Disagreement of feminine gender: historical perspectives
Författare
Summary, in English
In this paper a particular case of grammatical gender agreement system is discussed, concerning the referent of young females or small children. These referents are grammatically treated as neuter nouns, disregarding their biological sex. This is termed gender disagreement. It is argued here that this is due to the older classification of nouns based on active and inactive distinction, stemming from the active alignment. What decides the distinction is the ability to reproduce, which was once a characteristic of active nouns. This criterion has not been given much attention in analyzing modern languages, but it has been very persistent in spite of various sociocultural factors that forced changes in other parts of grammar Thus, it can be claimed that gender disagreement is a result of a shift of gender agreement criteria and persistency of a specific criterion, i.e., the ability to reproduce proves to be still an important criterion in gender agreement system in modern languages.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2012
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
63-82
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Text & Talk: an interdisciplinary journal of language, discourse & communication studies
Volym
32
Issue
1
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
De Gruyter
Ämne
- General Language Studies and Linguistics
Nyckelord
- feminine
- neuter
- gender
- agreement
- active alignment
- persistency
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1860-7349