1 Suffix ordering in Polish: Implications for foreign language learning Stela Manova and Bartosz Brzoza stela.manova@univie.ac.at , bbrzoza@wa.amu.edu.pl This article tackles the ordering of the suffixes in the Polish word with a focus on derivational morphology and formulates implications for foreign language learning. The combinability of the derivational suffixes is analyzed with the help of the so- called cognitive approach (Manova 2011b) and it is shown that the combinations of the derivational suffixes are either fixed or predictable. A psycholinguistic experiment provides evidence for the correctness of the analysis: native speakers of Polish seem to know the combinations of the derivational suffixes by heart. As semantic rules underline fixed and predictable combinations, we suggest that foreign language learners should rote learn both the existing productive combinations of semantic categories as well as the productive fixed and predictable combinations that are exponents of those semantic categories. Unproductive combinations should be learned in whole words. It is also demonstrated how observations about suffix combinability can facilitate the learning of a language’s vocabulary. 1. Introduction This article tackles the ordering of the suffixes in the Polish word with a focus on derivational morphology, i.e., it investigates words with more than one derivational suffix such as strzel-ec-two ‘shooting’, derived from strzel-ec ‘shooter’. It also tries to answer questions such as: why is the opposite order of the suffixes -ec and -two illegal, i.e., why is there no word *strzel-two-ec in Polish; how do native speakers