The Puzzle of Afrikaans Pronominal Gender

This article discusses the variation between masculine and neuter anaphoric pronouns in Afrikaans, especially in reference to inanimate entities such as objects, abstracts, collectives, and masses. The fact that books, governments, and wine can be referred to as both hy ‘he’ and dit ‘it’ is well known, but it is surprising given what is known about pronominal gender systems. Such systems are usually organized according to clear semantic principles, yielding predictable choices. The article summarizes the available literature, provides new data from the NWU-Kommentaarkorpus , and presents an approach that helps to make sense of the synchronic variation and, to some extent, the diachronic developments

Germanic languages · Personal pronoun · Gender Studies in Language · Linguistic research and analysis · Linguistic Variation and Morphology