Changing Gender of Self-Reference in the Polish Dialects of the Silesian Beskids

ABSTRACT This article deals with the masculine gender of self-reference in women's speech attested in the Polish dialects of the Silesian Beskids. It aims at identifying the diachronic relation between this phenomenon and the neuter gender used in the same function in the adjacent territories. Children – irrespective of sex – developed the neuter gender of self-reference in parallel to neuter forms they were addressed with but replaced it with the natural gender while growing up. As this convention gradually declined in males' speech, a three-step schema of development emerged in the case of females, viz. neuter → masculine → feminine. This unusual schema was subsequently reduced to a new two-step one, viz. masculine → feminine, which, in turn, could be reduced to the masculine gender alone. While the Polish material is sufficient for substantiating this interpretation, the main points are corroborated by comparative Slavic – mainly Czech and Slovenian – data. Special attention has been paid to lay accounts, which provide more detailed information than professional ones.