On the Grammatical Gender, the Relationship of Agreement and the Related Problems

Abstract

It has been noted in the paper that distinguishing three values of the category of gender for nouns in both numbers, and for verbs and adjectives three in the singular number and two in the plural number complicates the grammatical description. The latter is in many places vague and, what is worse, inconsequent. Moreover, apart from the generic classification there are plurale tantum nouns in it. On the basis of W. Mańczak's and Z. Saloni's works the author postulates to introduce in schools six values of the category of gender. This solution allows, firstly, to attribute the value of gender to all forms (also nouns which have no singular number), and, secondly, to preserve compatibility between the value of the gender of noun form and the adjectival, number and verbal form which is in the concordance relation with it. This is done through the introduction of the same set of values of the category of gender for all parts of speech, which in consequence simplifies the syntactic description in the Polish language.

It is worth stressing that the postulated values of the category of gender are based on the criteria which are not much different from traditional criteria. They are distinguished on the basis of the linking property of nouns with adjectives in the nominative (in both numbers).