SubGender: sub-gender or animacy of masculine referents
| Values: | Masc1 | Masc2 | Masc3 |
Polish masculine nouns can be subclassified into three subgenders based on the forms of words such as adjectives, which show morphological agreement with nouns. Most forms are still shared among all masculine subgenders. Semantically, the subgenders align relatively well with Animacy; however, as with all noun classes (including gender and animacy), there are exceptions that are semantically different from the prototypical elements of the class they grammatically belong to.
The SubGender feature is used only in the LFG treebank of Polish.
The other Polish treebanks, as well as treebanks of other Slavic languages,
encode this phenomenon using the standard feature of Animacy.
The following table is an example of a three-way animacy distinction (human – animate nonhuman – inanimate) in the declension of the masculine determiner który “which” in Polish (boldface forms in the upper and lower rows differ from the middle row):
| gender | sg-nom | sg-gen | sg-dat | sg-acc | sg-ins | sg-loc | pl-nom | pl-gen | pl-dat | pl-acc | pl-ins | pl-loc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| animate human | który | którego | któremu | którego | którym | którym | którzy | których | którym | których | którymi | których |
| animate non-human | który | którego | któremu | którego | którym | którym | które | których | którym | które | którymi | których |
| inanimate | który | którego | któremu | który | którym | którym | które | których | którym | które | którymi | których |
Masc1: animate human
Human beings, fictional characters, names of professions etc.
Examples
- [pl] mali chłopcy “small boys”
Masc2: animate non-human
Animals etc.
Examples
- [pl] małe psy “small dogs”
Masc3: inanimate
Nouns that are not animate are inanimate.
Examples
- [pl] małe domy “small houses”
SubGender in other languages: [pl]