Determination in German and Polish

A comparative study of determination & quantification in German and Polish ascertains that (1) the syntactic combinability of determinants & quantifiers indicates that determination & quantification are different grammatical categories; (2) several determination layers can be differentiated on both semantic & syntactic levels, running from nonquantified & nondetermined NPs through determined but not quantified NPs to both quantified & determined NPs; (3) definiteness is not always marked with determiners in languages with articles; (4) the feature "abstract situational specification" is an important function of the definite article as it cannot be marked by any other class of determinants (eg, demonstrative pronouns) in article languages; & (5) Polish, as a language without articles, utilizes alternative means of marking determination, such as deixis, word order, or aspect. A German political speech & its Polish translation are compared for the rendition/nonrendition of determination in the latter. References. Z. Dubiel