Abstract

The article deals with the semantic and valence modifications of three phraseological units: leżeć i kwiczeć, mieć na pieńku and grać pierwsze skrzypce. Initially, these units were connected with personal nouns only and appeared in the multi-word lexical units ktoś leży i kwiczy (‘someone is in a predicament, has no choice’), ktoś ma z kimś na pieńku (‘someone wants to complain about something to somebody, someone bears a grudge against someone) and ktoś gra pierwsze skrzypce (‘someone controls, leads or makes decisions’). Eventually, new phrasemes appeared due to the enrichment ofmeaning of the units and modification of their semantic and selective valency: coś leży i kwiczy (‘something does not work, neither develops nor evolves, does not meet requirements or expectations’), ktoś ma z czymś na pieńku (‘someone does not follow the rules, does not act accordingly or acceptably’) and coś gra pierwsze skrzypce (‘something is most important or dominating, something is in a controlling position’). The research proved that the process of the appearance of these lexical units was facilitated by the language users’ tendency to forget the motivation of the units and the evo-lution of their semantics towards the content which would enable connectivity with impersonal nouns.

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