Colloquia Germanica Stetinensia

The article is an analysis of Anna Pilarski’s book called „Das Nullsubjekt im Polnischen. Dependenzielle Verbgrammatik und Generative Transformationsgrammatik im Modellvergleich“ [Null-subject in Polish. A comparison of the models: Dependency Verb Grammar and Transformational Generative Grammar]. The author of the book aims to compare two grammar models present in the contemporary linguistics. Pilarski explicitly emphasises that she neither criticizes nor gives preference to any of them. The constructions analysed in detail in the book are the subjectless constructions with incorporated, context-conditioned, role-prominent, referential and transformation-conditioned realization of the subject. The reader of the book can notice that the two models, DVG and TGG, in principle exist independently and neither of them alone allows for a full description of all the aspects of null-subject in Polish since each of the two examines the null-subject phenomenon in a different way and applies different research mechanisms. Hence, during reading one can have an impression that Pilarski used the two models interchangeably, instead of confronting them with each other. Therefore, it seems reasonable to consider an integrative framework based on the two models with respect to the issue of null-subject instead of comparing DVG und TGG with one another.