Gender Assignment in Six North Scandinavian Languages
Patterns of Variation and Change
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21722799 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Briana Van Epps (Lund University, corresponding author), Gerd Carling (0000-0002-9190-9724, Lund University, corresponding author), Yair Sapir (Kristianstad University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 264-315 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Germanic Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1470-5427 • E-ISSN: 1475-3014 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1470542720000173 |
| OpenAlex | W2998547891 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 28 |
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
Ancient history · Geography · German · Germanic languages · Icelandic · Inflection · Linguistics · Norwegian · Old Norse · Sound change · Gender Studies in Language · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics and language evolution
The Nordic languages
The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics
Analyzing Linguistic Data
Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language
Language universals and linguistic typology
Lexical semantic change and semantic reconstruction
Gender in North Germanic
A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic.
Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages. A Contribution to the History of Ideas
Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
Loanwords in the World's Languages
The Germanic Languages
Die Gliederung des Nordgermanischen
The Diachrony of Semantic Gender Agreement
The Semantics of the Dutch Gender System
Pronominal Gender in Spoken Dutch
On the relation between gender and declension
Patterns of gender assignment in the Jamtlandic variety of Scandinavian
Gender
Svensk etymologisk ordbok
Pancake sentences and the semanticization of formal gender in Mainland Scandinavian
Gender assignment in Old Norse
Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |