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.

Lingüística prospectiva. Tendencias actuales en estudios de la lengua entre jóvenes investigadores

“…The present study follows a methodology similar to Swan's (1988) live interview research although the data collection method is different. The purpose of the study was to measure the degree of facultative animacy of the items in question, a term coined by Swan for those lexical items which were not semantically animate yet whose accusatives could be marked for animacy.…”

“…However, the results are still considered directly comparable. Indeed, results are presented on both scales for those items where Scores from Swan (1988) was available (see Appendix).…”

“…An asterisk (*) is used to indicate that in Swan's (1988) L os inventarios de bienes de difuntos son documentos jurídico-notariales realmente fructíferos para las investigaciones lingüísticas, y en concreto, para el análisis léxico. Esta rentabilidad se debe a la propia condición de la documentación, pues estos inventarios se caracterizan por recopilar y describir 1 una serie de bienes que van a ser objeto de una sucesión o venta pública 2 .…”