of case
s for noun
s, pronoun
s, and adjective
s. There are seven cases: nominative
(mianownik), genitive
(dopełniacz), dative
(celownik), accusative
(biernik), instrumental
(narzędnik), locative
(miejscownik), and vocative
(wołacz).
Polish has two number classes
: singular and plural (the dual
vanished around the 15th century, except in a few relicts).
There are three main gender
s: masculine, feminine and neuter. Masculine nouns are also divided into animate and inanimate (this distinction being relevant in the singular), and personal and non-personal (this distinction being relevant in the plural). All personal nouns are also animate; some nouns with inanimate meaning (such as papieros "cigarette") are treated grammatically as animate.
Masculine nouns typically end in a consonant, although a few (mainly personal names and words for people) end in -a, or more rarely -o (those which end -y or -i in the singular follow the adjectival declension). Feminine nouns end in -a, or less commonly in a consonant (always a soft or hardened consonant, at least in the inflected forms). Neuter nouns end in -o or -e, or in a few cases -ę.
Typical declensions are as follows:
A common deviation from the above patterns is that many masculine nouns have genitive singular in -a rather than -u. This includes all personal and animate masculines (ending in a consonant). Also masculine animate nouns have accusative singular equal to the genitive singular (in -a). Masculine personal nouns also have accusative plural equal to genitive plural, and often have nominative plural in -i.
For full details of noun inflection, see Nouns in the article on Polish morphology.
Like most Slavic languages
, with the exception of Bulgarian
and Macedonian
, Polish uses no definite or indefinite article
s. A noun such as kot may mean either "the cat" or "a cat".
Polish does not regularly place nouns together to form compound noun expressions. Equivalents to such expressions are formed using noun-derived adjectives (as in sok pomarańczowy, "orange juice", where pomarańczowy is an adjective derived from pomarańcza "orange"), or using prepositional phrases or (equivalently) a noun in the genitive or other case.
A group of nouns connected by a word for "and" is treated as plural. It is masculine personal plural if it contains any male person (in fact, if it contains any person and any masculine noun).
Most short adjectives have a comparative form in -szy or -iejszy, and a superlative obtained by prefixing naj- to the comparative.
For adjectives which do not have these forms, the words bardziej ("more") and najbardziej ("most") are used before the adjective to make comparative and superlative phrases.
Adverbs are formed from adjectives with the ending ie, or in some cases -o. Comparatives of adverbs are formed (where they exist) with the ending -iej. Superlatives have the prefix naj- as for adjectives.
For more details on the formation of the above forms, see Adjectives in the article on Polish morphology. For demonstrative adjectives, interrogative adjectives, etc., see also the Pronouns section below.
Attributive adjectives agree in gender, number and case with the noun they modify. Predicate adjectives agree with the relevant noun in gender and number, and are in the nominative case, unless the subject is unspecified (as in some infinitive phrases), in which case the adjective takes the (masculine/neuter) instrumental form (for example, być mądrym, "to be wise", although the nominative is used if the logical subject is specified). The instrumental is also used for adjectival complements of some other verbs, as in czynić go mądrym ("make him wise").
With pronouns such as coś ("something") (but not ktoś "someone"), if the pronoun is nominative or accusative, the adjective takes the genitive form (coś dobrego "something good").
Adjectives are sometimes used as nouns; for example, zielony ("green") may mean "the/a green one" etc.
Compound adjectives can be formed by replacing the ending of the first adjective with -o, as in formalno-prawny ("formal (and) legal").
Polish differs from English in using adverbs, rather than adjectives, in expressions like "look nice", "smell awful", etc.
s of Polish (nominative forms) are ja ("I"), ty ("you", singular, familiar), on ("he", or "it" corresponding to masculine nouns), ona ("she", or "it" corresponding to feminine nouns), ono ("it" corresponding to neuter nouns), my ("we"), wy ("you", plural, familiar), oni ("they", corresponding to a masculine personal group – see Noun syntax above), one ("they" in other cases).
The polite second-person pronouns are the same as the nouns pan ("gentleman, Mr"), pani ("lady, Mrs") and their plurals panowie, panie. The mixed-sex plural is państwo. All second-person pronouns are often capitalized for politeness, in letters etc.
For the full declension of these pronouns, see Pronouns in the article on Polish morphology. Subject pronouns can be dropped if the meaning is clear and they are not emphasized. Sometimes there are alternative forms available for a given personal pronoun in a given case:
The reflexive pronoun
for all persons and numbers is się.
The possessive adjective
s (also used as possessive pronouns) derived from the personal pronouns are mój, twój, jego (m., n.)/jej (f.); nasz, wasz, ich. There is also a reflexive possessive swój. The polite second-person pronouns have possessives identical to the genitives of the corresponding nouns, although there is a possessive adjective pański corresponding to pan.
The demonstrative pronoun, also used as a demonstrative adjective, is ten (feminine ta, neuter to, masculine personal plural ci, other plural te). The prefix tam- can be added to emphasize a more distant referent ("that" as opposed to "this").
Interrogative
pronouns are kto ("who") and co ("what"); these also provide the pronouns ktoś/coś ("someone/something"), ktokolwiek/cokolwiek ("anyone/anything"), nikt/nic ("noone/nothing").
The usual relative pronoun
is który (declined like an adjective). However, when the antecedent is also a pronoun, the relative pronoun used is kto or co (as in ten kto "he who" and to co "that which"). The word który also means "which" as an interrogative pronoun and adjective.
The pronoun and adjective wszystek means "all". It is used most commonly in the plural (wszyscy means "everyone"), and in the neuter singular (wszystko) to mean "everything". The pronoun and adjective każdy means "each, every", while żaden means "no, none".
For full information on the declension of the above pronouns, see Pronouns in the article on Polish morphology.
When the referent of a pronoun is a person of unspecified sex, the masculine form of the pronoun is generally used. When the referent is a thing or idea which does not correspond to any specific noun, it is treated as neuter.
The basic numerals are 1 jeden, 2 dwa, 3 trzy, 4 cztery, 5 pięć, 6 sześć, 7 siedem, 8 osiem, 9 dziewięć, 10 dziesięć, 11 jedenaście, 12 dwanaście, 13 trzynaście, 14 czternaście, 15 piętnaście , 16 szesnaście, 17 siedemnaście, 18 osiemnaście, 19 dziewiętnaście , 20 dwadzieścia, 30 trzydzieści, 40 czterdzieści, 50 pięćdziesiąt , 60 sześćdziesiąt (pron. sze(s)dź-), 70 siedemdziesiąt, 80 osiemdziesiąt, 90 dziewięćdziesiąt , 100 sto, 200 dwieście, 300 trzysta, 400 czterysta, 500 pięćset (usually pronounced pieńset), 600 sześćset (usually ronounced szejset), 700 siedemset, 800 osiemset, 900 dziewięćset (usually pronounced -wieńset-).
These numerals are inflected for case, and also to some extent for gender. For details of their inflection, see Numbers and quantifiers in the article on Polish morphology.
Thousand is tysiąc, treated as a noun (so 2000 is dwa tysiące, etc.) Million is milion, billion (meaning a thousand million) is miliard, a million million is bilion, a thousand million million is biliard, and so on (i.e. the long scale is used).
Compound numbers are constructed similarly as in English (for example, 91 234 is dziewięćdziesiąt jeden tysięcy dwieście trzydzieści cztery).
When a numeral modifies a noun, the numeral takes the expected case, but the noun may not; also the gender and number of the resulting noun phrase
may not correspond to that of the noun. The following rules apply:
Polish also has a series of numerals called collective numerals (liczebniki zbiorowe), namely dwoje (for 2), troje (for 3), czworo (for 4), pięcioro (for 5), and so on. These are used with the following types of nouns:
For the declination of collective numerals by case, see the morphology article section. They all follow the rule that when the numeral is nominative or accusative, the noun becomes genitive plural, and the resulting noun phrase is neuter singular. In this case the genitive noun is also used after the instrumental of the numeral.
Certain quantifiers behave similarly to numerals. These include kilka ("several"), parę ("a few") and wiele ("much, many"), which behave like numbers above 5 in terms of the noun cases and verb forms taken. There are also indefinite numerals kilkanaście, kilkadziesiąt, kilkaset (and similar forms with parę-), meaning "several-teen", several tens and several hundred.
Quantifiers which always take the genitive of nouns include dużo ("much, many"), mało ("few, little"), więcej ("more"), mniej ("less") (also najwięcej/najmniej "most/least"), trochę ("a bit"), pełno ("plenty, a lot").
The words oba and obydwa (meaning "both"), and their derived forms behave like dwa etc. However the collective forms oboje, obydwoje (in the nominative/vocative), when referring to a married couple or similar, take the nominative form of the noun rather than the genitive, and form a masculine plural noun phrase (oboje rodzice byli, "both parents were", cf. dwoje rodziców było).
For the declination of all the above quantifiers, see the morphology article section.
s have the grammatical category of aspect
. Each verb is either imperfective, meaning that it denotes continuous or habitual events, or perfective, meaning that it denotes single completed events (in particular, perfective verbs have no present tense). Verbs often occur in imperfective and perfective pairs – for example, jeść and zjeść both mean "to eat", but the first has imperfective aspect, the second perfective.
Imperfective verbs have three tenses: present
, past
and future
, the last being a compound tense (except in the case of być "to be"). Perfective verbs have a past tense and a simple future tense, the latter formed on the same pattern as the present tense of imperfective verbs. Both types also have imperative
and conditional
forms. The dictionary form of a verb is the infinitive
, which usually ends with -ć (occasionally with -c). The present-day past tense derives from the old Slavic
"perfect" tense; several other old tenses (the aorist
, imperfect, and past perfect) have been dropped.
The present tense of imperfective verbs (and future tense of perfective verbs) has six forms, for the three persons
and two numbers
. For example, the present tense of jeść is jem, jesz, je; jemy, jecie, jedzą (meaning "(I) eat" etc. – subject pronouns may be dropped), while the future tense of the corresponding perfective verb zjeść is zjem, zjesz etc. (meaning "(I) shall eat" etc.)
The verb być has the irregular present tense jestem, jesteś, jest, jesteśmy, jesteście, są. It also has a simple future tense (see below).
The past tense agrees with the subject in gender as well as person and number. The basic past stem is in -ł; to this are added endings for gender and number, and then personal endings are further added for the first and second person forms. Thus, on the example of być, the past tense forms are byłem/byłam ("I was", masc/fem.), byłeś/byłaś, był/była/było; byliśmy/byłyśmy ("we were" masc. personal/all other), byliście/byłyście, byli/były.
The conditional (also used as a subjunctive) is formed from the past tense plus by, the personal endings (if any) coming after the by. For example: byłbym/byłabym ("I would be", masc/fem.), byłbyś/byłabyś, byłby/byłaby/byłoby; bylibyśmy/byłybyśmy, bylibyście/byłybyście, byliby/byłyby.
The personal past tense suffixes, which are reduced forms of the present tense of być, are clitic
s and can be detached from the verb to attach to another accented word earlier in the sentence, such as a question word (as in kogoście zobaczyli as an alternative to kogo zobaczyliście "whom did you see"), or (mostly in informal speech) an emphatic particle że (co żeście zrobili? "what did you do"). The same applies to the conditional endings (kiedy byście przyszli as an alternative to kiedy przyszlibyście "when would you come").
A special case of the above is found in subjunctive-like clauses, where the by(-) of the conditional is detached and used to introduce the clause, either alone or attached to the conjunction a or że. For example, "that he (I) sing" might be aby(m) śpiewał, żeby(m) śpiewał or by(m) śpiewał. Such clauses may express "in order that", or be used with verbs meaning "want", "expect", etc.
The future tense of być ("be") follows the pattern of a typical present tense: będę, będziesz, będzie, będziemy, będziecie, będą.
The future tense of other imperfective verbs is formed using the future of być together with the infinitive, or the past form (inflected for gender and number, but without any personal suffixes), of the verb in question. For example, the future of robić ("do, make") has such forms as będę robić/robił/robiła, będziecie robić/robili/robiły. The choice between infinitive and past form is usually a free one, but with modals governing another infinitive, the past form is used: będzie musiał odejść (not będzie musieć...) "he will have to leave".
The second personal singular imperative
is formed from the present tense by dropping the ending (e.g. brać: 2/3S present bierze(sz), imperative bierz), sometimes adding -ij or -aj. Add -my and -cie for the 1P and 2P forms. To make third-person imperative sentences (including with the polite second-person pronouns pan etc.) the particle niech is used at the start of the sentence (or at least before the verb), with the verb in the future tense (if być or perfective) or present tense (otherwise). There is a tendency to prefer imperfective verbs in imperative sentences for politeness; negative imperatives quite rarely use perfectives.
Other forms of the verb are:
The prepositions z and w are pronounced together with the following word, obeying the usual rules for consonant cluster voicing (so z tobą "with you" is pronounced "stobą"). Before some consonant clusters, particularly clusters beginning with a sibilant (in the case of z) or with f/w (in the case of w), the prepositions take the form ze and we (e.g. we Wrocławiu "in Wrocław"). These forms are also used before the first-person singular pronouns in mn-; several other prepositions also have longer forms before these pronouns (przeze mnie, pode mną etc.), and these phrases are pronounced as single words, with the stress on the penultimate syllable (the -e).
Common prepositions include:
s include i (and less commonly oraz) meaning "and", lub and albo meaning "or", ale meaning "but", lecz meaning "but" chiefly in phrases of the type "not x but y", że (or more formally sometimes iż) meaning "that", więc, dlatego and zatem meaning "so, therefore", ponieważ meaning "because", choć/chociaż meaning "although", and aby/żeby meaning "in order to/that" (can be followed by an infinitive phrase, or by a sentence in the past tense; in the latter case the by of the conjunction is in fact the conditional particle and takes personal endings as appropriate).
In written Polish, subordinate clauses are normally set off with commas. Commas are not normally used before conjunctions meaning "and" or "or".
, it is possible to move words around in the sentence, and to drop
the subject, object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context.
These sentences mean more or less the same ("Alice has a cat"), but different shades of meaning are emphasized by selecting different word orders.
Note that each word order could carry a slightly different meaning, which may be difficult for a non-native speaker to completely grasp. There are no rules governing this, and even the emphases listed above could be easily changed with proper pronunciation.
Sometimes if apparent from context, the subject, object or even the verb, can be dropped:
Note the interrogative particle "czy", which is used to start a yes/no question
, much like the French "est-ce que". (See also tag question
.) The particle is not obligatory, and sometimes rising intonation is the only signal of the interrogative character of the sentence: "Alicja ma kota?" (see above).
There is a tendency in Polish to drop the subject rather than the object, as it is uncommon to know the object but not the subject. If the question were "Kto ma kota?" (Who has [a/the] cat?), the answer should be "Alicja" alone, without a verb.
In particular personal pronouns are almost always dropped, much like the respective Italian
and Spanish
pronouns. This is because other language aspects define the subject easily, for example the verb IŚĆ ("to go"):
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
of the Polish language
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
is characterized by a high degree of inflection, and has relatively free word order
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
, although the dominant arrangement is subject–verb–object (SVO). There are no articles
Article (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
, and there is frequent dropping of subject pronouns
Pro-drop language
A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically inferable...
. Distinctive features include the different treatment of masculine personal nouns in the plural, and the complex grammar of numeral
Numeral
The term numeral can refer to:* Symbols for numbers used in mathematics.* Numeral , the basic words combined in a language represent numbers* Numerical digit, the glyphs used to represent numerals...
s and quantifiers.
Regular morphological alternation
There are certain regular or common alternationAlternation (linguistics)
In linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a phoneme or morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization. Each of the various realizations is called an alternant...
s which apply across the Polish inflectional system, affecting the morphology of nouns, adjectives, verbs and other parts of speech. Some of these result from the restricted distribution of the vowels i and y, and from the voicing rules for consonant in clusters and at the end of words. Otherwise the main changes are:
- vowel alternations, arising from the historical development of certain vowels, which cause vowel changes in some words depending on whether the syllable is closed or open, or whether the following consonant is soft or hard;
- consonant changes caused by certain endings (such as the -ie of the locative case, and the -i of the masculine personal plural) which historically entailed palatization of the preceding consonant, and now produce a number of different changes depending on which consonant is involved.
Details of these changes are given in the Regular alternation section of the article on Polish morphology.
Noun declension
Polish retains the Old SlavicSlavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
system of case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
s for noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s, pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s, and adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s. There are seven cases: nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
(mianownik), genitive
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
(dopełniacz), dative
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
(celownik), accusative
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
(biernik), instrumental
Instrumental case
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
(narzędnik), locative
Locative case
Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
(miejscownik), and vocative
Vocative case
The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
(wołacz).
Polish has two number classes
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
: singular and plural (the dual
Dual number
In linear algebra, the dual numbers extend the real numbers by adjoining one new element ε with the property ε2 = 0 . The collection of dual numbers forms a particular two-dimensional commutative unital associative algebra over the real numbers. Every dual number has the form z = a + bε with a and...
vanished around the 15th century, except in a few relicts).
There are three main gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
s: masculine, feminine and neuter. Masculine nouns are also divided into animate and inanimate (this distinction being relevant in the singular), and personal and non-personal (this distinction being relevant in the plural). All personal nouns are also animate; some nouns with inanimate meaning (such as papieros "cigarette") are treated grammatically as animate.
Masculine nouns typically end in a consonant, although a few (mainly personal names and words for people) end in -a, or more rarely -o (those which end -y or -i in the singular follow the adjectival declension). Feminine nouns end in -a, or less commonly in a consonant (always a soft or hardened consonant, at least in the inflected forms). Neuter nouns end in -o or -e, or in a few cases -ę.
Typical declensions are as follows:
- klub ("club"; an inanimate masculine noun) – N/A klub, G klubu, D klubowi, I klubem, L/V klubie. Plural: N/A/V kluby, G klubów, D klubom, I klubami, L klubach.
- mapa ("map"; a feminine noun) – N mapa, G mapy, D/L mapie, A mapę, I mapą, V mapo. Plural: N/A/V mapy, G map, D mapom, I mapami, L mapach.
- mięso ("meat'; a neuter noun) – N/A/V mięso, G mięsa, D mięsu, I mięsem, L mięsie. Plural: N/A/V mięsa, G mięs, D mięsom, I mięsami, L mięsach.
A common deviation from the above patterns is that many masculine nouns have genitive singular in -a rather than -u. This includes all personal and animate masculines (ending in a consonant). Also masculine animate nouns have accusative singular equal to the genitive singular (in -a). Masculine personal nouns also have accusative plural equal to genitive plural, and often have nominative plural in -i.
For full details of noun inflection, see Nouns in the article on Polish morphology.
Noun syntax
The use of the cases of nouns is as follows:- The nominative (the dictionary form of a noun) is used for sentence subjectSubject (grammar)The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
and for certain complements (as in sentences of the form X to Y "X is Y", to jest Y "this is Y"). - The genitive is used for possessor and similar (equivalent to English "of X" or "X's"), for the direct object of negated verbs, as the object of some verbs and prepositions, as an object with partitivePartitiveIn linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that divides something into parts. For example, in the English sentence I'll have some coffee, some is a partitive determiner because it makes the noun phrase some coffee refer to a subset of all coffee...
meaning and in some fixed expressions, and for nouns governed by certain numbers and expressions of quantity (see Numbers and quantifiers below). - The dative is used for indirect objects, to denote the party for whom something is done or the "party concerned" in certain expressions (such as wolno mu, "he is allowed", lit. "it is allowed to him"), and as the object of some verbs and prepositions.
- The accusative is used for the direct object of verbs which are not negated, as the object of some prepositions, and in some time expressions.
- The instrumental is used for the means (instrument) by which something is done, for example pociągiem (instrumental of pociąg "train") means "by train". It is also used for a noun complement of być ("to be"), and for the complements and objects of some other verbs and some prepositions.
- The locative is used only as the object of certain prepositions (particularly w "in" and na "on", when they have static meaning).
- The vocative is used to indicate who or what is being addressed. However with personal names, in colloquial speech, the nominative is usually used instead.
Like most Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, with the exception of Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
and Macedonian
Macedonian language
Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
, Polish uses no definite or indefinite article
Article (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
s. A noun such as kot may mean either "the cat" or "a cat".
Polish does not regularly place nouns together to form compound noun expressions. Equivalents to such expressions are formed using noun-derived adjectives (as in sok pomarańczowy, "orange juice", where pomarańczowy is an adjective derived from pomarańcza "orange"), or using prepositional phrases or (equivalently) a noun in the genitive or other case.
A group of nouns connected by a word for "and" is treated as plural. It is masculine personal plural if it contains any male person (in fact, if it contains any person and any masculine noun).
Adjective inflection
Adjectives agree with the noun they modify in terms of gender, number and case. They are declined according to the following pattern (dumny means "proud"):- masculine singular: N/V dumny, G dumnego, D dumnemu, A dumny (for inanimate nouns)/dumnego (animate), I/L dumnym
- feminine singular: N/V dumna, G/D/L dumnej, A/I dumną
- neuter singular: N/V/A dumne, G/D/I/L as masculine
- plural: N/V/A dumne (but for mascualine personal nouns N/V dumni A dumnych), G/L dumnych, D dumnym, I dumnymi
Most short adjectives have a comparative form in -szy or -iejszy, and a superlative obtained by prefixing naj- to the comparative.
For adjectives which do not have these forms, the words bardziej ("more") and najbardziej ("most") are used before the adjective to make comparative and superlative phrases.
Adverbs are formed from adjectives with the ending ie, or in some cases -o. Comparatives of adverbs are formed (where they exist) with the ending -iej. Superlatives have the prefix naj- as for adjectives.
For more details on the formation of the above forms, see Adjectives in the article on Polish morphology. For demonstrative adjectives, interrogative adjectives, etc., see also the Pronouns section below.
Adjective syntax
Adjectives generally precede the noun they modify, although in some fixed expressions and official names and phrases they can follow the noun (as in język polski "Polish language"; also dzień dobry "good day, hello").Attributive adjectives agree in gender, number and case with the noun they modify. Predicate adjectives agree with the relevant noun in gender and number, and are in the nominative case, unless the subject is unspecified (as in some infinitive phrases), in which case the adjective takes the (masculine/neuter) instrumental form (for example, być mądrym, "to be wise", although the nominative is used if the logical subject is specified). The instrumental is also used for adjectival complements of some other verbs, as in czynić go mądrym ("make him wise").
With pronouns such as coś ("something") (but not ktoś "someone"), if the pronoun is nominative or accusative, the adjective takes the genitive form (coś dobrego "something good").
Adjectives are sometimes used as nouns; for example, zielony ("green") may mean "the/a green one" etc.
Compound adjectives can be formed by replacing the ending of the first adjective with -o, as in formalno-prawny ("formal (and) legal").
Polish differs from English in using adverbs, rather than adjectives, in expressions like "look nice", "smell awful", etc.
Pronouns
The personal pronounPersonal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
s of Polish (nominative forms) are ja ("I"), ty ("you", singular, familiar), on ("he", or "it" corresponding to masculine nouns), ona ("she", or "it" corresponding to feminine nouns), ono ("it" corresponding to neuter nouns), my ("we"), wy ("you", plural, familiar), oni ("they", corresponding to a masculine personal group – see Noun syntax above), one ("they" in other cases).
The polite second-person pronouns are the same as the nouns pan ("gentleman, Mr"), pani ("lady, Mrs") and their plurals panowie, panie. The mixed-sex plural is państwo. All second-person pronouns are often capitalized for politeness, in letters etc.
For the full declension of these pronouns, see Pronouns in the article on Polish morphology. Subject pronouns can be dropped if the meaning is clear and they are not emphasized. Sometimes there are alternative forms available for a given personal pronoun in a given case:
- there may be a form beginning with n-, used after prepositions (for example, the accusative of ona is nią after a preposition rather than ją);
- there may be a cliticCliticIn morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
form, used when unstressed, but not after prepositions (such as mi as the dative of ja, an alternative to mnie).
The reflexive pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...
for all persons and numbers is się.
The possessive adjective
Possessive adjective
Possessive adjectives, also known as possessive determiners, are a part of speech that modifies a noun by attributing possession to someone or something...
s (also used as possessive pronouns) derived from the personal pronouns are mój, twój, jego (m., n.)/jej (f.); nasz, wasz, ich. There is also a reflexive possessive swój. The polite second-person pronouns have possessives identical to the genitives of the corresponding nouns, although there is a possessive adjective pański corresponding to pan.
The demonstrative pronoun, also used as a demonstrative adjective, is ten (feminine ta, neuter to, masculine personal plural ci, other plural te). The prefix tam- can be added to emphasize a more distant referent ("that" as opposed to "this").
Interrogative
Interrogative word
In linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...
pronouns are kto ("who") and co ("what"); these also provide the pronouns ktoś/coś ("someone/something"), ktokolwiek/cokolwiek ("anyone/anything"), nikt/nic ("noone/nothing").
The usual relative pronoun
Relative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...
is który (declined like an adjective). However, when the antecedent is also a pronoun, the relative pronoun used is kto or co (as in ten kto "he who" and to co "that which"). The word który also means "which" as an interrogative pronoun and adjective.
The pronoun and adjective wszystek means "all". It is used most commonly in the plural (wszyscy means "everyone"), and in the neuter singular (wszystko) to mean "everything". The pronoun and adjective każdy means "each, every", while żaden means "no, none".
For full information on the declension of the above pronouns, see Pronouns in the article on Polish morphology.
When the referent of a pronoun is a person of unspecified sex, the masculine form of the pronoun is generally used. When the referent is a thing or idea which does not correspond to any specific noun, it is treated as neuter.
Numbers and quantifiers
Polish has a complex system of numerals and related quantifiers, with special rules for their inflection, for the case of the governed noun, and for verb agreement with the resulting noun phrase.The basic numerals are 1 jeden, 2 dwa, 3 trzy, 4 cztery, 5 pięć, 6 sześć, 7 siedem, 8 osiem, 9 dziewięć, 10 dziesięć, 11 jedenaście, 12 dwanaście, 13 trzynaście, 14 czternaście, 15 piętnaście , 16 szesnaście, 17 siedemnaście, 18 osiemnaście, 19 dziewiętnaście , 20 dwadzieścia, 30 trzydzieści, 40 czterdzieści, 50 pięćdziesiąt , 60 sześćdziesiąt (pron. sze(s)dź-), 70 siedemdziesiąt, 80 osiemdziesiąt, 90 dziewięćdziesiąt , 100 sto, 200 dwieście, 300 trzysta, 400 czterysta, 500 pięćset (usually pronounced pieńset), 600 sześćset (usually ronounced szejset), 700 siedemset, 800 osiemset, 900 dziewięćset (usually pronounced -wieńset-).
These numerals are inflected for case, and also to some extent for gender. For details of their inflection, see Numbers and quantifiers in the article on Polish morphology.
Thousand is tysiąc, treated as a noun (so 2000 is dwa tysiące, etc.) Million is milion, billion (meaning a thousand million) is miliard, a million million is bilion, a thousand million million is biliard, and so on (i.e. the long scale is used).
Compound numbers are constructed similarly as in English (for example, 91 234 is dziewięćdziesiąt jeden tysięcy dwieście trzydzieści cztery).
When a numeral modifies a noun, the numeral takes the expected case, but the noun may not; also the gender and number of the resulting noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
may not correspond to that of the noun. The following rules apply:
- The numeral jeden (1) behaves as an ordinary adjective, and no special rules apply. It can even be used in the plural, for example to mean "some" (and not others), or to mean "one" with pluralia tantum, e.g. jedne drzwi "one door" (drzwi has no singular).
- After the numerals dwa (dwie), trzy, cztery (2, 3, 4), and compound numbers ending with them (22, 23, 24, etc.), the noun is plural and takes the same case as the numeral, and the resulting noun phrase is plural (e.g. 104 koty stały, "104 cats stood").
- With other numbers (5, 6, etc., 20, 21, 25 etc.), if the numeral is nominative or accusative, the noun takes the genitive plural form, and the resulting noun phrase is neuter singular (e.g. 5 kotów stało, "5 cats stood").
- With the masculine personal plural forms of numbers (as given in the morphology article section), the rule given above – that if the numeral is nominative or accusative the noun is genitive plural, and the resulting phrase is neuter singular – applies to all numbers other than 1 (as in trzech mężczyzn przyszło, "three men came"), unless the alternative nominative forms dwaj, trzej, czterej (for 2, 3, 4) are used (these take nominative nouns and form a masculine plural phrase).
- If the numeral is in the genitive, dative, instrumental or locative, the noun takes the same case as the numeral (except sometimes in the case of numbers which end with the nouns for 1000 and higher quantities, which often take a genitive noun regardless).
Polish also has a series of numerals called collective numerals (liczebniki zbiorowe), namely dwoje (for 2), troje (for 3), czworo (for 4), pięcioro (for 5), and so on. These are used with the following types of nouns:
- dzieci ("children"), and words for the young of animals such as kocięta ("kittens");
- pluralia tantum, i.e. nouns which lack a singular form (like drzwi "door(s)", urodziny "birthday(s)")
- plural nouns referring to a group containing both sexes (for example, czworo studentów refers to a mixed-sex group of four students).
For the declination of collective numerals by case, see the morphology article section. They all follow the rule that when the numeral is nominative or accusative, the noun becomes genitive plural, and the resulting noun phrase is neuter singular. In this case the genitive noun is also used after the instrumental of the numeral.
Certain quantifiers behave similarly to numerals. These include kilka ("several"), parę ("a few") and wiele ("much, many"), which behave like numbers above 5 in terms of the noun cases and verb forms taken. There are also indefinite numerals kilkanaście, kilkadziesiąt, kilkaset (and similar forms with parę-), meaning "several-teen", several tens and several hundred.
Quantifiers which always take the genitive of nouns include dużo ("much, many"), mało ("few, little"), więcej ("more"), mniej ("less") (also najwięcej/najmniej "most/least"), trochę ("a bit"), pełno ("plenty, a lot").
The words oba and obydwa (meaning "both"), and their derived forms behave like dwa etc. However the collective forms oboje, obydwoje (in the nominative/vocative), when referring to a married couple or similar, take the nominative form of the noun rather than the genitive, and form a masculine plural noun phrase (oboje rodzice byli, "both parents were", cf. dwoje rodziców było).
For the declination of all the above quantifiers, see the morphology article section.
Verbs
Polish verbVerb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s have the grammatical category of aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
. Each verb is either imperfective, meaning that it denotes continuous or habitual events, or perfective, meaning that it denotes single completed events (in particular, perfective verbs have no present tense). Verbs often occur in imperfective and perfective pairs – for example, jeść and zjeść both mean "to eat", but the first has imperfective aspect, the second perfective.
Imperfective verbs have three tenses: present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
, past
Past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
and future
Future tense
In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
, the last being a compound tense (except in the case of być "to be"). Perfective verbs have a past tense and a simple future tense, the latter formed on the same pattern as the present tense of imperfective verbs. Both types also have imperative
Imperative
Imperative can mean:*Imperative mood, a grammatical mood expressing commands, direct requests, and prohibitions * A morphological item expressing commands, direct requests, and prohibitions...
and conditional
Conditional mood
In linguistics, the conditional mood is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances...
forms. The dictionary form of a verb is the infinitive
Infinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
, which usually ends with -ć (occasionally with -c). The present-day past tense derives from the old Slavic
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
"perfect" tense; several other old tenses (the aorist
Aorist
Aorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...
, imperfect, and past perfect) have been dropped.
The present tense of imperfective verbs (and future tense of perfective verbs) has six forms, for the three persons
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
and two numbers
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
. For example, the present tense of jeść is jem, jesz, je; jemy, jecie, jedzą (meaning "(I) eat" etc. – subject pronouns may be dropped), while the future tense of the corresponding perfective verb zjeść is zjem, zjesz etc. (meaning "(I) shall eat" etc.)
The verb być has the irregular present tense jestem, jesteś, jest, jesteśmy, jesteście, są. It also has a simple future tense (see below).
The past tense agrees with the subject in gender as well as person and number. The basic past stem is in -ł; to this are added endings for gender and number, and then personal endings are further added for the first and second person forms. Thus, on the example of być, the past tense forms are byłem/byłam ("I was", masc/fem.), byłeś/byłaś, był/była/było; byliśmy/byłyśmy ("we were" masc. personal/all other), byliście/byłyście, byli/były.
The conditional (also used as a subjunctive) is formed from the past tense plus by, the personal endings (if any) coming after the by. For example: byłbym/byłabym ("I would be", masc/fem.), byłbyś/byłabyś, byłby/byłaby/byłoby; bylibyśmy/byłybyśmy, bylibyście/byłybyście, byliby/byłyby.
The personal past tense suffixes, which are reduced forms of the present tense of być, are clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
s and can be detached from the verb to attach to another accented word earlier in the sentence, such as a question word (as in kogoście zobaczyli as an alternative to kogo zobaczyliście "whom did you see"), or (mostly in informal speech) an emphatic particle że (co żeście zrobili? "what did you do"). The same applies to the conditional endings (kiedy byście przyszli as an alternative to kiedy przyszlibyście "when would you come").
A special case of the above is found in subjunctive-like clauses, where the by(-) of the conditional is detached and used to introduce the clause, either alone or attached to the conjunction a or że. For example, "that he (I) sing" might be aby(m) śpiewał, żeby(m) śpiewał or by(m) śpiewał. Such clauses may express "in order that", or be used with verbs meaning "want", "expect", etc.
The future tense of być ("be") follows the pattern of a typical present tense: będę, będziesz, będzie, będziemy, będziecie, będą.
The future tense of other imperfective verbs is formed using the future of być together with the infinitive, or the past form (inflected for gender and number, but without any personal suffixes), of the verb in question. For example, the future of robić ("do, make") has such forms as będę robić/robił/robiła, będziecie robić/robili/robiły. The choice between infinitive and past form is usually a free one, but with modals governing another infinitive, the past form is used: będzie musiał odejść (not będzie musieć...) "he will have to leave".
The second personal singular imperative
Imperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
is formed from the present tense by dropping the ending (e.g. brać: 2/3S present bierze(sz), imperative bierz), sometimes adding -ij or -aj. Add -my and -cie for the 1P and 2P forms. To make third-person imperative sentences (including with the polite second-person pronouns pan etc.) the particle niech is used at the start of the sentence (or at least before the verb), with the verb in the future tense (if być or perfective) or present tense (otherwise). There is a tendency to prefer imperfective verbs in imperative sentences for politeness; negative imperatives quite rarely use perfectives.
Other forms of the verb are:
- present adverbial participleAdverbial participleAdverbial participles are built out of a verb , and in most cases they play the role of the sentence element called adverbial in the grammar of some languages...
(imperfective verbs only), also called gerundGerundIn linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
, as śpiewając (meaning "(when) singing", "by singing", etc.) - present adjectival participleAdjectival participleAdjectival participles are participles which are derived from verbs and which are used like adjectives. They contrast with verbal participles, which are considered to be forms of verbs rather than adjectives. In English for instance, adjectival participles may appear with modifiers typical of...
(imperfective verbs only), formed from the gerund by adding adjectival endings, as śpiewający etc., meaning "singing" (as an attributive adjective), although such participles can be used to form extended adjectival phrases, which (usually unlike in English) can precede the noun. - passive participle (all transitive verbs), in -ny or -ty (conjugated as an adjective). This often corresponds to the English past participle, both in fully adjectival use and in passive voicePassive voicePassive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
. - subjectless past tense, formed as the past participle but with the ending -o (e.g. śpiewano "there was sung").
- past active participle (perfective verbs only), like zabiwszy "having killed" (from zabić "kill"); this form is invariant.
- verbal nounVerbal nounIn linguistics, the verbal noun turns a verb into a noun and corresponds to the infinitive in English language usage. In English the infinitive form of the verb is formed when preceded by to, e.g...
, formed from the past participle with the ending -ie, e.g. śpiewanie. This is a neuter noun.
Prepositions
Polish uses prepositions, which form phrases by preceding a noun or noun phrase. Different prepositions take different cases (all cases are possible except nominative and vocative); some prepositions can take different cases depending on meaning.The prepositions z and w are pronounced together with the following word, obeying the usual rules for consonant cluster voicing (so z tobą "with you" is pronounced "stobą"). Before some consonant clusters, particularly clusters beginning with a sibilant (in the case of z) or with f/w (in the case of w), the prepositions take the form ze and we (e.g. we Wrocławiu "in Wrocław"). These forms are also used before the first-person singular pronouns in mn-; several other prepositions also have longer forms before these pronouns (przeze mnie, pode mną etc.), and these phrases are pronounced as single words, with the stress on the penultimate syllable (the -e).
Common prepositions include:
- na, with the locative with basic meaning "on", and with the accusative with basic meaning "onto" (also metaphorical meanings)
- w, with the locative with basic meaning "in", and with the accusative with basic meaning "into" (also metaphorical meanings)
- z, with the instrumental meaning "with"; with the genitive meaning "from, out of"
- do/od, with genitive, meaning "to, into/from"
- dla, with genitive, meaning "for"
- o, with locative meaning "about", also with the accusative in some constructions
- przed/za/nad/pod with instrumental meaning "before, in front of/behind/over/under", also with the accusative in some meanings (and genitive in the case of za); there are also compound prepositions sprzed/zza/znad/spod ("from in front of" etc.) taking the genitive
- przez with the accusative, meaning "through" etc.
- przeciw(ko) with dative, meaning "against" (but naprzeciw(ko) "opposite" takes genitive)
- po, with locative meaning "after", also with the accusative in some meanings
- przy, with locative, meaning "next to" etc.
Conjunctions
Common Polish conjunctionConjunction
Conjunction can refer to:* Conjunction , an astronomical phenomenon* Astrological aspect, an aspect in horoscopic astrology* Conjunction , a part of speech** Conjunctive mood , same as subjunctive mood...
s include i (and less commonly oraz) meaning "and", lub and albo meaning "or", ale meaning "but", lecz meaning "but" chiefly in phrases of the type "not x but y", że (or more formally sometimes iż) meaning "that", więc, dlatego and zatem meaning "so, therefore", ponieważ meaning "because", choć/chociaż meaning "although", and aby/żeby meaning "in order to/that" (can be followed by an infinitive phrase, or by a sentence in the past tense; in the latter case the by of the conjunction is in fact the conditional particle and takes personal endings as appropriate).
In written Polish, subordinate clauses are normally set off with commas. Commas are not normally used before conjunctions meaning "and" or "or".
Word order
Basic word order in Polish is SVO, however, as it is a synthetic languageSynthetic language
In linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
, it is possible to move words around in the sentence, and to drop
Pro-drop language
A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically inferable...
the subject, object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context.
These sentences mean more or less the same ("Alice has a cat"), but different shades of meaning are emphasized by selecting different word orders.
- "Alicja ma kota" ("Alice has a cat") standard order
- "Alicja kota ma" – emphasis and accent on "ma" ("has"). Used in an argumentative response to a statement maintaining the opposite: "Alicja nie ma kota." ("Alice doesn't have a cat"). Ale ona kota ma!" ("She does, too!" or "Yes, she does!")
- "Kota Alicja ma" – similar to the word order above.
- "Kota ma Alicja" emphasis on Alicja, the owner of the cat: "Kasia ma kota." ("Kathy has a cat"). "Nie, kota ma Alicja." ("No, Alice has a cat." or "No, it's Alice who has a cat.")
- "Ma Alicja kota" – rarely useful and often awkward, but still correct. Precise meaning is context- and pronunciation-dependent. This order is often used as a question in spoken / informal language.
- "Ma kota Alicja" – similar to the word order above
Note that each word order could carry a slightly different meaning, which may be difficult for a non-native speaker to completely grasp. There are no rules governing this, and even the emphases listed above could be easily changed with proper pronunciation.
Sometimes if apparent from context, the subject, object or even the verb, can be dropped:
- "Ma kota." ("has a cat") – can be used if it is obvious who the subject is
- "Ma." ("has") – a short answer for "Czy Alicja ma kota?" ("Does Alice have a cat?"), as in "Yes" or "Yes, she does."
- "Alicja." – answer for "Kto ma kota?" ("Who has a cat?"), as in "Alice does"
- "Kota." ("[a] cat") – answer to "Co ma Alicja?" ("What does Alice have?"), as in "A cat"
- "Alicja ma." ("Alice has"), as in "Alice does" - answer to "Kto z naszych znajomych ma kota?" ("Who among our acquaintances has a cat?") ("Alice does.").
Note the interrogative particle "czy", which is used to start a yes/no question
Yes-no question
In linguistics, a yes–no question, formally known as a polar question, is a question whose expected answer is either "yes" or "no". Formally, they present an exclusive disjunction, a pair of alternatives of which only one is acceptable. In English, such questions can be formed in both positive...
, much like the French "est-ce que". (See also tag question
Tag question
A question tag or tag question is a grammatical structure in which a declarative statement or an imperative is turned into a question by adding an interrogative fragment . For example, in the sentence "You're John, aren't you?", the statement "You're John" is turned into a question by the tag...
.) The particle is not obligatory, and sometimes rising intonation is the only signal of the interrogative character of the sentence: "Alicja ma kota?" (see above).
There is a tendency in Polish to drop the subject rather than the object, as it is uncommon to know the object but not the subject. If the question were "Kto ma kota?" (Who has [a/the] cat?), the answer should be "Alicja" alone, without a verb.
In particular personal pronouns are almost always dropped, much like the respective Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
pronouns. This is because other language aspects define the subject easily, for example the verb IŚĆ ("to go"):
- Idę - [I] go,
- Idziesz - [you (singular)] go
- Idzie - [he / she / it] goes - in this case (if not known from the context) personal pronoun should be used for clarification
- Idziemy - [we] go
- Idziecie - [you (plural)] go
- Idą - [they] go - same rule apply as for "idzie"