Gender agreement is different

Linguistics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-894
Author(s):  
Diana Forker
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Person Agreement

Abstract Person and gender are typical agreement features within the clause, and crosslinguistically they are frequently part of one and the same agreement system and even expressed through the same morphological exponents. Some theories even go so far as to claim that person and gender agreement on different targets, e.g., verbs and adjectives, are instances of one and the same agreement phenomenon. This paper discusses gender and person agreement in the Nakh-Daghestanian language Lak. It shows that the two agreement systems are formally and functionally completely separated from each other. Corpus data from Lak does not prove that gender agreement in this language is used to establish reference. Therefore it should rather be treated as concord, that is, similar to modifier agreement within the noun phrase.

From case to topology

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-307
Author(s):  
Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Case System ◽  
Multiple Processes ◽  
Constituent Order ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sign Relations ◽  
Indexical Sign ◽  
Internal Agreement

Abstract The Scanian dialect of Middle Danish underwent a range of changes and reductions in its case system. I argue that these changes were caused neither by phonological developments nor by language contact as often assumed, but by multiple processes of grammaticalisation. The present paper focuses on one of these factors: that the relatively predictable constituent order within the Middle Danish noun phrase made case marking redundant in its function of marking noun-phrase internal agreement between head and modifier(s). This redundancy caused the case system to undergo a regrammation where the indexical sign relations changed so that the expression of morphological case no longer indicated this noun-phrase-internal agreement, leaving only topology (as well as morphologically marked number and gender agreement) as markers of this type of agreement. This factor contributed to the subsequent degrammation of the entire case system.

scholarly journals Early acquisition of gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase: starting small

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
SONIA MARISCAL
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Individual Variability ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Early Acquisition ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Large Corpus

ABSTRACTNativist and constructivist accounts differ in their characterization of children's knowledge of grammatical categories. In this paper we present research on the process of acquisition of a particular grammatical system, gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase, in children under three years of age. The design of the longitudinal study employed presents some variations in relation to classical studies. The aim was to obtain a large corpus of NP data which would allow different types of analysis of the children's productions to be carried out. Intra-individual variability in early NP types was analyzed and measured, and an elicitation task for adjectives was used. Results show that the acquisition of NP and gender agreement is a complex process which advances as the children gradually integrate different pieces of evidence: phonological, distributional and functional. The reduction of variability as the grammatical process advances is a key feature for its explanation.

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.

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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