Differential Subject Marking in Polish: The Case of Genitive vs. Nominative Subjects in “X was not at Y”-constructions

What is it about?

This paper addresses the question of the nature of the genitive case-marking on the subject of a negated existential-locative clause. It is shown that this genitive seems to a cross between the usual genitive case-marked objects under negation in Polish and partitive case triggered by perfective aspect.

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Why is it important?

The paper offers new insights into the question of the proper analysis of the nominative-genitive alternation in negated (existential-)locative sentences in Polish. The analysis is set against a broader crosslinguistic context of the discussion about differential argument marking and prominence distinctions.