Breakdown of Zakończywszy karierę, sławny polityk opublikował swoje wspomnienia.
polityk
politician
swój
one's own
wspomnienie
the memory
kariera
career
sławny
famous
opublikować
to publish
zakończyć
to end
Questions & Answers about Zakończywszy karierę, sławny polityk opublikował swoje wspomnienia.
How is the form zakończywszy built here, and why does it use -wszy instead of -łszy?
It is the adverbial anterior participle of the perfective verb zakończyć (to end). To form it, we look at the third-person past tense. Because the stem zakończy- ends in a vowel, we add the suffix -wszy. If the stem ended in a consonant, we would add -łszy instead. This participle shows that the career ended before the memoirs were published.
How would you express this exact sentence using a standard time clause with po tym jak?
Why does the sentence use swoje rather than jego for "his memoirs"?
When a possessive pronoun refers back to the subject of the clause (the politician), you must use the reflexive possessive swój (here in the non-virile plural form swoje). Using jego here would strongly imply that the politician published some other man's memoirs.
The word wspomnienia usually means "memories". Is it the standard word for "memoirs"?
Yes. While a single wspomnienie is a memory, the plural wspomnienia is the standard Polish term for published memoirs or autobiographical writings. It perfectly fits the literary context of a famous politician releasing a book.
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