Z problemów opisu tzw. form deprecjatywnych

The paper is devoted to the phenomenon called “depreciativity” or “pejorativity”. In contemporary Polish many masculine-personal (virile) nouns in the nominative case of the plural are represented by two forms: the neutral (non-depreciative) form (eg. ci poeci) and the so called depreciative, pejorative one (eg. te poety). Presenting the problems of interpretation of the above-mentioned opposition on the basis of Saloni’s and Bogusławski’s opinions, the author of the paper notices a group of nouns that do not create the non-depreciative form easily or can be represented in texts only by the depreciative one. They are etymological names of animals and objects but they can also refer to people e.g. orzeł (‘eagle’), sokół (‘falcon’), and osioł (‘ass, donkey’). The group of nouns (which is numerous especially in slangs) is an argument against interpreting the mentioned phenomenon (“depreciativity”) as a grammatical category.