The Conjunction zed: A Contribution to the Description of the Lexicalisation of Syntactic Structures (Phrases) in Polish

The article presents hypothetical mechanisms of semantic changes that led to the transformation of the Proto-Slavic prepositional phrase *za + se into a temporal adverb and then into a particle and a coordinating adversative conjunction, resulting in the emergence of the homonymous lexeme zas (I, II, III). As analysed in the study, a crucial role was performed by a cognitive metaphor that grounds the space occupied by a person experiencing directed motion (cognitive subject - front : back relationship) in the temporal domain (future : past). The phrase under discussion gradually lost its original deictic features (the pronoun *se spatially identifies the cognitive subject, e.g. spojrzal za siebie 'he looked behind himself' vs spojrzal przed siebie 'he looked ahead'), gained anaphoric properties, and became semantically specialised in the Polish language (it came to express contrast to what has been mentioned earlier). Except for dialects, its grammatical polyfunctionality became limited. It is also increasingly replaced by the lexeme znow/znowu.