Extending the Person-Case Constraint to Gender: Agreement, Locality, and the Syntax of Pronouns

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Steven Foley ◽  
Maziar Toosarvandani
Keyword(s):  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Functional Head ◽  
Person Case Constraint ◽  
Person Features ◽  
Asymmetrical Shape ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Combinatorial Space ◽  
Crosslinguistic Variation ◽  
Gender System

In many languages with clitic or other weak pronouns, a Person-Case Constraint (Perlmutter 1971, Bonet 1991) prohibits certain combinations of these pronouns on the basis of their person features. This article explores the crosslinguistic variation in such constraints, starting with several closely related Zapotec varieties. These restrict combinations of clitics not just on the basis of person, but also on the basis of a finely articulated, largely animacy-based gender system. Operating within a larger combinatorial space, these constraints offer a new perspective on the typology of Phi-Case Constraints (ΦCCs) more generally. This typology has an overall asymmetrical shape correlating with the underlying syntactic position of pronominal arguments. We develop a principled theory of this typology that incorporates three hypotheses: (a) ΦCCs arise from how a functional head Agrees with clitic pronouns, subject to intervention-based locality (Anagnostopoulou 2003, Béjar and Rezac 2003, 2009); (b) the variation in these constraints arises from variation in the relativization of probes (Anagnostopoulou 2005, Nevins 2007, 2011); and (c) clitic and other weak pronouns have no inherent need to be licensed via Agree with a functional head. Under this account, the crosslinguistic typology of ΦCCs has the potential to shed light on the grammatical representation of person and gender.

The acquisition of French by German pre-school children

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 171-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Möhring
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Gender Attribution ◽  
German Children ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender System ◽  
First Time ◽  
French Gender ◽  
Simultaneous Input

The present study is an analysis of the acquisition of French by German children who were exposed to the language for the first time at the age of approximately three years. I investigated the usage of the French gender system, namely gender attribution and gender agreement, in order to determine whether these children were acquiring French as a ‘second’ first language, as bilinguals do with simultaneous input of two languages from birth onwards, or whether they were acquiring it as a ‘first’ second language. The analysis of several measures demonstrated that the usage of gender-marking elements of most subjects was more similar to that of bilingual children than of child L2 learners who have first been exposed to French after the age of 6. This suggests that bilingual first language acquisition is also possible with first exposure to a foreign language at the age of approximately three years.

The gender system of Durop

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-425
Author(s):  
Bruce Connell
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Present Approach ◽  
Cross River ◽  
University Of Leiden ◽  
Nominal Classification ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Classification Agreement

Abstract This paper presents an analysis of grammatical gender and agreement in Durop, a language of the Upper Cross subgroup of Cross River. The data used are drawn from Kastelein (Kastelein, Bianca. 1994. A phonological and grammatical sketch of DuRop. Leiden: University of Leiden Scriptie), whose analysis treats gender as the singular – plural pairings of nouns different from the present approach. Kastelein identifies eight concord classes (agreement classes); these form the basis of gender in Durop in the present analysis; as many as 24 agreement classes are identified here. The various systems comprising nominal classification, agreement and gender in Durop are compared and discussed. The agreement system comprises three subsystems of differing numbers of agreement classes.

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 Gender agreement hierarchy in common gender and epicene nouns in Spanish

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 279-292
Author(s):  
Anastasiia Ogneva
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Formal Rule ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Morphosyntactic Feature

Gender is a grammatical category defined as an abstract morphosyntactic feature of nouns reflected in characteristics of associated words (i.e. agreement) (Hockett, 1958; Corbett, 1991). Agreement is, in fact, easily established in “transparent” nouns which follow either semantic or formal rule of gender agreement. However, when we deal with ambiguous nouns regarding their gender, agreement is not straightforward. In this article we aim to pursue two main goals. Firstly, to review and briefly describe grammatical gender system in Spanish (§1) with a special focus on so called “ambiguous” or “problematic” nouns (§2). Secondly, to review agreement hierarchy theories and explore if they are applicable for Spanish epicenes and common gender nouns (§3). Discussion and conclusion remarks are presented in (§4).

Adjectives and Adverbs

2020 ◽  
pp. 134-156
Author(s):  
Florence Lydia Graham
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
And Gender

The fifth chapter focuses on adjectives and adverbs borrowed from Turkish into seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Bosnian and Bulgarian. These turkisms can be derived from Turkish nouns, adjectives, and/or adverbs, and have Slavonic and/or Turkish suffixes. Number and gender agreement are discussed, as are productive and unproductive suffixes and pleonasm.

scholarly journals Stability and Change in Grammatical Gender: Pronouns in Heritage Scandinavian

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Bondi Johannessen ◽  
Ida Larsson
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Heritage Languages ◽  
Stability And Change ◽  
Pronominal Gender ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Internal Agreement

Previous studies on gender in Scandinavian heritage languages in America have looked at noun-phrase internal agreement. It has been shown that some heritage speakers have non-target gender agreement, but this has been interpreted in different ways by different researchers. This paper presents a study of pronominal gender in Heritage Norwegian and Swedish, using existing recordings and a small experiment that elicits pronouns. It is shown that the use of pronominal forms is largely target-like, and that the heritage speakers make gender distinctions. There is, however, some evidence of two competing systems in the data, and there is a shift towards a two-gender system, arguably due to koinéization.

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