A little polish grammar. Masculine, animate objects.

plgThreads: 25 Posts: 316 Joined: Jul 9, 06 ♂	May 30, 10, 22:07 #1
Jeden pies/dwa psy/ trzy psy/ cztery psy/ pięć psów ( i assume thats correct)? ale.....Trzech chłopców i thought that masculine animate nouns would have the same changes. Obviously not unless i have made a mistake unless most of them are the same with a few exceptions???????????? cheers

1jolaThreads: 33 Posts: 2,737 Joined: Sep 23, 08 ♂	Edited by: 1jola May 30, 10, 22:18 #2
Throw in trójka dzieci . Edit: Sorry, you were talking about masculine.

BartolomeThreads: 2 Posts: 1,345 Joined: Sep 14, 06 ♂	Edited by: Bartolome May 30, 10, 22:42 #3
plg: Jeden pies/dwa psy/ trzy psy/ cztery psy/ pięć psów But 'pies' (and other animals, plants etc.) is an 'inanimate' object in grammatical sense (i.e. it gets all the relevant endings as 'real' inanimate objects for example 'stół'). 'Chłopiec' is the only animate noun here.

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May 31, 10, 00:09 #4

Bartolome:

But 'pies' (and other animals, plants etc.) is an 'inanimate' object in grammatical sense (i.e. it gets all the relevant endings as 'real' inanimate objects for example 'stół'). 'Chłopiec' is the only animate noun here.

really bartolome?

the thing i love about polish is the more you learn the more you just get confused.

well that would explain it but that is strange

im sure one of my teachers spoke about spiders etc been animate objects in the grammatical sense

anyway cheers (so it is only men/women and children in a grammatical sense that are animate nothing else that is alive?)

and isnt it "troje dzieci"?

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May 31, 10, 03:57 #5

Bartolome:

But 'pies' (and other animals, plants etc.) is an 'inanimate' object in grammatical sense (i.e. it gets all the relevant endings as 'real' inanimate objects for example 'stół'). 'Chłopiec' is the only animate noun here.

That is not correct. pies is definitely an animate object (used to be taught in grade 4 of Polish primary school, and repeated ad nauseam year after year).

In Polish there are three types of masculine nouns (rzeczowniki zywotne).This is the full list of genders, along with the subtypes in Polish:

Masculine
- Masculine personal, example: chlopiec (meski osobowy)
- Masculine animate, example: pies (meski zywotny)
- Masculine inanimate, example: dom (meski niezywotny)
Feminine, example: studentka
Neutral, example: krzeslo

All masculine personals are also animate, but not all masculine animate are personal.

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Edited by: SzwedwPolsce Jun 1, 10, 16:08 #6

z_darius:

Masculine
- Masculine personal, example: chlopiec (meski osobowy)
- Masculine animate, example: pies (meski zywotny)
- Masculine inanimate, example: dom (meski niezywotny)
Feminine, example: studentka
Neutral, example: krzeslo

Exactly. Personal masc nouns = only male humans

Male humans have special endings that differ from normal animate nouns (non-human).

When you take it one step further it gets confusing, I agree.

BartolomeThreads: 2 Posts: 1,345 Joined: Sep 14, 06 ♂	Edited by: Bartolome Jun 1, 10, 18:58 #7
Damn right. I get confused about these subcategories of subcategories of subcategories too. Humans and animals are 'animate'. But plants are not. Sorry plg. Animals however are 'żywotne nieosobowe' (would that be 'animate non-personal' in English?).

plgThreads: 25 Posts: 316 Joined: Jul 9, 06 ♂	Jun 1, 10, 19:06 #8
No problems, hehehe. Animals however are 'żywotne nieosobowe' (would that be 'animate non-personal' in English?).[/quote] i would assume so :)) cheers again

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Jun 4, 10, 12:49 #9

The thing with Polish accusative is that we have a kind of a case shift ongoing in the language. "Pies" is by all means animate, but retains "irregular" (for its animacy) features.

A similar thing is English - twelve most often used verbs are irregular:
be, have, do, say, make, go, take, come, see, get, know, give, find

Same goes for broadly used Polish nouns - they tend to evade rules ;-) But don't worry, there is only a couple of words with irregular inflection (well, certainly less than 500) and other nouns should easily succumb to the inflection :-)

As for grammatical descriptions, these are the proper names of genders and their subtypes:

1. Masculine
a) masculine personal (= animate)
b) masculine impersonal (= animate) (this one actually varies from source to source)
c) masculine inanimate

2. Feminine

3. Neuter

4. Masculine-personal

5. Feminine-objective (aka clunky Nonmasculine-personal)

Other than that, z_darius has explained this properly :-)

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