Formation and use of agentiv nouns in contemporary czech and polish language

This thesis focusses on the issue of feminine gender agentive nouns formation and use in contemporary Polish, with respect to analogical phenomena in Czech. The theoretical part of the thesis sketches the form and the manner of derivation of the feminine counterparts of agentive nouns, subsequently analysing their socio- political implications (the opposition between masculine and feminine gender, various views concerning the asymmetry in their usage). In contemporary Polish, two antagonistic trends can be delineated, one tabooing and blocking the derived forms, the other, on the contrary, upholding and promoting them. In general, feminine forms are widely used for designations of jobs with lower social prestige; conversely, with respect to professions and honorifics viewed as prestigious, feminization is sparse, and, outside the feminist coterie, viewed as unnatural, inappropriate, even belittling. There are also quite a few nouns that undergo derivation only selectively. This state of affairs is evaluated as substantially different from that in Czech, a language in which feminization is common and normally unmarked. The practical part contains a research carried out on a corpus of texts from the Polish daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza from 2006; 18 problematic feminine gender agentive nouns were..