Genus- und Sexuskongruenz im Neuhochdeutschen: Ergebnisse einer Korpusuntersuchung zur narrativen Prosa des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts

Birkenes, Magnus Breder; Chroni, Kleopatra; Fleischer, Jürg

doi:10.37307/j.1868-775x.2014.01.02

Cited by 2 publications

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“…[little son]. This can lead to a mismatch in gender agreement (see also Corbett 2006;Fleischer 2012;Birkenes, Chroni & Fleischer 2014). According to Corbett's Agreement Hierarchy, which can be reduced to attributive > relative pronoun > personal pronoun for our purposes, agreements are neuter in all positions except the personal pronoun: (Corbett 1991:228) The attributive modifier, i.e.…”

Section: Semantic Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

Referring to women using feminine and neuter gender

Busley

Nübling

2021

NOSO

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In German, gender is a strongly grammaticalized category and has the function of indicating grammatical agreement between syntactic units. Usually, each noun is assigned one of three grammatical genders. In standard German, nouns denoting women are typically feminine. However, Luxembourgish and some German dialects show a peculiarity: here, the gender of female first names and other parts of speech (e.g. pronouns) referring to women can be both feminine and neuter, depending on the nature of the interpersonal relationship between the speaker and the female referred to. In these varieties, gender assignment is governed by sociopragmatic factors. Sociopragmatic gender assignment is a result of de-grammaticalization, which is reflected in both syntagmatic and paradigmatic gender variability. The study shows that there is considerable diatopic variation in the use and function of gender in references to women. In some dialects, the neuter has become the default gender of female first names; this is a case of re-grammaticalization.

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Section: Semantic Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

Referring to women using feminine and neuter gender

Busley

Nübling

2021

NOSO

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“…This mismatch (morphosyntactic specification vs lexical semantics, Figure 3) implies a directionality for this item: feminine should represent semantic agreement, which conforms with its behaviour in respect of the Agreement Hierarchy. 8 For more on Mädchen 'girl', see Braun & Haig (2010), Birkenes, Chroni & Fleischer (2014), Binanzer, Schimke & Schunack (2022 and Lind & Nübling (2022). 9 Complex nominal constructions have more structure than a single nominal phrase.…”

Section: The Agreement Hierarchy: Established Examplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Agreement Hierarchy and (generalized) semantic agreement

Corbett

2023

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Therefore typology requires a means for generalizing over them. Instances like plural have are frequently termed "semantic agreement" (vs. "syntactic agreement" for singular has), but this notion has proved difficult. The challenge is to encompass the full typological range of alternative agreements. These include the core instances: (i) hybrid nouns like family; and (ii) constructional mismatches, such as conjoined nominal phrases, but also less obvious phenomena: (iii) split hybrids where neither alternative is straightforwardly semantic, both appear related to form, and (iv) examples like Scandinavian "pancake sentences", which stretch semantic agreement towards pragmatics. These different types are comparable in that (i) the alternatives are realized by the normal agreement forms; and (ii) they are subject to the Agreement Hierarchy. Hence they demand a common treatment. To achieve this, I first unpack the Agreement Hierarchy constraint into the agreement target positions and the directionality implied by "semantic agreement". I show how the latter arises from mismatches between the agreement information available from different sources. Typically, in the core instances, the information from one source is more evidently semantic than from the second. But in other instances, this is less clear. I argue that it is more parsimonious to treat these less obvious phenomena as falling under the constraint of the Agreement Hierarchy. They are seen as part of the pattern of a Hierarchy of Agreement Sources, which gives different degrees of "generalized semantic agreement". This reworking offers a more robust underpinning to the Agreement Hierarchy, and fits into a current trend: a typology that works is no longer sufficient, rather we examine and justify the defining criteria, and relate them to the underlying attributes of the domain.

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Genus- und Sexuskongruenz im Neuhochdeutschen: Ergebnisse einer Korpusuntersuchung zur narrativen Prosa des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts

Cited by 2 publications

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Referring to women using feminine and neuter gender

Referring to women using feminine and neuter gender

The Agreement Hierarchy and (generalized) semantic agreement

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