któraktóry

Któraktóry is a neologistic term used in Polish linguistics to describe a hypothetical fused interrogative relative pronoun that blends the functions of several standard forms such as który and która. The concept is primarily discussed as a thought experiment about gender and number agreement in Polish and is not part of standard grammar.

Origin and status

The name któraktóry is a portmanteau created to illustrate how a single form might refer to a subset of referents across gender in a relative clause. It appears mainly in academic essays, language-technology discussions, and speculative-fiction or pedagogy contexts as a way to explore the limits of morphological agreement and gender-neutral language in Polish. It is not used in everyday speech or authoritative grammar references.

Morphology and hypothetical usage

In the imagined framework, któraktóry would be a single, invariant form intended to stand for “which one” within a set of referents that may be mixed in gender. Its hypothetical usage would be before a determiner phrase or within a relative clause, in place of the standard który/która/które forms. The form would need to resolve issues of case, number, and agreement, and would be treated as an experimental construct rather than a normative grammatical element.

Relationship to standard pronouns

Któraktóry is discussed to highlight challenges in creating universally applicable gender-neutral pronouns in Polish and to provoke discussion about how a fused form would interact with Polish case and agreement rules. It remains a theoretical/fictional tool rather than an accepted part of Polish grammar.

See also

Polish grammar; Relative pronouns in Polish; Gender-neutral language.

Note

This article describes któraktóry as a hypothetical concept used in linguistic thought experiments and does not reflect established usage in standard Polish.