Chapter 5: Ostensible epenthetic glides in Polish: An experimental perspective
5.1 Background: Polish <uła> and <ua> nouns
Polish shows nouns whose nominative singular forms end in <uła> or <ua > in orthography. A full list of such words found in the National Corpus of Polish (Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego) is given in (1).71
71The data were obtained using the Poliqarp search engine (http://nkjp.pl/poliqarp/; Przepiórkowski et al., 2004) by means of the following queries: [orth="*uła" & pos=subst & case=nom] and [orth="*ua" & pos=subst &
case=nom].
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(1) Polish: nouns ending in <uła> and <ua> in the nominative singular a. <uła>
i. two-syllable words
buła ‘big bread roll’, stuła ‘stole’
ii. three-syllable words
bibuła ‘blotting paper’, ceduła ‘quotation’, fabuła ‘plot’, famuła ‘family house in Lodz, Poland’, formuła ‘formula’, gaduła ‘talkative person’, infuła
‘mitre’, kapsuła ‘capsule’, kopuła ‘dome’, niezguła ‘butterfingers’, piguła
‘big pill’, reguła ‘rule’, szkatuła ‘casket’, szypuła ‘pedunculus’, tawuła
‘Spiraea’
iii. four-syllable words
bałaguła ‘coachman’, kameduła ‘Camaldolese’, kanikuła ‘dog days’, kapituła ‘chapter (religious)’, molekuła ‘molecule’, minuskuła ‘miniscule’, preambuła ‘preamble’, partykuła ‘particle’, półkopuła ‘semidome’,
safanduła ‘lazy bones’
b. <ua>
i. Three-syllable words:
statua ‘statue’, Joshua (proper name), Joszua (proper name), Genua
‘Genoa’, genua ‘genoa sail’, Mantua ‘Mantua’, Papua ‘Papua’, Managua
‘Managua’
ii. Four-syllable words:
Gargantua (proper name), Nikaragua ‘Nicaragua’, Jehoszua (proper name), Perpetua (proper name)
The nouns listed in (1a), that is, the ones spelled with <ł> between the final and penultimate vowels, undoubtedly end with a lexical glide. This is because forms of these words such as the genitive plural buł [ˈbuw] ‘big bread roll’ (gen. pl.) or reguł [ˈrɛguw] ‘rule’ (gen. pl.), contain a glide even though they do not meet the context for epenthesis. Consequently, it can be assumed that the words in (1a) are realised with a lexical glide between the two vowels, for instance buła [ˈbuwa] or reguła [rɛˈguwa].
However, as discussed in Chapter 2, there is no unanimous interpretation for <ua>
sequences. Rubach’s (2000) analysis, which interprets epenthetic elements as full segments, would imply that the words in (1b), such as statua ‘statue’ are realized with a full glide, i.e., [staˈtuwa]. According to some sources such as Dunaj (2006), there is no intervocalic epenthetic element in <ua> sequences in Polish, or it is mere a
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transition effect. These sources suggest that words with <ua> in the spelling should be realized with a hiatus (e.g. [staˈtua]), a glottal stop ([staˈtuɁa]) or a weak transitional segment ([staˈtuwa]).72, 73
In addition to possible phonetic differences, the words in (1a) and (1b) also differ morphologically: they fall into different declension classes, that is, they combine with different sets of inflectional suffixes. The declension class is also affected by the gender of the noun (or, in the case of words such as gaduła, which can refer to both males and females, by the natural gender of the referent). Below, I focus on feminine nouns, as they constitute the majority of nouns that end in <uła> or <ua>.
Feminine nouns spelled with <uła> are declined in line with the declension pattern labelled as IV in Doroszewski’s dictionary of Polish (accessed online;
https://doroszewski.pwn.pl/). This pattern applies to those feminine nouns (as well as exceptional masculine nouns, such as mężczyzna ‘man’) whose stems end in an underlyingly hard consonant, such as kobiet-a ‘woman’, or form-a ‘form’. This declension class is illustrated with the nouns buła ‘big bread roll’ and kobieta ‘woman’
in Table 1.
Table 1. Polish: Declension class IV
SINGULAR PLURAL
NOM. kobiet-a buł-a kobiet-y buł-y GEN. kobiet-y buł-y kobiet-ø buł-ø DAT. kobieci-e bul-e kobiet-om buł-om ACC. kobiet-ę buł-ę kobiet-y buł-y INS. kobiet-ą buł-ą kobiet-ami buł-ami LOC. kobieci-e bul-e kobiet-ach buł-ach VOC. kobiet-o buł-o kobiet-y buł-y
A characteristic feature of Class IV declension is stem allomorphy in the dative and locative singular. The stem-final consonant in these forms is either palatalised (e.g., forma [ˈfɔrma] – formie [ˈfɔrmʲjɛ]), prepalatal (kobieta [kɔˈbjɛta] – kobiecie [kɔˈbjɛt͡ɕɛ]), or, when the stems in the remaining forms end in [w] or [r], it is [l] or [ʒ], respectively
72Dunaj (2006: 166) does not discuss the phonetic nature of what he dubs ‘weak labial element’.
73The transcription [staˈtuwa]) is proposed by the author of the present dissertation.
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(as in buła [ˈbuwa] – bule [ˈbulɛ]). The fact that the words ending in <uła> display an alternation analogous to other stem-final consonants in this declension class provides further support for treating the glide in the words in (1a) as a lexical rather than an epenthetic or transitional glide.
As far as the feminine nouns spelled with <ua> are concerned, many of them are place names, and as such do not have plural forms. Those that do, that is, statua ‘statue’
and genua (when used with the meaning of ‘genoa sail’) display different declension patterns depending on grammatical number. In the plural, the declension of these two words is most similar to pattern IV. The only difference is in the genitive, where the two nouns take the ending –i, rather than the null ending. The two plural declension patterns are compared in Table 2.
Table 2. Polish: plural declension of statua compared with plural declension class IV
STATUA KOBIETA
NOM. statu-y NOM. kobiet-y
GEN. statu-i GEN. kobiet-ø
DAT. statu-om DAT. kobiet-om
ACC. statu-y ACC. kobiet-y
INS. statu-ami INS. kobiet-ami
LOC. statu-ach LOC. kobiet-ach
VOC. statu-y VOC. kobiet-y
In the singular, the declension pattern of <ua> nouns mostly aligns with that labelled as Declension I in Doroszewski’s dictionary. This declension pattern is found with feminine nouns whose stems end in underlyingly soft consonants, as in ziemia ‘earth’, prepalatal and palatal consonants, as in buzia ‘face’ or żmija ‘viper’, /l/, as in niedziela
‘Sunday’, as well as vowels, as in idea ‘idea’.74 The singular declension of the nouns ending in <ua> is compared in Table 3 with the singular declension class I on the examples of the common noun genua and the proper noun Genua, on the one hand, and the words niedziela ‘Sunday’ and idea ‘idea’, on the other. A peculiarity of the
74 In Polish, one should interpret soft consonants as palatalized ones and hard as non-palatalized ones.
Gussmann (2007: 48), however, observes that Polish comprises a group of consonants ([ʃ, ʒ, ʧ, ʤ, ʦ, ʣ, l]) which are not palatalized, but behave as such phonologically. He dubs that group ‘functionally soft/palatalized’ consonants.
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common nouns ending in <ua> is suffix allomorphy in the genitive singular. The ending is either -y or -i.
Table 3. The singular declension of Genua/genua compared with declension class I
GENUA GENUA IDEA NIEDZIELA
NOM. Genu-a genu-a NOM. ide-a niedziel-a
GEN. Genu-i genu-i/-y GEN. ide-i niedziel-i
DAT. Genu-i genu-i DAT. ide-i niedziel-i
ACC. Genu-ę genu-ę ACC. ide-ę niedziel-ę
INS. Genu-ą genu-ą INS. ide-ą niedziel-ą
LOC. Genu-i genu-i LOC. ide-i niedziel-i
VOC. Genu-o genu-o VOC. ide-o niedziel-o
While the declension illustrated above is advised by prescriptive sources, many words ending with <ua> in spelling are sometimes reanalyzed as nouns belonging to declensional pattern IV. Table 4 illustrates the occasional reanalysis of the noun statua by listing all the forms of the noun found in the corpus that have been tagged as feminine nouns, and which can be given the meaning of ‘statue’. Additionally, the table includes the token frequency of each form. By token frequency one should understand the number of occurrences of a particular word-form in the corpus.
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Table 4. Grammatical forms of the word statua found in plTenTen12: Corpus of the Polish Web 75, 76, 77
SINGULAR TOKEN FREQUENCY PLURAL TOKEN FREQUENCY
NOM. statua
*statue statuła statula
3444 54 35 19
statuy 1196
GEN. statuy statui statuły
*statue statuly
453 185 73 49 7
statuł statul
7 7
DAT. statui statule
430 6
statuom 7
ACC. statuę statuą statułę
1861 23 23
**statule 7
INS. statuą statuä statułą
715 42 16
statuami 119
LOC. statule statui
*statue
55 26 15
statuach 70
VOC. statuo 8
75The results in Table 4 include forms with a non-Polish character <ä> and with the character <l>
in contexts where <ł> would be expected. This is most likely the result of incorrect display of the Polish character <ą> or of the users replacing <ł> with the closest basic character. Consequently, the frequencies of the forms with <ą>/<ä> and <ł>/<l> will be grouped together.
76A careful reader will notice that the form statue appears in the nominative, genitive and locative singular where the ending –e is not expected. This results from two facts. First, in some contexts, the English words statue is used (e.g., the Statue of Liberty). Secondly, there are tagging errors, which attribute an incorrect case to some items. For instance, accusative singular forms spelled with <e>
rather than the correct <ę> have been tagged as instances of the nominative case. The relevant word forms are marked with an asterisk.
77The acc. pl. row includes 7 tokens of the form statule, marked with a double asterisk. This is a result of a tagging error, as the expected prescriptive acc. pl. form would be statuy.
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Table 4 shows three types of non-standard forms suggesting that the user has reinterpreted the word statua as belonging to declension class IV. First, some nominative, genitive, accusative, and instrumental singular forms are spelled with the letter <ł> between the stem-final vowel and the suffix vowel: statuła, statuły, statułę and statułą, respectively. This suggests that users associate statua with forms characteristic for the IV declension pattern ending with <uła>, such as buła or reguła.
Second, the dative and locative singular forms resemble the stem allomorphs typical of declension class IV forms, in that they end with –le, as in bule (recall Table 1 above).
In the locative singular, the token frequency of the non-standard form is twice as high as the token frequency of the standard form. Third, the genitive plural forms have a null ending, another characteristic trait of feminine nouns that fall into declension pattern IV, e.g., buł. All the non-standard forms attested in the corpus are summarized in Table 5 below and juxtaposed with the declension of the word buła ‘big bread roll’.
The table demonstrates that the non-standard forms are analogous to those of class IV nouns that end in <uła> in the nominative singular.
Table 5. The non-standard declension of statua ‘statue’ compared with declension class IV
SINGULAR PLURAL
STATUA BUŁA STATUA BUŁA
NOM. *statuła buła NOM. buł-y
GEN. *statuły buły GEN. statuł buł-ø
DAT. *statule bule DAT. buł-om
ACC. *statułę bułę ACC. buł-y
INS. *statułą bułą INS. buł-ami
LOC. *statule bule LOC. buł-ach
VOC. buło VOC. buł-y
Overall, in the corpus, the non-standard forms constitute around 2.7% of all the forms of the word. However, in the locative singular, the proportion is much larger, with two thirds of the forms being the non-standard statule.
Statua is not the only noun ending with <ua> that is occasionally reinterpreted as a declension IV noun. Other <ua>-ending nouns, both feminine and masculine, are also sometimes reanalyzed. In the corpus, evidence of the type discussed above
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can be found for the reinterpretation of higher frequency words such as Joshua (proper name), Genua ‘Genoa’, genua ‘genoa sail’, Papua ‘Papua’, RMUA ‘monthly report for the insured’, Nikaragua ‘Nicaragua’, żenua ‘embarassment (col.)’. The average percentage of non-standard grammatical forms found for the words listed above is around 1.2%. Words that are less frequent in the corpus, such as Managua ‘Managua’, Gargantua (proper name), Jehoszua (proper name), Perpetua (proper name), Mantua
‘Mantua’ either do not show variation, or the variation is minimal. A full list of grammatical forms of these words found in plTenTen12: Corpus of the Polish Web, is given in Appendix A.
Returning to the comparison of the feminine nouns in (1a) and (1b), the third way in which they differ is their frequency. Data drawn from plTenTen12: Corpus of the Polish Web indicate that there are substantial differences in both type and token frequencies for the feminine nouns ending in <uła> that undergo declension according to pattern IV and <ua> nouns that are declined according to mixed Class I–Class IV pattern. The results are shown in Table 6 below (the figures include proper names).
Table 6. Frequency of feminine Class IV <uła> nouns and Class I/IV <ua>nouns in plTenTen12: Corpus of the Polish Web.
TYPE FREQUENCY TOTAL TOKEN FREQUENCY
<uła> (Cl. IV) 73 1,285,082
<ua> (Cl. I/IV) 9 125,286
The type frequency (i.e., the total number of distinct lemmas which appear in the lexicon) of feminine <uła> nouns which undergo class IV declension is 73, and of
<ua> nouns undergoing class I declension is only 9. This means that the type frequency of the declension pattern IV for feminine <uła> nouns is 8 times higher than the Class I/IV pattern for feminine <ua> nouns. As for the total token frequency (i.e., total numbers of uses of all word forms of the aforementioned lemmas) it is 1,285,082 for class IV feminine <uła> nouns and 125,286 for Class I/IV feminine
<ua> nouns. Thus, the total token frequency of the class IV feminine <uła> pattern is over 10 times higher than that of Class I/IV feminine <ua> pattern.78
78All lemmas which represent nouns which are subject to Class I/IV and Class IV declension patterns, as well as the token frequencies of all relevant word forms are summarized in Appendix B.
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