Polish in the light of grammaticalization theoryThe paper is concerned with grammaticalization, a type of language change whereby lexical items, in specifi contexts, come to serve grammatical functions, and grammatical items acquire new grammatical functions. The aim is twofold: to shed light at the main properties of grammaticalization, and to demonstrate its applicability to Polish data. Some prominent examples in Polish are discussed: the grammaticalization of modals, imperative and avertive constructions. The paper closes with a non-exhaustive list of leads for further research into grammaticalization in Polish.