On the synchrony, variation and diachrony of adverbial exceptive clauses in Polish

Abstract

In this article, I examine the synchrony and the diachrony of adverbial exceptive clauses in Polish headed by the complementizer chyba że ‘unless’. Synchronically, I argue that chyba-że- clauses are JudgeP modifiers in the sense claimed by Krifka (to appear) and Frey (2016; 2020; to appear(a); to appear(b)). Diachronically, I provide an analysis according to which chyba że ‘unless’ is treated as a morphologically complex C-head that developed out of the preposition chyba ‘except’ and the declarative complementizer że ‘that’ in Middle Polish (1543–1765)