Chapter Masculine Personal Gender

Overview & Synopsis

This paper examines the problems associated with the meaning, syntax and use of the masculine personal nouns. It presents selected groups of masculine nouns defining men, heterogenous groups unspecifying sex, describing mythological characters etc. Examples of conjunctions are also given, for instance dual-gender personal and dual-gender interspecific of part-masculine personal nouns (cham, grubas), and the untypical combination of female sex person and inanimate masculine gender object. Attention is brought to the problems connected with the usage of nouns denoting titles (eminencja) and dual-gender nouns (sierota). The results of the analysis indicate that the masculine personal gender is a grammatical category which is logically very inconsequential. Due to its unstable linguistic norm and troubles with usus, the users avoid certain phrases in order not to make an error or just not knowing the correct form.