Polish Grammar - Sentence Structure

Sentence Structure

Basic word order in Polish is SVO, however, as it is a synthetic language, it is possible to move words around in the sentence. For example, Alicja ma kota ("Alice has a cat") is the standard order, but it is also possible to use other orders to give a different emphasis (for example, Alicja kota ma, with emphasis on ma ("has"), used as a response to an assertion of the opposite).

Certain words, however, behave as clitics: they rarely or never begin a clause, but are used after another stressed word, and tend to appear early in the clause. Examples of these are the weak pronouns mi, go etc., the reflexive pronoun się, and the personal past tense endings and conditional endings described under Verbs above.

Polish is a pro-drop language; subject pronouns are frequently dropped. For example: ma kota (literally "has a cat") may mean "he/she/it has a cat". It is also possible to drop the object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context. For example, ma ("has") or nie ma ("has not") may be used as an affirmative or negative answer to a question "does... have...?".

Note the interrogative particle czy, which is used to start a yes/no question, much like the French "est-ce que". The particle is not obligatory, and sometimes rising intonation is the only signal of the interrogative character of the sentence.

Negation is achieved by placing nie directly before the verb, or other word or phrase being negated (in some cases nie- is prefixed to the negated word, equivalent to English un- or non-). If a sentence contains a negative element such as nigdy ("never"), nikt ("no-one"), etc., the verb is negated with nie as well (and several such negative elements can be combined, as in nikt nigdy nie robi nic, "no-one ever does anything", literally "no-one never doesn't do nothing").

The equivalent of the English "there is" etc. is the appropriate part of the verb być ("to be"), e.g. jest... ("there is..."), są... ("there are..."), był(a/o)... ("there was..."), etc., with a noun phrase in the nominative. The negative form is always singular (and neuter where applicable), takes the noun phrase in the genitive, and uses ma rather than jest in the present tense: nie ma kota ("there isn't a cat", also "the cat isn't there"), nie było kota etc. (as usual, the word order is not fixed).

Where two concepts are equated, the particle to is often used instead of a part of być, with the nouns expressing the concepts in the nominative case (although verb infinitives can also be used here: istnieć to cierpieć "to exist is to suffer"). There are also sentences where to appears to be the subject of być, but the complement is in the nominative and the verb agrees with the complement: to jest..." ("this/it is..."), to są..., to był(a/o)..., etc.