scholarly journals Grammatical Gender and Declension Class in Language Change: A Study of the Loss of Feminine Gender in Norwegian

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-263
Author(s):  
Yulia Rodina ◽  
Marit Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The Status ◽  
Gender System

In this paper, we investigate an ongoing change in the grammatical gender system of Norwegian. Previous research has shown that the feminine form of the indefinite article is quickly disappearing from several dialects, which has led to claims that the feminine gender is being lost from the language. We have carried out a study of the status of the feminine in possessives across five age groups of speakers of the Tromsø dialect. Our findings show that the prenominal possessives are affected by the change to the same extent as the indefinite article, while forms that have been argued not to be exponents of gender (the definite suffix and the postnominal possessive) are generally unaffected.

scholarly journals Gender Change in Norwegian Dialects: Comprehension is affected before Production

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (s1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Lundquist ◽  
Yulia Rodina ◽  
Irina A. Sekerina ◽  
Marit Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Gender Change

AbstractThis article investigates language variation and change in the grammatical gender system of Norwegian, where feminine gender agreement is in the process of disappearing in some Northern Norwegian dialects. Speakers of the Tromsø (N=46) and Sortland (N=54) dialects participated in a Visual Word experiment. The task examined whether they used indefinite articles (en, ei, et) predictively to identify nouns during spoken-word recognition, and whether they produced feminine articles in an elicited production task. Results show that all speakers used the neuter indefinite article et as a predictive cue, but no speakers used the feminine ei predictively, regardless of whether they produced it or not. The masculine article en was used predictively only by the speakers who did not produce feminine gender forms. We hypothesize that in dialects where the feminine gender is disappearing, this change in the gender system affects comprehension first, even before speakers stop producing the feminine indefinite article.

scholarly journals Grammatical Gender: Acquisition, Attrition, and Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-121
Author(s):  
Terje Lohndal ◽  
Marit Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
First Language ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Combined Data

This paper discusses grammatical gender in Norwegian by bringing together data from first language acquisition, Norwegian heritage language, and dialect change. In all these contexts, gender is often claimed to be a vulnerable category, arguably due to the relative non-transparency of gender assignment. Furthermore, the feminine gender is in the process of being lost in many Norwegian dialects, as feminine agreement forms (for example, the indefinite article) are merged with the masculine. The definite suffix, in contrast, is quite stable, as it is acquired early and does not undergo attrition/change. We argue that the combined data provide evidence that gender and declension class are separate phenomena, and we outline a possible formal analysis to account for the findings.*

scholarly journals Grammatical Gender in Norwegian: Language Acquisition and Language Change

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Rodina ◽  
Marit Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
The Feminine

Based on data from two experimental studies, this paper investigates the production of gender in a Norwegian dialect (Tromsø) by several groups of child and adult speakers. The findings show that gender is late acquired (around age 7) and, furthermore, that there are considerable differences between the groups, indicating an ongoing historical change that involves the loss of feminine gender agreement. However, the feminine declensional endings, such as the suffixal definite article, are retained. While there are sociolinguistic factors causing this change, we argue that the nature of the change can be explained by the process of language acquisition.*

scholarly journals Dead, but Won’t Lie Down? Grammatical Gender among Norwegians

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toril Opsahl
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Gender Features

This paper examines grammatical gender from the sociolinguistic perspective. The question pursued is to what extent exponents of grammatical gender are tied indexically to identity categories. Building on literature and corpus data, I claim that within the Norwegian context, grammatical gender is associated with sociolinguistic dimensions such as the urban/rural distinction, political views, class, ethnicity. The traditional three-gender system is being replaced by a two-gender system in several dialects, resulting in the loss of the feminine gender. Indexical values associated with the feminine gender features are still valid, though, and some forms take on new pragmatic functions. Once grammatical gender is viewed through a sociolinguistic lens, with the agency of speakers being recognized, it becomes clear that it may not be fully understood without taking into account the context of interaction at a micro-level, and the sociohistorical characteristics of—for instance—regions with language contact at a macro-level.*

scholarly journals Gender Assignment in Six North Scandinavian Languages: Patterns of Variation and Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 264-315
Author(s):  
Briana Van Epps ◽  
Gerd Carling ◽  
Yair Sapir
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Old Swedish ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Gender Change

This study addresses gender assignment in six North Scandinavian varieties with a three-gender system: Old Norse, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Old Swedish, Nysvenska, Jamtlandic, and Elfdalian. Focusing on gender variation and change, we investigate the role of various factors in gender change. Using the contemporary Swedish varieties Jamtlandic and Elfdalian as a basis, we compare gender assignment in other North Scandinavian languages, tracing the evolution back to Old Norse. The data consist of 1,300 concepts from all six languages coded for cognacy, gender, and morphological and semantic variation. Our statistical analysis shows that the most important factors in gender change are the Old Norse weak/strong inflection, Old Norse gender, animate/inanimate distinction, word frequency, and loan status. From Old Norse to modern languages, phonological assignment principles tend to weaken, due to the general loss of word-final endings. Feminine words are more susceptible to changing gender, and the tendency to lose the feminine is noticeable even in the varieties in our study upholding the three-gender system. Further, frequency is significantly correlated with unstable gender. In semantics, only the animate/inanimate distinction signifi-cantly predicts gender assignment and stability. In general, our study confirms the decay of the feminine gender in the Scandinavian branch of Germanic.

Culture or language: what drives effects of grammatical gender?

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sieghard Beller ◽  
Karen Fadnes Brattebø ◽  
Kristina Osland Lavik ◽  
Rakel Drønen Reigstad ◽  
Andrea Bender
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Cultural Effects ◽  
Gender System

AbstractAlthough investigations of linguistic relativity originated in cultural anthropology, the role of culture in the interplay of language and cognition has rarely been addressed. The debate on whether the grammatical gender of nouns affects how people represent the entity denoted by the respective noun is a typical example of this. A common research strategy has been to compare the gender associations for non-animate entities as a function of their grammatical gender between two languages spoken in different cultural groups. In the study reported here, we try to disentangle linguistic and cultural effects on such gender associations, by focusing on members of one cultural group speaking two language variants that differ in whether or not they distinguish masculine and feminine gender. Participants were asked to assign a male or female voice to nouns from a broad range of semantic categories (animates, allegories and artefacts). Our findings indicate that the gender system does indeed have an impact on voice assignment. However, this grammatical effect is small compared to the variation induced by culturally conveyed associations within and across the semantic domains. In conclusion, we discuss some implications and guidelines for future research on how to control for culture as a problematic confound in cross-linguistic studies.

scholarly journals Noun classes and grammatical gender in Wolof

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheikh Anta Babou ◽  
Michele Loporcaro
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Theoretical Issue ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Main Thrust ◽  
Plural Noun ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Noun Classes ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Gender System

AbstractIn this paper, we propose a reassessment of Wolof noun morphology and morphosyntax. Wolof is usually said to possess a total of 10 noun classes (8 for the singular, 2 for the plural), marked today exclusively on agreement targets. We provide evidence that two more plural noun classes must be recognized, which have so far been misinterpreted as “collective” rather than plural: the evidence we provide is morphosyntactic (from verb agreement) as well as morphological (from class-related asymmetries in the paradigm of the indefinite article). As for method, the main thrust of the paper consists in showing that an accurate analysis of the Wolof data must make use of the three distinct notions “noun class”, “inflectional class” and “agreement class” (or gender). Under the analysis defended here, Wolof turns out to have a fairly complex gender system, featuring 17 distinct gender values. Our analysis – and especially the discussion of Wolof so-called “collectives” – also bears on the general theoretical issue of how to establish the values of the number category.

Gender

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Audring
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
The World ◽  
Broad Variety ◽  
Formal Properties ◽  
Gender System

Gender is a grammatical feature, in a family with person, number, and case. In the languages that have grammatical gender—according to a representative typological sample, almost half of the languages in the world—it is a property that separates nouns into classes. These classes are often meaningful and often linked to biological sex, which is why many languages are said to have a “masculine” and a “feminine” gender. A typical example is Italian, which has masculine words for male persons (il bambino “the.m little boy”) and feminine words for female persons (la bambina “the.f little girl”). However, gender systems may be based on other semantic distinctions or may reflect formal properties of the noun. In all cases, the defining property is agreement: the behavior of associated words. In Italian, the masculine gender of the noun bambino matches its meaning as well as its form—the noun ends in –o and inflects like a regular –o class noun—but the true indicator of gender is the form of the article. This can be seen in words like la mano “the.f hand,” which is feminine despite its final -o, and il soprano “the.m soprano,” which is masculine, although it usually refers to a woman. For the same reasons, we speak of grammatical gender only if the distinction is reflected in syntax; a language that has words for male and female persons or animals does not necessarily have a gender system. Across the languages of the world, gender systems vary widely. They differ in the number of classes, in the underlying assignment rules, and in how and where gender is marked. Since agreement is a definitional property, gender is generally absent in isolating languages as well as in young languages with little bound morphology, including sign languages. Therefore, gender is considered a mature phenomenon in language. Gender interacts in various ways with other grammatical features. For example, it may be limited to the singular number or the third person, and it may be crosscut by case distinctions. These and other interrelations can complicate the task of figuring out a gender system in first or second language acquisition. Yet, children master gender early, making use of a broad variety of cues. By contrast, gender is famously difficult for second-language learners. This is especially true for adults and for learners whose first language does not have a gender system. Nevertheless, tests show that even for this group, native-like competence is possible to attain.

Nominal Gender in Coptic Egyptian

2021 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Sabrina Bendjaballah ◽  
Chris H. Reintges
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Masculine Gender

Summary The interdisciplinary research (philology, typology, morphology, phonology) presented here explores the role of gender in the meaning and morphology of Coptic nouns. Coptic has a predominantly grammatical gender system, albeit with a niche for semantically based gender assignment. The gender system marks a three-way semantic contrast between a [male] versus a [female] versus an [unspecified] gender value, even where the morphology draws only a two-way distinction between grammatical masculine and feminine gender. By integrating quantitative data and morphophonological analysis, we shall argue that masculine gender is morphologically unmarked. Although no discrete morpheme can be identified, feminine gender is always morphologically marked on nouns. Masculine and feminine nouns are distinguished in terms of their templatic structure, which interacts in complex ways with vowel distributions, stress assignment, and noun class.

scholarly journals Gender and numeral classifiers in Modern Nepali and their Proto-Indo-European analogues

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 475
Author(s):  
Marcin Kilarski ◽  
Piotr Gąsiorowski
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Old Irish ◽  
Numeral Classifiers ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Numeral Classifier ◽  
Gender System

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had two grammatical genders (common and neuter); the feminine was a shared innovation of the non-Anatolian part of the family. Using comparison with Modern Nepali, we argue that the puzzling feminine forms of the numerals ‘3’ and ‘4’ in Celtic and Indo-Iranian, and possibly also some similar constructions in Latin and Old Irish, are survivals of a system of numeral classifiers predating the full gender system. They contain the feminine element * s(o)r-, grammaticalized as a numeral classifier in PIE. A similar situation is attested in Nepali, where grammatical gender occurs alongside numeral classifiers. Analogies between numeral phrases in PIE and Nepali help elucidate the historical development in question.

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