KTOŚ TO ZNACZY KTO? O JĘZYKOWYM STATUSIE ROŚLIN
Someone – meaning whom? On the linguistic status of plants

Summary/Abstract: The presence of plants in the world is so obvious that it rarely becomes the object of reflection. Plants are simply there in our lives. We associate them with a field, a garden, a vase, different types of ceremonies etc. The author of this article is not interested in such a perception of plants, although it in a way confirms our objective attitude towards them (linguistic reflection of this attitude is attributing inflectional category of inanimate gender to the names of plants which is marked by formal requirements of the identity of accusative and nominative). The author does not agree with such a clearly mechanical (non-reflective) categorization of plants as inanimate beings, which is why she presents semantic-syntactic arguments proving, in her opinion, that plants belong to a common (including people and animals) world of living organisms, a world where every member is SOMEONE who acts.

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