Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2026
P[ossessive] A[djective]s in Slavonic, formed from nouns via suffixation, show unusual syntactic behavior. In Upper Sorbían, the form of attributive modifiers, relative pronouns, and personal pronouns can be controlled by the syntactic features of the noun underlying the PA. Control of attributive modifiers gives rise to phrases in which word structure and phrase structure do not match. The fact that the underlying noun is available for syntactic purposes suggests that PA formation is an inflectional process, while other factors (such as change of word-class membership) point just as clearly to a derivational process. It thus appears that any sharp differentiation between inflectional and derivational morphology must be abandoned. Data presented from all thirteen Slavonic languages, based on extensive work with native speakers, show that the control possibilities of the PA vary considerably. However, control of the attributive modifier is possible only if control of the relative pronoun is also possible, and that in turn only if control of the personal pronoun is possible. This result is subsumed under the constraints of the Agreement Hierarchy.
Versions of this paper were read at the Spring Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, Salford, April 1985, and in the Department of Theoretical Linguistics, Leipzig University, May 1985. I am grateful to those present for their comments, and to all the following for help of various kinds: Stephen Barbour, Jan Bosák, Wayles Browne, Catherine Chvany, Michael Colenso, N. E. Collinge, Bernard Comrie, Annabel Cormack, Francis Cornish, L'. Ďurovič, Helmut Fasske, Jan Firbas, Richard Hudson, David Huntley, Johanna Nichols, Janez Orešnik, H. Richter, H. Šewc-Schuster, Robert Slonek, Neil Smith, Christo Stamenov, Gerald Stone, A. E. Suprun, and Roland Sussex. I am also very thankful for the time and intuitions of over fifty native speakers, especially P. Asipowich, Božena Činkole, Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Smiljka Gee, Barbara Gorayska, Ewa Jaworska, Duška Johnson, Olga Lalor, Anna Maslennikova, J. Michaluk, Magda Newman, Alexander Soloshenko, Bogusia Sussex, and Vaska Waterhouse. Errors are of course mine. The British Council provided a grant toward travel to Leipzig and Bautzen. The paper is based on research funded in part by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), reference number C00232218. The support of both is gratefully acknowledged.