1. What is the relationship between case inflectional endings (declension) and word order?

Please
give examples.

2. What are some similarities and differences between Spanish and Polish diminutives? Please
give specific examples.

1. Case inflectional endings are very important in languages with more selective (free) word
order since they tell us the grammatical role of nouns and help differentiate meaning and
avoid ambiguity that could occur otherwise. Examples of this are present in most Slavic
languages where the word order is not that strict (it is generally SVO but OVS is also
allowed, variation in the order of direct and indirect objects is also possible).
For example, in Polish the same sentence The man killed the dog can be organized in 2
ways (examples extracted from class):
Czlowiek
zabil psa.
man (Nom) killed dog (Acc)
> The man killed the dog.
Psa
zabil
Dog (Acc) killed

czlowiek.
man (Nom)

>

The man killed the dog.

Switching the order does not work in English since we will not know who killed who (we
wont be able to identify the man as subject if we do OVS order), however, due to the
difference in case endings in Polish (for nominative and accusative respectively) there
will be no ambiguity in the meaning conveyed. Should the dog be the subject, the
sentence will have the following form:
Czlowieka
zabil pies.
Man (Acc)
killed dog (Nom) >

The dog killed the man.

The case endings here are different from the ones in the examples above and mark the dog
as the subject and the man as the object.
2. Spanish and Polish both use diminutives a lot, unlike English does. These are not only
used to signify smaller objects but also to show affection or even modify and change the
meaning. One thing these languages have in common is that both use suffixation to form
diminutives -ito/-ita in Spanish and -ek/-ka/-ko in Polish. An important thing to note is
that these can be used for both nouns and proper names.
Some examples that signify being small/affection:
- dom house

domek little house

- kawa coffee

kawka little coffee

- Dariusz

Darek
- caf

cafecito little coffee

- Corina

Corinita
Diminutives can also have semantic differentiation. Some Polish examples include:
grucha pear tree

gruszka pear (the fruit)

suknia gown

sukienka dress

These both have the endings for diminutives but the meaning is no longer little , they
are used to form another separate word. A similar phenomenon can be noticed in Spanish
with adverbs like:
ahora now

ahorita right now

rpido fast, quick

rapidito quickly

In these cases, even though the meaning is very similar, as our lecturer described, ahorita
for example does not actually refer to this very moment (now) but is a way to say that
something will happen at some point (not clear if its in 5 minutes, or 5 hours, or 5

days). The semantic meaning of the words when the diminutive is added is no longer
literal, does not signify smaller size.
A major difference, on the other hand, is that in Spanish, only two suffixes are used
-ito and ita, whereas in Polish more variation is possible:
pies

dog

piesek, pieseczek, psina, psinka, psitko, psiunia

Most of these forms are not easy to figure out by non-native speakers and have to be
memorized.