Facultative Animacy in Polish

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. 'Grammatical' gender is a largely semantically empty noun trait whose existence is typically revealed through the triggering of agreement rules on the part of items in a sentence with which the noun is in construction. For example, the fact that the Latin word res is feminine in gender requires that the modifying adjective public- take the feminine ending -a. 'Natural' gender refers to perceptual categories with which people tend to view reality- male, female, animate, concrete, abstract, and so onwhich may have means of formal expression in a language. Present-day Polish provides an illustration of the process by which a natural gender can become "grammaticized" by the extension of a formal marker of natural gender to nouns outside the range of the natural gender category, making the feature referentially unpredictable. In Polish, the Genitive=Accusative feature of masculine nouns, traditionally a sign of referential animacy, is being applied more and more to concrete nouns of all sorts, gradually turning the category 'animate' from a natural into a purely grammatical gender designation.