What happens with ów pronoun, i.e. about possibilities of observing some linguistic phenomena

Katarzyna Czarnecka

Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu

Abstract

The author has observed a growing tendency in contemporary Polish language to inactivate ów pronoun, which is an inflectional indicative. This article attempts to describe a scale of the phenomenon and provide evidence for the contexts where a male nominative form of ów substitutes forms of other cases, genders and numbers. The revival covers uses recorded from three sources: 1) student works, 2) a survey including tasks where ów pronoun had to be used in an appropriate form, 3) the Internet resources. A number of wrong uses of the pronoun, both spontaneous and resulting from the didactic experiment as well as the statements coming from the Internet that confirm doubts as to the form of ów pronoun, lead to a didactic conclusion according to which the issues regarding correct uses of ów pronoun should become a part of corrective publications and school teaching.