The traditional description of Polish abstract nouns such as lekkość ‘lightness’ or jasność
‘brightness’ holds that they are formed with an adjectival root and the nominalizing
suffix -ość. The paper considers an alternative analysis where -o-ść is a complex marker
and such nominals go through an adverbial stage in their formation, rendering them
[[[ A ] Adv ] N ] structures, a possibility suggested by the fact that the -o itself is an ad-
verbial marker.