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Gender Assignment
What is Gender?
The grammatical category of gender can be defined as follows:
"Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words" (Hockett: A Course in Modern Linguistics (1958:231), cited after Corbett 1991:1)
"Associated words" include agreement targets and pronominal antecedents. By way of illustration, consider the following examples from the Nynorsk variety of Norwegian:
(1) Eg såg ein liten stol. Han er norsk.
I saw a.masc little.masc chair he.masc is Norwegian
‘I saw a little chair. It is Norwegian.’
(2) Eg såg ei lita bok. Ho er norsk.
I saw a.fem little.fem book she.fem is Norwegian
‘I saw a little book. It is Norwegian.’
(3) Eg såg eit lite bord. Det er norsk.
I saw a.neut little.neut table it.neut is Norwegian
‘I saw a little table. It is Norwegian.’ As can be seen from the examples, the three nouns stol ‘chair’, bok ‘book’ and bord ‘table’ combine with different indefinite articles, adjective forms and personal pronouns. Accordingly, Nynorsk has three genders.
Notice, that in the context of gender studies the notion of "gender" is used in a broader sense involving the representation of men and women in language and discourse. This is not the usage adopted here. The CASTL gender subproject focuses on the assignment of nouns to agreement classes.
Gender is related to the more inclusive notion of "classification system". Research on classifiers is relevant for the CASTL gender subproject as long as it explores the assignment of nouns to classes that are reflected in syntactic agreement.
Assignment vs. Agreement
Since gender manifests itself in agreement, gender raises many interesting syntactic issues. However, the syntactic study of gender assignment is beyond the scope of the CASTL gender subproject. As pointed out above, our focus is gender assignment, i.e. the rules for classification of nouns into different genders. Here are two assignment rules for Russian:
(4) Nouns denoting male persons/animals --> masculine gender
(5) Nouns ending in —a in the NOM SG --> feminine gender Rule (4) assigns masculine gender to e.g. brat ‘brother’, while (5) assigns feminine gender to nouns like kniga ‘book’.
Rule Interaction in Gender Assignment
An area of particular interest in the context of the CASTL subproject is the interaction of gender assignment rules. Of considerable interest for the study of rule interaction are conflicting rules. Rules (4) and (5) above are in conflict in that there are nouns like djadja ‘uncle’ that refer to male persons and at the same time end in —a in the NOM SG. The following questions are important for the study of rule interaction in gender assignment, and hence for the CASTL gender subproject:
- Are rule conflicts resolved in terms of rule counting or rule ordering?
- What is the role of defaults in rule interaction?
The rule ordering strategy states that Russian djadja belongs to the masculine gender because the semantic rule (4) takes precedence in gender assignment (Corbett 1982). Rule (4) is ranked above (5) in a hierarchy of assignment rules. According to the rule counting approach (Steinmetz 1986), on the other hand, the gender is selected that is supported by most rules. In the case of djadja, however, one rule points towards masculine and one towards feminine gender. In the case of ties like this, the default gender takes precedence. Given that masculine is the default gender in Russian, the rule counting approach correctly assigns masculine gender to djadja.
Synchrony vs. Diachrony
Rule interaction in gender assignment can be studied from a synchronic and diachronic point of view. Rule A can "win" over rule B synchronically, in which case the relevant nouns are assigned gender according to rule A at a point in time. Diachronically, A can "win" over B by replacing it in the course of time. Both the synchronic and diachronic perspectives on rule interaction are relevant for the CASTL gender subproject.
Gender Assignment and Linguistic Theory
Much of the research on gender assignment has been carried out in a theory neutral fashion. We believe that gender assignment can shed light on recent linguistic theories, and that linguistic theories can shed light on gender. One of the goals of the CASTL gender subproject is to explore the relationship between gender assignment and recent developments in linguistic theory. A case in point is Optimality Theory (OT), which focuses on the resolution of conflicts between constraints. Thus, it is interesting to explore the implications of rule conflicts in gender assignment for OT, as well as the implications of OT for gender assignment. OT forms a good starting point for comparative studies of rule interaction in gender assignment and other areas.
Relevant Languages
The CASTL subproject on gender focuses on Slavic and Germanic languages, but other languages are also relevant to the extent that they shed light on relevant theoretical problems.
Research in 2004
Curt Rice, Tore Nesset and Hans-Olav Enger are guest editors for a theme issue of Lingua devoted to gender assignment. Contributions by Curt Rice, Trond Trosterud and Tore Nesset are under resubmission. Final decisions regarding the submissions will be made in June 2004; after this, a final version of the volume will be furthered to the editor-in-chief of Lingua. Article by Philipp Conzett on gender in Norwegian is submitted for publication in refereed journal. A bibliography and a database of Indo-European gender systems will be completed in the summer of 2004. Professor Donald Steinmetz (Augsburg College, Minnesota) visits the gender team in May 2004.
The research activities in 2004 will have a continued focus on Germanic and Slavic. Areas of special interest include the modelling of gender assignment in compounds and the investigation of the position of the neuter gender in relevant gender systems. With special reference to the latter topic, Philipp Conzett will start working on tagging of electronic corpora during the summer of 2004.
Bibliography
The starting point for the CASTL subproject is the research tradition represented by the following works:
Corbett, G.G: (1982): Gender in Russian. An account of gender specification and its relationship to declension. Russian Linguistics 6, no. 2, pp. 197-232.
Corbett, G.G. (1991): Gender. Cambridge: CUP.
Köpcke; K.-M. (1982): Untersuchungen zum Genussystem der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Köpcke; K.-M. and D. Zubin (1996): Prinzipien für die Genuszuweisung im Deutschen. In E. Lang and G. Zifonum (eds.): Deutsch-typologisch. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Steinmetz, D. (1986): Two principles and some rules for gender in German: inanimate nouns. Word 37, pp. 189-217.
Trosterud, T. (2001): Genustilordning i norsk er regelstyrt. NLT 19, pp. 29-57.
Gender database
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