Nominal abstracts and gender in Modern German: A "quantitative" approach towards the function of gender

Vogel, Petra M.

doi:10.1515/9783110802603.461

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Bybee 1985Bybee , 2001Bybee , 2010. In addition, research inspired by cognitive semantics tries to establish a basic grounding of gender categories according to the principles of (un)boundedness and (in)divisibility (Bittner 2001;Vogel 2000). From yet another theoretical perspective, the attribution of gender to nouns has been viewed through the lens of optimality theory.…”

Section: Poznań Studies In Contemporary Linguisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Gender variation of anglicisms in German: The influence of cognitive factors and regional varieties

Onysko

Callies

Ogiermann

2013

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When English nouns are borrowed into German, they need to be assigned grammatical gender. Since grammatical gender information is not present in English, the integration of anglicisms in German offers the opportunity to investigate regularities of gender assignment. Furthermore, it can be expected that the integration of loanwords can cause some variation in the usage of grammatical gender, as has been observed impressionistically for different varieties of German in previous research. This article picks up on both of these issues and first of all discusses "gender assignment schemas" for English loans based on established patterns of gender assignment in German. Secondly, an empirical study investigates gender variation across three major German dialect areas. The findings show a substantial amount of variation among many of the test items. These results are discussed in relation to cognitive schemas of gender assignment and in terms of regional variation.

show abstract

Section: Poznań Studies In Contemporary Linguisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…das Obst 'fruit', das Gemüse 'vegetable', das Werkzeug 'tools'). Finally, Vogel (2000) highlights the relation between different degrees of individuation and German gender categories. Her focus on individuation is closely linked to Bittner's conceptual interpretation of gender in German.…”

Section: Gender Variation Of Anglicicsm In German 107mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender variation of anglicisms in German: The influence of cognitive factors and regional varieties

Onysko

Callies

Ogiermann

2013

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the three-gender system of Indo-European, the original function of the feminine affix was to derive abstract nouns. This led to the following gender specification for nominal forms (Luraghi 2013): neuter appears on mass nouns, masculine on individuated nouns, and feminine on abstract nouns (see also Vogel 2000;Weber 2001). In fact, Luraghi (2013) points out that this is a more general strategy, not only found in Indo-European: for example, in Afro-Asiatic, feminine affixes also occur in abstract nouns and collectives.…”

Section: The Structure Of Feminine Nounsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, as discussed in Luraghi (2013), in German deverbal abstract nouns take the feminine affix -ung. This fact is attributed to the emergence of a three-gender system that led to the following gender specification for nominal forms: neuter appears on mass nouns, masculine on individuated nouns, and feminine on abstract nouns (Vogel 2000;Weber 2001). The interesting finding of our investigation is that the same state of affairs holds for zero-derived nominals, and we will explore the reasons for this behavior.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Zero-Derived Nouns in Greek

Αλεξιαδου

Anagnostopoulou

2022

Languages

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper, we investigate zero-derived nouns based on irregular verbs in Greek. This is an under-explored area in Greek morpho-syntax, and in this paper, we will make three main contributions. First, we will discuss the fact that the overwhelming majority of these nouns are feminine, while neuter nouns are considerably less represented and masculine nouns are almost nonexistent. As feminine is taken to be the semantically marked gender in the case of animate nouns, asserting female sex, and neuter is argued to be the default gender in Greek for inanimates, the fact that zero abstract nouns are feminine is surprising. We will argue that feminine is the default in the case of zero derivation by exploiting an analysis of flavors of n. Second, we will show that, contrary to the findings in earlier literature, certain zero-derived nouns do have argument structure, similarly to their affixed counterparts. As not all zero-derived nouns have argument structure, we will appeal to complex head formation to explain the properties of those zero-derived nouns that have an eventive interpretation but do not surface with arguments. Finally, we will turn to an examination of the size of the domain that is nominalized. Since, in our cases, we observe root allomorphy conditioned by a nominal affix in the presence of a zero verbal head, we will suggest that Pruning is the mechanism that allows this.

show abstract

“…Gender shifts in OE and in ME do not seem to be random or chaotic: indeed, conflicting gender choices correspond to a conceptual distinction which goes beyond animacy or sex, and more generally reflect a broader distinction, i.e. individuated vs. non-individuated entity (Sasse 1993;Vogel 2000). This factor becomes more and more stronger in the gender marking system as nominal inflection weakens and loses in transparency.…”

Section: Introducing the Notion Of "Individuation"mentioning

confidence: 97%

She, He or It? Is it a Matter of Gender or Something Else? A Look into Children and Teens’ Literature

Vezzosi

2023

bsfm-lea

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the last couple of decades, there have been numerous studies on gender renewal (Unterbeck et al. 2000; Fernández Ordoñez 2009; Fanego et al. 2011; Aikhenvald 2016; Samuel, Cole, and Eacott 2019), all of them stressing the relevance of conceptual categories, such as animacy and individuation, in the transition towards (more) semantic systems. These studies mainly focus on the emergence of new gender system and on pronominal agreement strategies. The phenomenon of gender variation concerns the change of gender assignment and also co-exists within fully-grammaticalised and/or standardised gender system[s]. This paper deals with gender assignment variation in English children’s literature, where the factors ruling gender assignment apparently diverge from those claimed in traditional grammar. Examining a more marginal phenomenon, i.e. multi-gender nouns (Corbett 1991; Vezzosi 2008; Semplicini and Vezzosi 2017) in the history of English, I propose to show how gender is not too different from other nominal categories, and its assignment is a matter of semantic-pragmatic agreement. Accordingly, individuation still plays a major role in the gender systems of English varieties and informal register.

show abstract

Nominal abstracts and gender in Modern German: A "quantitative" approach towards the function of gender

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Gender variation of anglicisms in German: The influence of cognitive factors and regional varieties

Gender variation of anglicisms in German: The influence of cognitive factors and regional varieties

Zero-Derived Nouns in Greek

She, He or It? Is it a Matter of Gender or Something Else? A Look into Children and Teens’ Literature

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About