Marking similarity “in the style of”

Abstract This paper compares Czech and Polish prepositional phrases formed with non-taxonomic abstract nouns such as styl ‘style’ or duch ‘spirit’. It analyzes their syntactic functions, surrounding contexts (especially co-occurrence with indefinite pronouns), and semantic-pragmatic extensions, including similarity, exemplification, and quotative uses. While Polish shows broad grammaticalization (of variable advancement) of both taxonomic and non-taxonomic nouns into similative, exemplifying and quotative constructions, Czech limits such developments to a small set of manner-based nouns, which brings further evidence that the semantic domain of ‘manner’ is a productive source for the emergence of similative and quotative constructions, even in the absence of analogical models based on taxonomic nouns in Czech. The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how similarity and related meanings are grammatically expressed in Slavic languages.