The Acquisition of Gender: A Study of English and German

Springer Series in Language and Communication 20 Editor: W. J. M. Levelt

Springer Series in Language and Communication Editor: W.J.M. Levelt

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Developing Grammars By W. Klein and N. Dittmar The Child's Conception of Language 2nd Printing Editors: A. Sinclair, RI. Jarvella, and W.l.M. Levelt The Logic of Language Development in Early Childhood By M. Miller Inferring from Language By L.G.M. Noordman Retrieval from Semantic Memory By W. Noordman~Vonk Semantics from Different Points of View Editors: R. Bauerle, U. Egli, and A. von Stechow Lectures on Language Performance By Ch. E. Osgood Speech Act Classification By Th. Ballmer and W. Brennenstuhl The Development of Metalinguistic Abilities in Children By D. T. Hakes Modelling Language Behaviour By R. Narasimhan Language in Primates: Perspectives and Implications Editors: J. de Luce and H. T. Wilder Concept Development and the Development of Word Meaning Editors: Th.B. Seiler and W. Wannenmacher The Sun is Feminine A Study on Language Acquisition in Bilingual Children By T. Taeschner Prosody: Models and Measurements Editors: A. Cutler and D. R. Ladd Metalinguistic Awareness in Children Theory, Research, and Implications Editors: W.E. Tunmer, C. Pratt, and M.L. Herriman Dynamic Aspects of Language Processing Focus and Presupposition By J. Engelkamp and H. D. Zimmer Language Awareness and Learning to Read By 1. Downing and R Valtin Cognition, Metacognition, and Reading By D. L. Forrest-Pressley and T. G. Waller Young Children's Knowledge of Relational Terms Some Ifs, Ors, and Buts By L. A. French and K. N eJson

Anne E. Mills

The Acquisition of Gender A Study of English and German

With 14 Figures

Springer~Verlag

Berlin Heidelberg New York London Paris Tokyo

Dr. ANNE E. MILLS

Preface

Department of Language Studies College of Ripon and York St. John Lord Mayor's Walk York, Great Britain Series Editor Professor Dr. WILLEM J. M. LEVELT Max-Planck-Institut fur Psycholinguistik Wundtlaan I 6525 XD Nijmegen, The Netherlands

ISBN 3~540-16740-4 Springer-Vedag Berlin Heidelberg New York ISBN 0-387-16740-4 Springer-Verlag New York Berlin Heidelberg Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data. Mills, Anne E. The acquisition of gender. (Springer series in language and communication; 20) Bibliography; p. 1. German language-Gender. 2. English language-Gender. 3. German language-Acquisition. 4. English language-Acquisition. 5. German language-Grammar, Comparative-English. 6. English language-Grammar, Comparative-German. 7. Language acquisition. 8. Children-Language. L Title. II. Series. PF3211.M5 1986 435 86-13945

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2131/3130-543210

This study of gender was conceived when I first took up the position of lecturer in linguistics at the University of Tiibingen in 1975. My particular in, terest in gender arose out of the work with German children and adults conducted in the context of preparing my doctoral dissertation for the University of York; my position at the University of Tiibingen has given me the opportunity to carry out the necessary research in both Germany and Britain. The empirical investigations reported in this study were begun in my first year in Tiibingen and continued over a period of 7 years. In this connection, I would like to express my thanks to the staff and pupils of all the schools who participated in the testing: Kindergarten Waldhauser-Ost, Kindergarten Winkelwiese, Grundschule Wanne, Grundschule Waldhauser-Ost, and Albert Schweitzer Schule (Tiibingen); Somerford Junior and Infants School and Twynham Junior and Infants School (Christchurch, GB); Burdyke Infants, Badger Hill Junior and Infants School and Joseph Rowntree Junior School (York, GB). Thanks must also go to the families of Georg, Hanna and Gisela and of course to the children themselves, who allowed the intrusion of recording equipment so regularly into their homes. I am also grateful to the staff and students of the Universities of Tiibingen, York and Manchester who cooperated in several of the investigations. This work was first submitted in December, 1984, to the Neuphiloiogische Fakultiit of the University of Tiibingen in order to obtain the qualification of Habilitation. In its preparation, I have obtained great help and support from my friends and colleagues, especially of course from Prof. D. A. Reibel. Special mention must be made of Dr. W. Glaser of the Psychoiogisches Institut, Tiibingen, who offered considerable help with the statistical analysis, and of Prof. P. Werth (University of Brussels), Dr. David Warden (University of Strathclyde), Dr. Werner Deutsch (Max Planck Institut, Nijmegen) and Laura Lane (University of Tiibingen), who gave helpful criticism of the manuscript. I am also indebted to Prof. Coseriu, Prof. Kaminski and Prof. Reis, all of the University of Tiibingen, who made constructive proposals for the preparation of this manuscript for publication. Particular thanks go to the secretarial staff and student assistants of Lehrstuhi Linguistik I for their help and patience atevery stage of the work and to Frau Netuschil for her careful typing of the final version. ANNE E. MILLS

Contents

Introductiou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Chapter 1 Gender in Linguistic Description ......................

6

Ontology and Development of Gender ............................ The Grammatical Status of Noun Classification Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . Theories of Opposition and Markedness ..........................

6 8 9

Chapter 2 A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German ..................................................

12

Parts of Speech Affected by Gender .............................. Semantic Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Natural Gender Rule ........................................ The Animacy and Personal Rule .............................. Common Gender Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Personification Rule ......................... .".............. Other Semantic Rules ....................................... Morphological Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Derivational Suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Noun Compounds .......................................... Phonetic Rules ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Interaction of the Rule Types ................................ Function ..................................................... Anticipation of Content ..................................... Marking of the Onset of a Noun Phrase ........................ Distinction of Singular and Plural ............................. Lexical Structuring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anaphoric Reference ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deictic Reference ........................................... Functional Importance of the Male/Female Opposition . . . . . . . . . . . Summary ....................................................

13 16 16 17 20 23 26 30 30 30 32 34 36 36 36 37 37 38 38 39 41

VIII

Contents

Chapter 3 Rules and Speakers' Behaviour ....................... . The Psychological Status of Morphological and Phonetic Rules of Gender Assignment of German Nouns ........................... . Evidence from Loan Words ................................. . The Experimental Testing of the Use of Phonetic Rules in Gender Assignment in Adult German Speakers ........................ . The Psychological Status of Semantic Rules of Gender Assignment ... . Evidence from Loan Words ................................. . Conflict of Semantic and Grammatical Gender in German ....... . A Study of Metaphorical Extension in German ................. . Frequency of English Pronoun Forms and a Study of the Use of Generic 'he' in English Children's Literature ................... . The Psychological Status of Unmarked Terms .................... . Summary and Conclusions ..................................... . Chapter 4

43 43 43

45 50 50

51

Contents

IX

Hypotheses ............................................. . Observational Acquisitiou Data ............................ . The Use of Pronouns Referring to Sex-Marked Persons in a Production Task by 3- to 4-Year-Old English and German Children ................................................ . Summary and Conclusions ................................ . Implications for Explanatory Theories in Child Language Acquisition . The Interaction of Formal and Semantic Rules in Acquisition ., ... . The Relative Notion of 'Clear Rule' .......................... . Summary and Conclusions ..................................... .

98 99 101 109 109 109

114 115

53 55 57

59

The Acquisition of Gender in Children ................ .

61

Introduction ................................................. . The Acquisition of Formal Rules in German ...................... . Hypotheses ............................................... . Observational Acquisition Data .............................. . Indefinite Article ......................................... . Definite Article .......................................... . V ocabulary Analysis ...................................... . Gender with Suffixes and Compounds ....................... . Gender and Plural ........................................ . Relative Pronouns and Question Words ..................... . Experimental Investigation .................................. . Experimental Testing of the Selection of the Definite Article for Real Words by 5- to 6-Year-Old German Children ............. . Experimental Testing of the Use of Phonetic Rules in 7- to 8-Year-Old German Children .............................. . Summary and Conclusions .................................. . The Acquisition of Semantic Rules in English and German .......... . The Acquisition of the Animacy and Common Gender Rule ...... . Hypotheses ............................................. . Observational Acquisition Data ............................ . The Use of Pronouns Referring to Animates and Inanimates in a Production Task by 5- to 10-Year-Old English and German Children ................................................ . The Use of Pronouns Referring to Animates and Inanimates in an 'Animating' Context Compared in English Adults and in 9- to 10-Year-Old Children ..................................... . Summary and Conclusions ................................ . Acquisition of the Natural Gender Rule ....................... .

61 62 62 63 64

67 71 72 74 75

77 78 79 85

86 86 86 87 90

95 97

98

Chapter 5 Psychological Gender ............................... .

117

Language and Thought ........................................ . An Investigation of the Interrelationship of Grammatical Gender and Sex Assignment in English and German .......................... . An Investigation of Sex Assignment in Children's Literature ...... . Experimental Testing of Sex Assignment ...................... . The Testing of Sex Attributes ................................... . Summary and Conclusions ..................................... .

117

120 120 122

Chapter 6

Conclusions ....................................... .

142

Appendices .................................................. .

145

References .................................................. .

156

Subject Index

167

130

140

Introduction

It could be expected that this book would begin with a general discussion of language acquisition and its principles. Since this has been done by a considerable number of authors and at considerable length elsewhere, I will not attempt such a review, but will restrict myself to setting out as concisely as possible the working framework which directed the organization and interpretation of the research to be reported. Studies in child language acquisition have both a descriptive value and a theoretical explanatory value. The comparison of acquisition in two languages, that is, the cross-linguistic approach to language acquisition, has the primary goal of providing a sounder basis for theories of language acquisition. It is assumed that common principles of language acquisition exist independently of the language to be learned and independently of the language learning situation. This was even recognized by the Sterns in their introduction to the diary study of the language acquisition of their children first published in 1907. Although they report on the learning of German, they emphasize the general nature of the language acquisition process and the possibility of taking evidence from other languages (Stern & Stern, 1928, p. 3). A comparison between two or more languages shows clearly where similarities exist in the acquisition process, so that it is possible to reflect on what the common principles of acquisition underlying the similar behaviour may be. The similarities in acquisition between languages point to the formulation of putative universals. The differences in acquisition are, however, just as informative by high-lighting the effects of different structure and function on the acquisition process. Each language presents a different problem for the child in that it has properties which are distinct from those of other languages. When acquisition is compared in an area where the languages involved have differing structures, the effect of this different structure can be assessed. In the introductory chapter to The Crosslinguistic Study oj Language Acquisition, Slobin writes: "The crosslinguistic method can be used to reveal both developmental universals and language-specific developmental patterns in the iuteraction of form and content" (Slobin, 1986a). In this study, the cross-linguistic method is applied to the area of gender, comparing acquisition of this area in English and German. The two gender systems have some features in common, for example the natural gender rule,

2

Introduction

but also many distinctive features, such as the number of parts of speech on which gender is marked. In these areas of similarity and difference, the importance of the various features can be judged from the similarities and differences occurring in acquisition.

When similarities are found in acquisition, these can be attributed to universal principles of acquisition. Different theoretical approaches formulate such universals in different ways. Within the nativist framework, universal principles of acquisition are seen as innate behaviour resulting from an innate language-learning capacity (Chomsky, 1965, pp. 27 - 37). The language acquisition device is seen as one of the faculties of the mind, but distinct from the others in that it is specific for language. Universals in the structure of languages are seen as related to the structure of the language acquisition device. A knowledge of these universals is attributed to the child, although this need not logically be the case (see Comrie, 1981). The attempts to find evidence that putative linguistic universals (formulated within the transformational generative framework) have their direct equivalents in acquisition universals have not been successful. For example, the specified subject condition postulated by Chomsky (1977, p. 90) to explain the reference of the pronoun each other does not appear to be used in children interpreting sentences of the type the chickens said that the pigs tickled each other; children aged between 4 and 6 make the frequent error of interpreting each other as referring to the subject of the main clause, that is chickens (see Clahsen, 1982a, pp. 16 -17, for a further discussion of this example). It need not, however, be the case that such universals can be observed in child language behaviour. If this premise is accepted, then the influence of the innate language-learning capacity is unobservable, and the nativist theory becomes uninteresting in explaining child language acquisition. A different theoretical framework comes from the direction of psychology, within which universals in language acquisition are related to universals in cognitive development. No language-specific capacity is postulated; language acquisition principles are to be accounted for by principles of learning in general. The name of Piaget is most commonly associated with this theory; he maintained that language development can be explained in terms of general cognitive development (Piaget, 1959). As Atkinson (1982, pp. 171-205) argues, however, it is necessary to find evidence of learning principles which is independent of the evidence of language learning, but from which it can be argued that the general principles clearly underlie and fully explain the language-learning principles. Greenfield, Nelson and Saltzman (1972) have attempted to relate developments in a non-linguistic area with developments in language structure. They compare strategies used by young children in playing with and combining cups with combinations of elements in sentence types. They wish to see "a single competence underlying certain forms of action and grammar" (1972, p. 308). The acquisition of this competence results in nonlinguistic and linguistic behaviour, but it is not clear that the non-linguistic behaviour must necessarily appear before the linguistic behaviour for the

Introduction

3

claim that they result from a single competence to be true. In some cases, cognitive development seems to precede and explain language development (e.g. Karmiloff-Smith, 1979); in other cases, the linguistic development takes place considerably later than the related cognitive development (e.g. Mills, 1986), while in still other cases, the cognitive development occurs concurrently with the linguistic development (e.g. Gopnik, 1984). As with the nativist theory, no conclusive evidence of the correctness of the cognitive theory exists. Slobin, who is usually strongly associated with this theory, has in fact a modified version which explicitly includes some innate knowledge of grammatical structures:

1

There are major pacesetters to language development, involved with the

poles of function and of form: (1) on the functional level, development is paced by the growth of conceptual and communicative capacities, operating in conjunction with innate schemas of cognition; and (2) on the formal level, development is paced by the growth of perceptual and information-processing capacities, operating in conjunction with innate schemas of grammar

(Slobin, 1986a). An aspect which is becoming increasingly more popular in the literature is the role played by interaction in language acquisition (e.g. Wells, 1981). It is rarely claimed that interaction can function as a total explanatory theory of acquisition, and most research which places an emphasis in this area works basically within the cognitive theory described above. The interest in interaction stems from the claim that the acquisition of language functions is a prerequisite for the acquisition of language structures (see Bates, 1976; Miller, 1976); interaction is the context for the acquisition of these functions. Although it is not explicitly claimed that interaction can explain the mechanisms of the acquisition of the structures themselves, the focus on interaction in some research is so intense as to make it appear that it has total explanatory value. The present study takes as its framework the cognitive approach described above; within that framework, interaction and language input are also considered for their possible influence. The features of the acquisition process found in the area of gender will be discussed in reference to the various theories and approaches, but it is not the goal of this work to seek absolute proof or disproof of one or the other. As stated earlier, studies in language acquisition also have a descriptive value. In providing a descriptive account of the acquisition of a particular area of language, it becomes possible to establish norms for the development 1

Slobin does not state from within which linguistic theory he would wish to make claims about innate grammatical schemas, and in that respect, he leaves the door open somewhat for behaviour which is unexplained on general cognitive grounds to be put into an innate grammar category. His position needs to be more rigourously stated.

4

Introduction

patterns in the individual language. In education and clinical practice, these norms and the techniques of description developed in the investigation can be used for diagnosis of children with language problems. This study also contributes towards the description of acquisition in English and German. AI. though a great deal of research has been carried out on English (de Villiers & de Villiers, 1986), work on gender in English is comparatively scarce. Very little is known, however, about the acquisition of German in general. Until re-

cently, there existed only diary studies made at the turn of the century (e. g. Stern & Stern, 1909) and a handful of experimental investigations (see Mills, 1986 for a review). This has meant that the basis for German diagnostic tests has been totally inadequate and, in some cases, simply been transferred from better-researched languages such as English (see Angermaier, 1968; Grimm, 1968; Clahsen, 1983). This study contributes towards providing a more detailed description of the acquisition of German and thereby to the construction of better diagnostic tests. Chapter 1 provides a description of gender in general terms, that is, not specifically related to German or English. The status of gender in various types of linguistic description is investigated, the views on gender as a

linguistic system are preseuted, together with a discussion of related notions such as markedness. This discussion is kept brief and restricted to those points which can be related to acquisition in terms of the predictions which can be made about the acquisition process on the basis of the theoretical description. Chapter 2 presents a comparative and contrastive description of the gender systems of German and English. Any study in child language acquisition needs to have as its background a detailed description of the area to be investigated, firstly, as a basis for knowing what the target behaviour of the child is and, secondly, as a basis for making predictions about acquisition when properties of the system to be learned are related to postulated acquisition principles. The gender systems for German and English have been fairly well researched; this information is brought together, with some new insights, under the headings of formal, semantic and functional properties of the systems. These are then related to acquisition. Chapter 3 examines the evidence for the psychological status of some aspects of the linguistic description set out in the preceding chapter. This evidence is taken from adults' language behaviour, experimental and observational, over and above the analysis of speech utterances, which has led to the formulation of the linguistic descriptive rules. The linguistic behaviour in adults which results from the differing psychological status of rules also forms part of the input to the child and therefore can be seen as an influence on acquisition. The child also learns to produce this linguistic behaviour, and so it forms in turn a part of acquisition. Evidence of this type of language behaviour in adults has been collected for English and German to provide as complete a background to the acquisition studies as possible. Chapter 4 presents the acquisition data collected from German and English children. The data are organized according to the type of gender rules

Introduction

5

being investigated: firstly, the formal rules of gender assignment in German and secondly, in English and German, the semantic rules of animacy and natural gender. In each section, the data are divided into those collected from longitudinal or cross-sectional observation and those collected from experimentation. These two types of data are seen as complementary to one another and both as essential to providing as complete an account of the acquisition process as possible. Whereas observational studies provide detailed information about children's language, such studies are very time-consuming and therefore difficult to carry out with a group of children large enough to generalize from. Experimentation, on the other hand, makes working with larger groups more feasible and allows the detailed examination of particular aspects which it is impossible, or at least difficult, to observe in spontaneous utterances. A combination of data from both sources produces a fuller picture of the acquisition process. In the fmal section of this chapter, the implications for the validity of principles of language acquisition are considered. Chapter 5 investigates the relationship between language and thought as illustrated by the area of gender. The possible effect of the gender classification system on the perception of sex-related features or "psychological" gender is explored in a series of studies with both adults and children. Chapter 6 contains the overall conclusions to be drawn from the research and discusses implications for further work.

Ontology and Development of Gender

CHAPTER 1

Gender in Linguistic Description

Ontology and Development of Gender There are many different types of noun classification systems. These systems have different bases: Some are related to properties of the referents; others have language-internal rules. Among the first type, properties of the referents can be quite diverse. Some North American Indian languages classify according to the shape and size of the referent. The Algonkian languages have a system related to animacy and inanimacy (Bloomfield, 1946).2 Most Indo-European languages base their system on the natural sex distinction, hence the term 3 'gender'. As the basis of a classification system, gender must therefore be seen as one possibility among many. Frequently, parallels are made between the phylogeny of a system and structure in the young organism. If such a parallel is drawn, the origins of noun classification systems can be made to make predictions about the acquisition of such systems in children. Research on the origins of noun classification systems has mainly been carried out on those languages with a gender system, and particularly in Indo-European languages. The discussion therefore necessarily takes this perspective. Not all languages have a noun classification system; Finnish and Chinese are examples of languages that do not. Such a system would seem to be an unlikely candidate for a language universal. If it is assumed that properties of the innate language capacity within Chomsky's (1965) model of language acquisition can be deduced from language universals (see Comrie, 1981, for an alternative view), the learning of a noun classification system would not be based directly on an innate capacity. Some attempts have been made to offer a functional explanation for noun classification systems. Jakobson (1932) argues with respect to Russian that the gender system makes possible reference to an entity which is not marked for sex, but, as Wienold (1967, p. 120) points out, this function is limited to a relatively small number of cases. Martinet (1956), similarly to Meille! (1965), 2 3

Kaa (1976) argues against Bloomfield's interpretation of categories in Algonkian. Although the term gender is derived from genus, which originally meant category in general, the term now refers to sexual categories and will be used in this sense.

7

has argued in functional terms for the development of feminine gender in Indo-European, that is, the feminine gender developed from the necessity of congruence between the demonstrative pronoun and the noun. It is not clear, however, for what reasons such congruence is necessary and for what reasons this is necessary with nouns denoting female beings as opposed to other categories. If a noun classification system could be said to arise from functional necessity, then within the explanatory framework of Bates (1976) and others, who place great emphasis on the functional principles in language acquisition, the child should learn the system quickly once the function has been established. The arguments for the functional necessity of noun classification systems in order to explain their origin are weak, but the connection between function and acquisition may be relevant when considering the functions the system fulfils once established. A traditional view of the origin of gender and the view which lies behind all descriptions of noun classification systems in terms of perceptual properties of the referents is that every noun, not just a core, is ordered to one category or another on the basis of the perceptual properties. Following Herder (1744-1803) and Adelung (1732-1806), Jakob Grimm (1831) also saw the origin of the gender systems in Indo-European languages as being in the perception of all entities as members of one sex or the other. If a noun classification system is based on such perceptual distinctions, then such a system should be reconstructible for the child once the underlying concepts have been established from experience. For a gender system, for example, the concepts of animacy and sex must be learned as a prerequisite for acquisition. In a gender system such as German, which has entities with no natural sex included within sex-related categories, the classification of each noun is described, within this view, as being based on sex-related attributes of the referent. In acquisition, therefore, assuming the features for classification have not changed over time, it should still be possible to learn these attributes and hence the gender system. During the last century, research into the structural properties of early Indo-European led to the view that language-internal changes had produced the development of noun categories (Bindseil, 1836; Brugmann, 1897), although the natural sex view still persisted as an explanation of the separation of masculine and feminine (e.g. Wheeler, 1898; Meillet, 1965). Modern studies on the origin of gender (Fodor, 1959; Ibrahim, 1973; loffe, 1973) conclude that the classification systems have emerged from the interplay of nounadjective agreement systems and changes in morphology and phonology; Ibrahim (1973, p. 92) refers to "an accident of linguistic history". This view implies that the child will learn gender as part of the linguistic structure of his language using whatever language-internal rules are available. According to the theory of acquisition upheld, different predictions can be made as to the learning of these language-internal rules. The three explanations for the development of noun classification systems in particular with respect to gender can be linked to predictions about be-

8

Gender in Linguistic Description

haviour iu acquisition. Predictions can also be based on other aspects of the system: the status accorded to the noun classification system and the extent to which the system affects the linguistic structure of the language in question. These aspects, including the status of noun classification systems in grammar and the theory of markedness, which are related for the most part to the structure of individual languages, will be discussed in sections to follow (see pp. 8-11).

The Grammatical Status of Nouu Classification Systems When considering acquisition, the grammatical status of a structure is only interesting if it is assumed that there is a close relationship between linguistic description and the acquisition process. Within different theories, it is seen as a target of description to reflect closely principles of acquisition in the formulation of grammar (Chomsky, 1965; Pinker, 1982; Givan, 1986). In the present discussion, it will be assumed that such a close relationship exists in order to examine the consequences for the description of acquisition. Martinet argues in his functionalist approach that gender in French carries no meaning and thus should not be considered a morpheme. He writes: If, as I believe we should, we refuse to identify as a linguistic unit a segment

that does not correspond to a new choice of the speaker, we must declare that gender in French is no morpheme (1962, p. 16).

He sees gender as different from number, for example, where the speaker chooses to communicate plurality. This analysis applies to French and by definition to a noun classification system in general, since once the noun has

been selected, the marking will ensue. The consequence must be that gender has no meaning base and must therefore be learned by such formal principles as can apply in acquisition. The status of classification units in linguistic description is pertinent to acquisition. In gender systems, the semantic features [ + male) or [ + female) attached to the noun are generally related to a gender category. Such components or features are based on componential analysis in semantic theory (e.g. Katz & Fodor, 1963). Coseriu and Geckeler (1974) call such general features which occur in different lexical fields 'c!assemes'. Classemes are usually both lexicalized and grammaticalized. Such units, as set up in linguistic description, presumably correspond to units which are used by the speaker in language behaviour and learned by the child in acquisition. The theories do not usually specify how units may be acquired and whether certain units are easier to learn than others. In Chomskyan theory, such types of components are seen as universal and therefore innate. This implies that such components will be accessible to the same degree for learners of all languages.

Theories of Opposition and Markedness

9

The different theories of grammar do not show such great variation in their treatment of a feature such as agreement in relation to a noun classification system. For example, in Chomsky's (1965, pp. 174 -175) treatment of

gender, which in his discussion he relates to German, gender is specified on the noun as an entry in the lexicon and copied by means of an alpha-rule onto those structures which are in agreement with the noun. This description, which places the emphasis on the lexical entry for each individual noun, implies that the child in acquisition will first learn the gender of the noun and then the agreement rules for the affected parts of speech. Information about the existence of a noun classification system and the classification of the indi-

vidual nouns comes at least in part from those parts of speech affected by the agreement rules, so that it can be argued that acquisition could proceed in the reverse direction from that predicted by the linguistic description (see Maratsos & Chalkley, 1980; Maratsos, 1983). This question will be explored further· in the light of the acquisition data. The next question to be raised is the basis for the lexical entry: Whether an arbitrary entry exists for each noun or whether for those cases in which the classification can be made by rule, such rules determine the classification on the principle of economy in linguistic description. Semantic, morphological or phonetic rules can specify the classification of the noun. A problem for the latter solution in linguistic description is the exception to the rule and those cases where more than one rule can apply. For the exception, the lexical entry must be specified. For those cases where more than one rule can apply, it may be possible to stipulate a hierarchy of rules. The solution of arbitrary entries in the lexicon implies for acquisition that the child must learn the classification by rote.' The integration of rules into the system, which may cover the whole or only parts of the lexicon, implies that the child will learn these rules in the acquisition process. The question then arises which rules will be acquired first. A hierarchy of rules in the linguistic description would make predictions about the order of acquisition.

Theories of Opposition and Markedness Opposition is the semantic r,elation between a pair of elements in which the one element is 'opposed to' the other, for example, in English the adjectives big and small. There are problems in defining the notion of opposition exactly, especially, as in the above example, where gradable properties are involved (see Lyons, 1977, pp. 270 - 290), but the question of interest here is the relation of this opposition property to gender systems. Several linguists see gender categories as establishing oppositions within the language (e.g. Hjelmslev, 1956), as for example between animate and inanimate or between male and female. Hjelmslev (1959) argues from his considerations of the development of gender categories in Indo-Germanic that the oppositions can become

10

Gender in Linguistic Description

weaker over time, but the possibility of making an opposition will be reexploited and possibly resemanticized. He suggests that the opposition in Modern German between masculine and feminine genders is based on the appositive properties 'expansive' (fem.) and 'concentrated' (masc.). If such a

system of oppositions is seen as the basis of a gender classification at anyone point in time, these can be expressed as a set of semantic rules determining the

classification. The child's task would then be to learn these rules in his acquisition of the gender system. Of a pair of items which are in opposition to one another, one is frequently described as being 'unmarked', while the other is 'marked'. This notion of marking or markedness originates in the Prague School (See Vachek, 1966) and was flfSt applied in the field of phonology; it has been extended to other areas, in particular to semantics. Two aspects of marking are relevant to the discussion of gender: distributional marking and semantic marking. For distributional marking to apply, one member of an opposition pair must be restricted in its distribution compared with the other. The restricted member is the 'marked' item and the less restricted item the 'unmarked' one. For example, in English the question How - is the X? can usually contain only one of the two adjectives in pairs such as long/short, high/low, old/young; this is the first member in each case. In gender systems, one gender may be more restricted than another and so be described as marked. In French, for example, feminine gender is distributionally marked compared with the masculine, since in the case of a noun phrase containing two conjoined nouns of different genders and an agreeing adjective, the adjective will take masculine agreement, e.g. des boutiques (fern.) et magasins (masc.) fermes (masc.).4 In German and English, the masculine pronoun form is distributionally unmarked compared with the feminine marked form, since, amongst other evidence, indefinite personal pronouns such as someone, jemand, whoever or wer are referred to with the masculine form only. This rule that the unmarked gender forms have masculine gender has also been formalized within a transformational framework (Jacobsen, 1977, p. 1981). Semantic marking means that one of a pair of terms in opposition has a more restricted sense than the other 'unmarked' term. This is frequently related to the property that the distinction which forms the basis of the opposition can be neutralized in one term of the pair. For example, the English word author can be used to refer to a male or a female writer, whereas the word authoress can only be used to refer to a female writer. The semantic marking is in this case also formally marked by the suffix -ess, but this is not always so, as in the pair dog and bitch. For such pairs, the unmarked term functions as its own hypernym. There appears to be a gradation in the extent to which this is possible: Some terms can function with the neutralized opposi4

This rule applies in standard French. However, it m~st be noted that agreement is also frequently made, in spoken French, with the final element of a conjoined set, whatever gender that element may have.

Theories of Opposition and Markedness

11

tion in all contexts, others in only restricted contexts (see Lyons, 1977, pp. 308-311; Lehrer, 1985). Although dog and man are the unmarked terms in the pairs dog/bitch and man/woman, dog can be used in all contexts as the hypernym, but man cannot, as in that dog is a bitch, but not that man is a woman. There is a considerable amount of research on psycholinguistic aspects of marked and unmarked categories. Greenberg (1966a; 1966b) has discussed markednes in great detail and with respect to a large number of structures. He sets out seven criteria for establishing the markedness of a form, covering the points set out above. By his definition, markedness is to be equated with complexity. In terms of semantic markednes, it can be seen that the unmarked term, for which the opposition can be neutralized, is less complex in its description since the distinctive semantic feature is not specified; this neutralized term is less complex than the marked term for which the feature is specified. For children in the process of acquisition, the less complex term or unmarked form should therefore be the easier to acquire. Lyons' notion of a degree of markedness implies a range in complexity, which again has implications for acquisition.

Since semantic markedness frequently goes together with distributional markedness, the latter being the result of the former, the frequency with which one of a pair of items appears in the input to the child could also influence acquisition. The two factors of complexity and frequency cannot be kept apart in this instance. Some research in child language has already suggested that unmarked terms are learned before marked terms, including Donaldson and Wales (1970) on adjective pairs such as high/low and Clark (1971) on the time prepositions before and after. Greenberg (1966a, pp. 36 - 39) has discussed markedness in relationship to gender: He claims that the feature male is unmarked as compared with the feature female. While this appears to be common in languages, it is not a language universal. Items with the feature [ + male] should then be acquired earlier by children than items with the feature [ + female]. This prediction will be examined closely in the acquisition data. This chapter has examined general aspects of the notion of gender in relation to acquisition. The following chapter takes a detailed look at the features of the gender systems in English and German, also from the perspective of relating the description to acquisition and particularly in terms of predicting similarities and differences in the acquisition process.

Parts of Speech Affected by Gender

CHAPTER 2

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

13

of the individual rules would vary according to the theoretical framework adopted. The location of a particular rule does not, however, have clear implications for acquisition since no one has claimed that, for example, rules in the lexicon are more difficult to acquire than others. Such questions are therefore not pursued in the following discussion.

Parts of Speech Affected by Gender

A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is .... Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this, one has to have a memory like a memorandum book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl.

Mark Twain, The Awful German Language (1879) Despite Mark Twain's impression of the German gender system, there are far more regularities than he was aware of. In this chapter, the main features of the gender systems of German and English will be presented under different aspects; a comparison of the two systems will be made in order to underline clearly the areas of similarity and difference. 5 This chapter thus serves as part of the background to the work on acquisition of gender. Although different theories of language acquisition will give the formal properties of a linguistic system different weight in predicting behaviour in acquisition (see Introduction), it is evident that they are important in every theory. An area which can be described as having the same conceptual base in two languages, such as reference to past time or reference to plural objects, will not necessarily be learned in the same way or at the same rate in the two languages depending on the linguistic structures involved. Even the theories which root language acquisition in the development of cognition cannot deny the influence of linguistic structure (Cromer, 1974). The formal properties of the gender systems of English and German will now be discussed by trying to evaluate the possible influence of these properties on the acquisition process in both languages. In the course of the presentation, frequent reference will be made to various types of gender assignment rules with varying degrees of absoluteness. Some of these rules could form part of the structure of the lexicon, some could belong to the morphological component of the grammar. The location 5

Hawkins (1985) does not consider gender one of the essential contrasts between the languages, although there are some major differences affecting syntax (see pp. 36 - 41).

In English, the gender assigned to the noun influences only the selection of the form of pronouns and then only in the third person singular. There are three gender paradigms which have related case forms (see Table 2.1). In brief summary, he, (his, him) refers to masculine nouns, she, (her) to feminine nouns and it (its) to impersonal nouns. In Old English, the gender system was more extensive in that it affected not only the pronoun but also the article and adjective (see Brunner, 1961). Owing to phonological and morphological changes, the agreement system was reduced to the pronoun only in Middle English (Baron, 1971; van Glahn, 1918; see also Jesperson, 1914, pp. 174 - 219, for a general discussion of the system). The German system ressembles that of Old English. The gender of the noun influences the selection of the form of the articles, the attributive adjective, ordinal numbers, adjectival pronouns, relative and question pronouns, participles, and the personal pronouns in the third person singular (see Jarnatowskaja, 1968). There are three gender paradigms called masculine, feminine and neuter. The adjective ending varies according to the presence of a definite or indefinite article in the noun phrase. With a definite article, the declension is referred to as 'weak', with the indefinite article as 'mixed' and with no article as 'strong'. Case and gender marking are confounded in that they cannot be related to distinct segments. One form can also have several functions, so that knowledge of case is necessary to place a form in its gender paradigm (see Werner, 1975, for a discussion of the interrelations). The article forms, pronouns, and adjective declensions are set out in Tables 2.2 - 2.4 together with the plural,

Table 2.1. The Gender-Marked Pronoun System in EngliSh

Subject Object Possessive pronoun Possessive adjective a

Masculine

Feminine

Neuter

he him his his

she her hers her

it it its a its

There is no evidence of the use of this form.

14

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

Table 2.2. Declension of the Definite and Indefinite Articles in German Case

Masculine singular

Neuter singular

Feminine singular

Plural

Definite Indefinite Definite Indefinite Definite Indefinite Definite Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

der den des dem

ein eineo

eines eioem

das das des dem

ein ein

die

eine

die

eines einem

der der

eine einer einer

die die

der den

Table 2.3. Declension of the Gender-Marked Pronouns (Third Person) in German 6 Case

Masculine

Feminine

Neuter

Plural

Nominative Accusative Dative Possessive adjective

er ihn

sie sie

es es

sie sie

ihm

ihr ihr

ihm

ihnen

sein

ihr

sein

from which this plurifunction can be easily seen. For example, the form der (see Table 2.2), once it has been established that it is an article, could be masculine nominative, feminine genitive or dative, or plural genitive. Information must be gained from the number marking on the noun from the syntactic function of the noun before gender can be identified. If the child uses the marking of these forms of establish gender on the noun rather than rules associated with the noun itself in terms of phonetic, morphological or semantic rules, then this plurifunction must present problems. The child must have knowledge of cases and plural in order to be able to establish the gender paradigms. This plurifunction is not present in English, although case marking is combined with gender marking on the pronouns. Plurifunction should make acquisition harder for the German children; on the other hand, gender is marked in German on adjectives and articles, which are acquired before pronouns, pronouns being attenuated in their referential function. German children could therefore learn the gender system in association with articles and adjectives before English children learn gender in association with pronouns.

6

The genitive forms should possibly be included here, although they only Occur with a small number of verbs which have their object in genitive case, for example, gedenken 'to honour'. The genitive forms are seiner (masc.), ihrer (fern.) and seiner

or es (old form) (neu!.).

Parts of Speech Affected by Gender

15

16

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

Semantic Rules Natural Gender Rule

Both English and German have a natural gender rule, that is, when a noun has the feature [ + male] or [ + female] because its referent possesses natural sex, in the majority of cases, the noun is given masculine or feminine gender respectively. This rule is perceived as central to the German and English noun classification system, hence the use of the term 'gender'. 3 Together with the animacy/inanimacy distinction the masculine/feminine distinction is seen as characteristic of Indo-European languages in general (Lohmann, 1932) For example sister and Schwester have the semantic feature [ + female], brother and Bruder have the feature [+ male], the first pair have then feminine gender, the second pair, masculine. This distinction is not made in the plural in either language, unlike languages such as Spanish. In German, proper names can be used with a preceding article indicating natural gender, e.g. der Peter, die Maria. In English, there are only a few instances in which there is a mismatch between the biological fact and language use: A male can be referred to as she if an emphasis is placed on his effemininacy, such as in the case of homosexuals. A female can almost never be referred to as he. Hall (1951) argues on this basis that English has no grammatical gender. In German, there are only two terms for male humans which have feminine gender, both of which emphasize the lack of masculinity of the referent: die Mumme 'coward' and die Tunte 'effeminate homosexual'. For females, however, Zubin and Kopcke (1981) see the relationship between sex and gender as weaker. They formulate a rule: "Nouns canonically referring to women are feminine or neuter, depending on lexical content for sexual status, kinship status, and derogation" (p. 445). Those nouns which refer to females before the age of recognized sexual status, e.g. das Gar 'girl', or which, in Zubin and K6pcke's formulation, "suggest lack of sexual desirability" e.g. das Weib 'woman', or which have clear derogatory content, e.g. das Mensch 'hussy' have neuter gender. Although the relationship between sex and gender may be described as weaker for females, this must be seen as relative to males. The relationship is still strong; the incidence of neuter gender according to the above rule is comparatively small. In English, the natural gender rule accouuts for a high proportion of the uses of he and she; in other words, masculine and feminine gender are to be attributed to a large proportion of the nouns which are related to a gendermarked form on the basis of the natural gender rule. In German, the natural gender rule accounts for only a relatively small number of nouns to which masculine or feminine gender is assigned. Tisch 'table', for example, is not masculine gender on the basis of the natural gender rule. It is a question of debate, as discussed earlier (pp. 6 - 8), whether gender assignment in such cases is to be attributed to properties of the referent associated with masculinity or femininity, but it clearly cannot be accounted for by the natural gender

Semantic Rules

17

rule. The rule has quite a different status in the two languages, which implies a different degree of difficulty for the language learner. Since in English the natural gender rule is important compared with other rules, the acquisition of this rule should be easier than in German, where it takes its place among other rules affecting the rest of the lexicon (see pp. 26-30).

The Animacy and Personal Rule

In English, the animacy and personal rules account to a large extent for the use of the pronoun it as opposed to he and she. Under normal stylistic conditions, inanimate referents are referred to with it, contrasting with he and she for human or personal animates. The distinction is not upheld in the plural; the pronoun they covers both animates and inanimates. Impersonal animates (plants, insects, animals, etc.) are also pronominalized with it, unless the animate being has been specified for sex, then the natural gender rule applies. Thus, in sentence 1, the dog being unspecified for sex is pronominalized with it (or possibly he, see common gender rule); bitch in sentence 2 must be pronominalized with she. (1) That dog is educated. It barks at politicians. (2)

The bitch is on heat. She is desperate to be let out.

The animacy and personal rules also apply to relative, interrogative, demonstrative and indefinite pronouns in English, although these do not reflect the natural gender rule (see Table 2.5). Hjelmslev (1959, p. 232) records that languages which have no masculine or feminine distinction often have such a rule in this area, so that it appears to reflect a basic notion. The interrogative pronoun what and the relative pronoun which refer to inanimates and impersonal animates, contrasting with who for personal animates. Table 2.5. The Marking of Animacy in Relative, Interrogative, Demonstrative and Indefinite Pronouns in English and German Part of speech Relative pronoun

English

Inanimate/impersonal

Personal

which

who

what was that das

who wer

something, anything

someone, anyone

German

Interrogative pronoun

English German

Demonstrative pronoun Indefinite pronoun

English German English German

everything

everyone

etwas

jemand

18

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

The demonstrative pronoun that can only be used for inanimates and impersonal animates; there is no corresponding animate form of this pronoun. To refer to a person the adjective that must be used with the indefinite noun person. So, while sentence 3 is possible, sentence 4 not. (3) 1 want to buy that. (pointing to a carpet) (4) 1 want to see that. (pointing to a man) In English, the inanimate and impersonal category would seem to be unmarked according to the criteria discussed above (pp. 9-11), since under some circumstances (not all) the terms from this category can act as the terms with the neutralized opposition, as for example in sentences Sa or 5b. (5a) What is standing in the corner? Is it Daniel or the bottle?

(Sb) The bike and its rider, which were both squashed flat by the lorry, ... It does not seem possible to use it as a hypernym, however. Assuming the in-

animate and impersonal terms are unmarked, they should, according to the arguments presented earlier, be acquired first. In German, the neuter gender does not include all inanimate referents, although the class derives its name in the language from the word for 'thing': sachlich 'neuter' from Sache 'thing'. Inanimate referents are distributed across all three genders, although animate referents are concentrated in masculine and feminine genders. By contrast, then, neuter gender may be perceived as being more closely related to the feature 'inanimate'. Once reference has been made to a noun in German, it can be omitted in a following phrase which includes an article and adjective, as the following sentence illustrates: Ich habe zwei Schreibmaschinen. Die alte ist kaputt.

'I have two typewriters. The old (one) is broken'. It is also possible to use the article followed by an adjective, when no linguistic

reference to a noun has preceded, to make general reference to a category. When the masculine article or feminine article is used in such a construction, reference is made to a man or woman respectively, thus der Kranke 'the sick (man)" eine Dicke 'a fat (woman)' (Brinkmann, 1954). When the neuter article is used in this way, the noun phrase refers to the abstract property, for example das Schone 'the beautiful (thing) = the beauty'. Here, the neuter gender contrasts with masculine and feminine in that it refers only to the inanimate. 7

7

The exception is the use of das Kleine 'the little (one)' to refer to a child.

Semantic Rules

19

In some areas of German, the link between neuter gender and inanimacy is clear. As in English, interrogative, demonstrative and indefinite pronouns (not relative pronouns) distinguish the forms referring to inanimates and im-

personal animates from those referring to personal animates (see Table 2.5). So, for example, was 'what' and das 'that' cannot be used to refer to humans. Wer is the interrogative pronoun used to refer to animate personal referents. A differentiation is also made in German in the possible forms of pronoun in combination with a preposition. When the pronoun refers to a personal referent, the pronoun forms ihn, ihm, etc. (see Table 2.3) are used (sentence 6a); whereas with an impersonal referent a general prefixed form is used da- (sentence 6b). (6a) Ich mag den Jungen; ich gehe mit ihm ins Kino. 'I like the boy; I'm going with him to the cinema'. (6b) Ich mag den Hut; ich gehe damit ins Kino. 'I like the hat; I'm going with it to the cinema', (= I'm going to wear it to the cinema'.) (6c) Die Frau, fUr die ich den Aufsatz schrieb, ist pleite. 'The woman for whom I wrote the essay is broke' .

[wofOr ich den Aufsatz schrieb, ist pleite. (6d) D'Ie Z't el ung, fUr die 'The newspaper for which I wrote the essay is broke' .

In relative clauses, the form wo + preposition can be used with impersonal nouns; with personal nouns, this form is impossible. The alternative of preposition + relative pronoun (in most cases, identical to the definite article, see Table 2.2) can be used with both personal and impersonal nouns (see sentences 6c, 6d). The choice is often made on pragmatic grounds, since the form wo gives no information as to gender (see Curme, 1960, p. 201) or case. In questions, the wo + preposition form is essential with impersonal nouns; with personal nouns, the appropriate form of wer is used. In German, the inanimate and impersonal category would seem to be unmarked in the same way as in English; these terms can be used with the neutralized opposition, as sentence 7 illustrates (compare with sentence Sa). (7) Was stehl in der Ecke? Daniel oder die Flasche? In both English and German, there is a tendency to avoid using the impersonal interrogative and demonstrative pronouns when referring to higher animals. This applies particularly to the demonstrative pronoun, since the reference is clear in that case. So, in the context of a zoo visit, it is possible to say Was gibt es im nachsten Kafig? or What is in the next cage? when an animal is clearly being referred to, but it is not clear of what type. However, it is not so acceptable to say with clear reference to a particular, especially higher, animal Dos sieht aber gefahrlich aus or That looks dangerous. The implications of inanimacy appear to be too strong in that context.

20

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

dos Geflugel poultry'

In both languages, it is possible to break the rule deliberately to produce an effect of disparagement through inanimacy (non-humanness) where a personal pronoun would be normally expected. Curme quotes (1935, p. 149) a popular novel: Would you like to marry Malcolm? Fancy being owned by that! Fancy seeing it every day.

21

Semantic Rules

I das Huhn

~chicken~ der Hahn

die Henne 'hen'

'rooster'

In German, a similar effect is possible: Sowas wurde ich nie heiraten.

This use is a deliberate violation of the rule, exploiting the usual associations for unusual effect. English and German would then appear to have many similarities in the application of this animacy and personal rule, but English has a far more extensive association of inanimate and impersonal with it and related forms than German has with neuter gender. It could be the case that German children make use of the distinction in the area of demonstrative pronouns etc. in the learuing of the gender system in nouns and classify all inanimates as neuter gender. In terms of the markedness theory, the forms marking inanimate and impersonal in both languages should be learned before those marking personal.

Common Gender Rule He you know was Jacky She you know was Kit And then there came that baby boy Whom everyone called it.

Beny, rneeny, miney, mo, Put the baby on the po, When he's done Wipe his bum Shove the paper up the lum. Opie and Opie (1959)

In German, there exists a certain association between common gender terms, that is, terms referring to entities which can have sex but where the sex is unspecified, and neuter gender. Zubin and Kopcke (1981) formulate the rule thus: "Nouns denoting domesticated animals without reference to sex are neuter" (p. 444). Terms which do not determine sex are superordinate terms or those referring to the young. An example of this association is taken (1981, p. 444) from the lexical field of chickens illustrated in Figure 2.1. An alternative term for chicken is Hiihnchen (neuter). Although the diminutive suffix -chen assigns neuter gender to the noun by morphological rule (see pp. 30 - 31) the fact that the term is superordinate in the lexical structure fits in with the semantic rule.

das Kuken 'chick'

Fig. 2.1. Lexical field of chickens. (Adapted from Zubin & Kopcke, 1981)

Clearly, the area of application of this rule is limited in scope, but the general feature of sexlessness, as formulated in the natural gender rule for female humans in German, is also associated with neuter gender (see pp. 16-17). Other related items which are also neuter gender are das Kind 'child' and das Baby 'baby' (exception: der Siiugling 'infant'). It is also possible to refer to a baby or small animal, without a previous linguistic reference, using the headless noun-phrase construction discussed in the previous ,ection. For example: Guck mal, so ein Kleines. 'Look, such a little (one, baby)'. In English, the common gender rule and impersonal rule are interrelated since, as was set out above, those impersonal animates which can have sex are usually pronominalized with the pronoun it etc., unless sex has been specified by some aspect of the linguistic or non-linguistic context. It would be possible to separate the two rules by formulating them so that the impersonal rule would apply to those referents which have no sex specification and the common gender rule to those referents which can be specified for sex but where the sex is unknown or irrelevant. In many instances, it would be impossible to know which rule had applied, since this depends on the knowledge of the speaker. For the speaker who does not know that an amoeba can be male or female, for example, and for the speaker who chooses to ignore that fact, the result is the same, i.e. the use of the pronoun it. For human referents, both English and German select the masculine forms to indicate common gender. That is, where the sex of the person is unknown or irrelevant, the gender of the noun, pronouns and related forms are taken from the masculine paradigm. Sentences 8a and 8b illustrate this use with nouns. The speaker is not specifying a male doctor but a person of either sex within that profession. (Sa) I am looking for a doctor. He must come straight away. (8b) Ich suche einen Arzt. Er mu13 sofort kommen.

22

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

Indefinite personal pronouns are also masculine (sentences 9a and 9b), but some linguistic contexts make it more difficult to get the common gender reading, as is the case in 9c and 9d compared with 9a and 9b (see Lehrer, 1985, for a discussion of this variation in relation to markedness).

Semantic Rules

23

(9a) Someone has left his coat.

The use of it here does not carry the overlay of disparagement as it does in connection with adults but does emphasize the lack of sex specification. 8 In Modern English, the plural third person pronoun is also used to indicate common gender, even when the referent is clearly singular (Mackay, 1980). So, for example, an alternative version of sentence 9a is sentence 12, although only one coat is mentioned.

(9b) Jemand hat seinen Mantel dagelassen.

(12) Someone has left their coat.

(9c) Who is leaving tomorrow and what train will he be catching? (9d) Wer reist morgen ab und mit welchem Zug fahrt er?

The generic terms for human in both languages are masculine: man and der Mensch. In German, there has not yet emerged an alternative to the masculine as common gender; the indefinite pronouns are assigned masculine grammatical gender. So, even when it is known that the reference group can only consist of females, for example in an antenatal gymnastics class, the indefinite pronoun remains masculine (see Chapter 3). Thus, the following utterance from the physiotherapist to the group: Jemand, def Wehen hat, soli sofort in def Klinik anrufen. 'Anyone who (mase.) has contractions should immediately ring the hospital'.

Some nouns in English appear to be an exception to this rule, in that she is used when indefinite reference is made, for example in sentence 10. (10) When a nurse is on duty, she must wear her cap.

On closer inspection, however, such terms often cannot function as hypernyms and are restricted to the group of females only, so nurse does not include female and male nurses. With a noun such as primary school teacher, which is frequently, but not always, pronominalized with she, the decision appears to

be pragmatic, since most primary school teachers are female. The use of the pronoun she in such contexts is not perceived as including males; it refers to a stereotype. Where an explicit linguistic reference, for example to male and female teachers, had been made beforehand, it would not be possible to continue with the use of the feminine pronoun. Such uses are not to be seen as common gender forms, since the formal criterion of hypernymity is not fulfilled. For small children and babies, it is also used as the common gender form, as well as he (see sentence 11 and the two children's rhymes at the beginning of this section). (11) The baby yelled at the top of its voice.

Despite some variations, in both English and German there is an association of neuter gender with common gender for animate impersonal referents

and an association of masculine gender with common gender for personal referents. The association in the first instance is stronger in English than in German, since it affects a greater part of the lexicon. In terms of a prediction according to markedness, these semantically unmarked common gender forms should be learned before the corresponding marked forms. In English, the rule for animate impersonal referents is affected by what has been in the grammars frequently called personification. This will be discussed in the next section.

Personification Rule

In English, it is possible to use the personal pronoun forms for referents which are inanimate or animate impersonal and which would according to the previous rules be pronominalized by the it form. This use is called personification. since the personal pronouns are used. In German, this is not possible. since the masculine and feminine genders are not reserved exclusively for male and female referents. Personification enables the English speaker to avoid the connotations of inanimacy which follow when it is used as the common gender pronoun in reference to an animate being (sentences 13a and 13b) and actually to suspend the feature of inanimacy in reference to an inanimate object (sentence 14). (13a) The bear looks ferocious, but he does not eat meat. (13b) How winsome is the swallow. How tender and pleasing all her notes. (14)

Look at that car; he's waiting for the driver. (mother to child)

Several explanations have been offered for the choice of personal pronoun, that is, he or she, once the speaker has decided not to use the pronoun it. From a historical perspective, the rules determining the choice of 8

At the turn of the century, it could also be used as the pronoun in reference to a collective everyone or each one, where the group referred to consisted of both sexes, e.g. "Everyone fell on its knees" (Nesbit, 1904). This is no longer common.

24

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

Semantic Rules

25

he or she can be linked to the change in the status of gender from Old to Middle English. In Old English, each noun had a grammatical gender as in German. Through phonological and morphological changes, this system decayed and was gradually replaced by a system close to Modern English (Baron, 1971). Personification was common in Middle English texts; for example, in The Owl and the Nightingale (ca. 1195 -1216), both the birds are referred to with feminine pronoun forms. The choice of pronoun was affected by a considerable number of factors discussed at length in the corresponding literature (see for example Ausbiittel, 1904; Morsbach, 1913; Karpf 1930, pp. 4 - 28). Amongst the factors mentioned are the influence of the language of

referred to as she, but dogs he. Secondly, since both are pets, power would not seem to explain the difference between the animals.

the original text, rhyme associations, gender of words in the same semantic

and some machines, but it is to be disputed that this use is predominant among all inanimates. In many examples', it is not clear that the concept of minor power is appropriate, such as with a ship or a country. The concept of power does not seem to be adequate to explain the facts. Vachek (1964) refers to the use of he and she in this context as 'emotionally marked' compared with the use of it. If this can be interpreted in the general framework of marking, it would imply that these marked uses would be learned later than the unmarked use of 'it'. Vachek explains the choice of masculine or feminine according to the properties of the referent. He writes:

field and what is called a general tendency to 'masculinize'. Patterns of personification were established which continued through New Modern English (see Abbott, 1966) and which are close to those found in Modern English (see Langenfelt, 1951). The latter can therefore be explained on the basis of traditional usage. Other explanations exclude the idea of traditional usage and emphasize the influence of psychological factors determining the choice of pronoun at the moment of speaking. Joly (1975) wants to explain usage using the concept of power. 'Major power' is associated with he and 'minor power' with she. This is schematized in Figure 2.2. When an animal is referred to as it, this is because it is considered as inanimate and without power; the speaker is indifferent. Using he" the speaker is interested and considers the animal animate. Using he2 or she, the speaker is strongly interested and assigns major or minor power to the animal. J oly claims, without any justification from frequency of usage, that "she will be said of any animal, big or small, that is in some way subordinated to the speaker" (1975, p. 272). Pets, he argues, are the objects of affection and are to be given minor power. Joly's analysis is descriptively and explanatorily inadequate. Firstly, pets are not most commonly referred to as she; usage appears to be animal specific, cats, for example, frequently being HE,~.~-----------------------IT

animate power

inanimate no power

Jaly also claims that she is predominant with inanimates if it is not used

and attributes this to the fact that: .. . she is in fact the first position to be found in the field of animation and, as

such, it has gradually become the usual referring pronoun for inanimates that are momentarily (or permanently) endowed with power. (1975, p. 276)

The feminine pronoun is used to refer to countries and ships, as well as cars

The reason why the feminine set was chosen to refer to the positive kind of approach (signalling the thing referred to as amiable, intimately known, delicate, etc.), while the masculine set serves to denote the opposite, negative kind of approach (signalling, in its turn, the concerned thing as huge, strong, unwiedly or generally unpleasant) is too obvious to need detailed specification - it reflects the common conception of the feminine vs. masculine features regarded as typical of each of the two sexes (1964, pp. 190-191).

These features are definitely not universally associated with maleness and femaleness; some Australian languages, for example, make all nouns referring to poisonous creatures feminine gender. Vachek's analysis must therefore be restricted to English. For English speakers, Vachek assumes that males and females are associated with specific attributes and that the speakers agree on the attributes, although individual differences can occur in the perception of a particular referent. On the basis of these attributes, the sex-marked pronouns are chosen.

HE,

SHE

major

minor power

power

I

I:

Fig. 2.2. Use of he/she/it with non-human-animates and inanimates. (Adapted from Joly, 1975, pp. 273, 276)

Mathiot (1979) makes the same assumption that attributes of the referent determine usage, but she has conducted a more detailed analysis of the attributes involved as they relate to social and emotional factors. She makes a distinction in usage according to the sex of the speaker. So, for example, a woman will use she to refer to an inanimate object which she perceives as 'mature', but he for an object perceived as 'infantile'; a male speaker on the other hand will use she to refer to an object he perceives as 'incompetent' and he for an object perceived as 'competent'. The positive and negative poles, as

26

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

assumed by Vachek, do not match the uses of masculine and feminine prououns in this analysis. Both authors mention conventional uses, such as she for countries, ships etc., but suggest that these uses can be explained in terms of their general analysis. This detracts from the description of usage as conventional, however, since the convention will override and replace the sp,:0ntaneous choice. It is difficult to determine where a convention exists, except in a few clear instances such as she for countries, and how to distinguish between conventional and spontaneous usage. This distinction is important in accounting for acquisition since, according to the description given, the child would learn two different systems - either the use of a pronoun with a particular noun or a general rnle classifying referents on the basis of perceived attributes. To summarize: Conventional and spontaneous usage determine the choice of he and she in personification, that is, in animated contexts. Spontaneous usage is determined by varying factors which may be linked to the perception of the referent in terms of male and female attributes. The pronoun he can function as the animated common gender form of it.

Other Semantic Rules The rules set out in the previous section account for the major uses of gendermarked pronouns in English. In German, however, there are a considerable number of other semantic rules, as well as morphological and phonetic rules. The most recent work on semantic rules in German gender assignment has been carried out by Zubin and Kopcke (1982; 1983). This will be briefly summarized here to give an idea of the complexity of the semantic rule system. Zubin and Kopcke have discovered a far greater number of rules than were previously included in standard grammars (e.g. Schulz & Sundermeyer, 1974); the latter will be presented in Zubin and Kopcke's framework along with the other more recently discovered rules (see Table 2.6). Zubin and Kopcke distinguish between basic level nouns and superordinate terms. Superordinate terms are associated with neuter gender; some of these terms have neuter gender through the morphological rule that the prefix ge- (meaning 'collective') on an noun determines neuter gender (see pp. 30 - 31), for example, Geflugel 'all with wings = poultry'. However, the rule covers a much broader section of the lexicon than is affected by this morphological rule, for example, das Amt 'office' compared with die Post 'post office', die Polizei 'police station', or das Obst 'fruit' compared with der Apfel 'apple' and die Birne 'pear'. Zubin and Kopcke divide the basic level nouns into four group types according to the type of gender assignment. Firstly, there are semantic fields such as colour names which are directly associated with a particular gender, in this case neuter (rules 2 -14, Table 2.6). Secondly, there are semantic fields which have an 'inner structure' (rules 15 - 21, Table 2.6), that is, different

27

Semantic Rules

Table 2.6. Semantic Rules of Gender Assignment in German Associated gender

Example

1. Superordinates

Neuter

das Obst 'fruit'

2. Colours

Neuter

das Grlin 'green'

3. Power/strength 4. Speech acts

Feminine

5. Waste

Masculine Masculine Feminine Masculine Masculine Feminine Feminine Neuter

Semantic category

das Amt 'office'

6. Cloth 7. Hunting 8. Heavenly bodies 9. Stone/sand 10. Musical instruments

11. Knowledge/skill 12. Chemical elements 13. Abstract units of measure 14. Games

Feminine,

das Saffran 'saffron' die Gewalt 'force' die Rede 'speech' def Dreck 'muck' def Taft 'taffeta' die Jagd 'hunt' der Mond 'moon' def Quarz 'quartz' die Orgel 'organ' die Kunst 'art'

das Silber 'silver'

Neuter

das Watt 'watt'

Neuter

das Poker 'poker'

Masculine Feminine Feminine Feminine

der Stock 'stick' die Tafel 'board'

Masculine

der Fahrer 'driver'

Feminine Masculine Neuter

die Witwe 'widow' der Herr 'gentleman' das Mensch 'hussy'

Feminine Masculine Neuter Neuter Feminine Feminine Feminine

die Stute 'mare' der Hengst 'stallion' das Pferd 'horse' das Zeichen 'sign' die Gebarde 'gesture' die Boje 'buoy' die Nummer 'number'

Masculine Masculine Feminine

der Reif 'frost' der Passat 'tradewind' die Glut 'burning heat'

Feminine Masculine

die Sekunde 'second' der Tag 'day'

.

" :§'

.0

.0

r.

~u

~

:§' ~

s

'"'">.C5

mesU C5 "'I=1UI=l,1=1

r,Jo'o'o

>.

0

'"

~

~

"'''' 0

C'~

I-
.

I I

" .-

~

(Il

s f 'r

- -'-'

"

"

_N

34

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

The Interaction of the Rule Types

35

when the respective items enter his vocabulary. Another question which Zubin and Kopcke raise (1982) in connection with these phonetic rules is the status of the lexical items involved, as was discussed above with respect to semantic rules (pp. 26 - 30). Exceptions to rules are accepted more easily, theyargne, when such an exception belongs to the lexical core, and it is here that the most exceptions are to be found. As was mentioned in the discussion of the seman-

Ponsada and Sankoff (1982) have argued for a variable process in gender assignment. An interesting but difficult problem for the establishment of a rule hierarchy is the number of nouns which allow two, or in rare cases, three different genders. Where the nouns have different semantic content, the gender assignment can be related to semantic rules (Spiewok, 1975), as for example, the

tic rules, the child may however perceive the core items as representing the rule

contrast between der See 'lake' and die See 'sea'. Where the gender differen-

rather than as exceptions, since these would most frequently be the first to be acquired. Generalizing from exceptions would clearly lead to error. Some evidence will be presented in a later chapter to throw light on the question of how

tiation makes no change in meaning, for example, der Pier oder das Pier 'pier', the noun clearly falls under the scope of different rules. Sometimes this can be accounted for by stylistic or dialect differences, but not in every case. A formal observation about all such nouns is that nouns rarely vary in having feminine or neuter gender; the other two combinations of masculine or feminine and neuter or masculine are far more common. Clearly, such a hierarchy of rules needs to be researched in far more detail before claims can be made for it. As has been touched on in the above discussion, there is a distinction to be made between rules of gender assignment on the basis of their absoluteness. Kopcke and Zubin (1984, p. 44) distinguish between different levels of gender

easily such phonetic rules are acquired and their consequences.

The Interaction of the Rule Types In English, the semantic and pragmatic rules described above cover the use of gender. The morphological rules which exist for English can be seen as secondary, since the semantic rule also applies in every case. For example, wait-

ress has feminine gender, since it refers to a female person; once the natural gender rule has applied, there are no cases left for the morphological rule (-ess->fem.) to specify. In German, the interaction is far more complex, since the rules have dif-

ferent scope and the areas of application overlap. Kopcke, who worked on the rules of gender attribution in monosyllables, proposed the following hierarchy (1982, p. 111): 1.

Semantic rules

2.

Morphological rules

3.

Phonetic rules a. Related to final sounds b. Related to initial sounds

This hierarchy was used as the basis of a computer programme which assigned gender to the monosyllabic nouns in German. The programme achieved 75"70 success compared with the actual gender of the nouns. The rules considered, however, were only a selection of those already presented, since clearly some

rules cannot apply to monosyllabic nouns. Thus, the hierarchy would have to include, for example, the final element rule, which necessarily orders some morphological rules before semantic rules. In the word Herrchen 'master (of an animal)" the gender is neuter because of the diminutive suffix -chen, although the whole refers to a male person. In the description of the semantic rules, one group of rules was described as complex because the semantic rules applied only in the cases where morphological and phonetic rules did not. This implies a more detailed structuring and reordering of the hierarchy. Poplack,

assignment: Firstly, categorial rules of gender assignment, such as the Last-

Member Principle; secondly, clusters of nouns which share a common semantic or formal feature and where, in most cases, there are exceptions; and thirdly, the set of exceptions to the above principles. Very few of the gender assignment principles discussed in the proceeding sections have 100"70 applicability. The relative strengths of these principles is clearly relevant in establishing a hierarchy. It is a frequent but often only implicit goal of liuguistic description that the grammar should approximate psycholinguistic processing in adults and the acquisition process in children. Such a hierarchy of rules could imply that children will learn the different types of rule in that hierarchical order. This was argued by Keeuan and Comrie (1977) in connection with the hierarchy of noun phrase accessibility in relative clauses; the psychological testing of the hierarchy showed only partial matching, however (Keenan, Comrie & Hawkins, 1974). It seems plausible to argue, however, that rules which are high on a hierarchy and which therefore have a greater scope than others will be learned earlier. On the other hand, factors such as input which cannot so easily be related to a hierarchical ordering cau be relevant in acquisition. The dominance of one rule over another has to be learned and may not be simultaneous with the learning of the rules themselves. Thus, a child may learn the morphological rule assigning nouns with the suffix -chen to neuter gender and the rule assigning nouns having female referents to feminine gender, but the child may not know which rule dominates in the case of a conflict such as in Miidchen. Some evidence will be presented from empirical and observational findings related to this question of the hierarchy of rules in adults and in acquisition.

36

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

Function In Chapter 1, the functionalist perspective was discussed in connection with

the origin of the gender and noun classification systems in general. The general conclusion was that no essential functions for gender could be found which would explain its existence, but that once the system existed, it would take on certain functions, A follow-up question is whether the functions which the gender system then assumes are essential functions in themselves, so that in a language with a more limited or no gender system, these functions would be fulfilled by other systems, In comparing English and German, it will be seen that some functions are pertinent to gender marking on the articles and therefore only pertain to German; others are pertinent to gender marking on the pronouns and thus pertain to both languages. Where functions are fulfilled by the gender systems of both English and German, they will be compared to indicate the varying importance of the systems in this respect. Anticipation of Content Since nouns in German are distributed across three genders, the selection of a gender-marked modifier (article, adjective etc.) reduces the number of possible nouns being referred to. The mention of a gender-marked form in relation to a following noun allows the listener, on hearing the gender-marked form to anticipate the noun that will be referred to by using additional informatio~ from the semantic and pragmatic context. Clark and Clark (1977, pp. 61, 75) talk of such anticipation in relation to the comprehension process. Zubin and Kopcke (1983) give, as an illustration of this function, the context of two friends looking at a landscape whereby one says: Guck mal. Das groBe, im Garten stehende Haus.

'Look. The large in the garden standing house.'

In the context of having the same mutual gaze, after the mention of the neuter gender article das, the listener can anticipate all possible references having that gender. Using the following linguistic information, the possibilities can be further reduced, until the house is the obvious referent.

Function

37

relative clauses into a noun phrase, as for example in sentence 15, which can mean that another noun phrase intervenes between the gender-marked form, in this case, the article and the head noun.

(15) Der die Landschaft beschreibende Brief ist mir abhanden gekommen. 'the (masc.) the (fern.) landscape (fern.) describing letter (masc.) is for me lost.

=

I

have lost the letter describing the landscape' .

The listener, upon hearing der marking masculine gender will wait for a masculine gender noun in the correct case as the cue that the noun phrase can be closed. Clearly, the intonation patterns on such clauses and the presence of other markers in the clause assist the listener in determining which noun should be the head. The gender marking nevertheless could allow the whole to be processed more easily. On similar lines, the gender-marked form helps the listener identify the head noun in a nominal compound where the compound is made up of nouns of different genders, since, as discussed earlier (pp. 30- 31), the last noun in a compound determines the gender of the whole. Gender marking in these instances increases the syntagmatic cohesion of German, which apparently has a facilitating effect on processing. This cannot be achieved by stress alone, which may explain why such complex constructions are limited in English compared with German.

Distinction of Singular and Plural The plural form in German does not distinguish gender in articles and adjectives. In all cases except the dative, the plural marking is similar to feminine gender forms. Most nouns have clear plural marking, so that singular and plural can be distinguished by the marking of the noun aione, as in Lampe (fem. sing.) and Lampen (pl.). Those nouns which have zero plural marking, however, can only be distinguished in number by the preceding gender-marked form in the singular or the plural form. Such nouns are always of neuter or masculine gender, so that this distinction is always clear, for example, der

Loffel (masc. sing.) 'spoon' and die Loffel (pl.) or das Kiitzchen (neut. sing.) 'kitten' and die Kiitzchen (pl.).

Marking of the Onset of a Noun Phrase

Lexical Structuring

Articles and declined adjectives in German mark the beginning of a noun phrase and, assuming some form of chronological processing takes place, can be used as a cue to the listener in comprehension to search in the following informatIOn for the noun. This function is not restricted to those languages which have gender. In German, however, it is possible to iusert left-branching

Zubin and Kopcke (1983), in their article describing the large number of semantic rules related to gender in German, argue that the organization of the lexicon into areas associated with a particular gender or the contrast of areas through a contrast in gender assists the speaker in lexical access. Other authors have also discussed the function which can be assumed by gender of al-

38

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

lowing contrasts and similarities to be established in the lexicon throngh membership in different or similar classes (e.g. Hjelmslev, 1959; Wienold, 1967). The additional psycholinguistic functiou which Zubin and Kopcke wish to ascribe to gender is the greater ease of lexical access which the speaker gains thereby. There is no experimental evidence on this point available at the present time.

Function

39

using the gender-marked pronouns. Thus, in contexts in which several entities could be referred to, the gender-marked pronouns will specify reference to one of the entities as long as they are of different genders. In sentences 20 and 21, the linguistic reference to a couple (the Smiths) introduces the possibility of referring to either the man or the woman using a pronoun only; the use of the masculine pronoun here makes specific reference to the man. (20) The Smiths were over to dinner last week. He has gone very grey.

Anaphoric Reference Important in both English and German is the function of anaphoric indexing. Througb the three different gender-marked forms in both languages, reference can be made non-ambiguous to a preceding noun phrase, where otherwise more precise information from the context or use of a different construction would be required to specify identity. Sentences 16a-16c and 17a-17c illustrate this possibility. (16a) Maria fotografierte Tobias vor dem Haus, als sie 10 Jahre alt war. (16b) Maria fotografierte Tobias vcr dem Haus, als er 10 Jahre alt war.

(16c) Maria fotografierte Tobias vor dem Haus, als es 10 Jahre alt war. (17a) Mary photographed Toby in front of the house, when she was 10 years old.

(17b) Mary photographed Toby in front of the house, when he was 10 years old. (17c) Mary photographed Toby in front of the house, when it was 10 years old. Clearly, this is only possible under certain circumstances. In German, the possibilities of disambiguation using gender are greater than in English, since the distribution of nouns across the three genders is more evenly spread. Thus, reference to inanimate nouns can be made non-ambiguous, which is not possible in English, as a comparison of sentence 18 with sentence 19 shows:

(21) Die Schrnidts waren ietzte Woche bei uns zum Abendessen. Er sieht schon sehr grau aus.

The introduction of the possibility of referring to one of a couple can also be established by gesture or by mutual gaze, as in sentences 22 and 23. (22) (looking at a,man and woman) He's badly dressed but she's not. (23) (looking at a man and woman) Er ist schlampig angezogen, sie aber nicht.

It must be noted that, in German, this use is not possible with all nouns, for example, der Computer (masc.) 'computer' or die Schreibmaschine (fern.) 'typewriter', since the use relies on the semantic opposition which exists between the masculine and feminine genders when referring to natural gender. A computer and a typewriter do not form a pair in which such an opposition is present. This point will be elaborated in the next section. In the limited context of contact advertisements in German, the pronouns er und sie have been nominalized and have the meaning of 'male person' or 'female person' respectively, as for example in sentence 24. (24) HausIicher Er sucht gutverdienende Sie zwecks Heirat. 'domestic he (man) seeks she (woman) with a good income for marriage.'

Again, the use relies on the semantic opposition of natural gender.

(18) Das Bild liegt auf meinem Schreibtisch. Er (der Schreibtisch) ist sehr alt. (19) The picture is lying on my desk. It is very old.

Functional Importauce of the MalelFemale Opposition

Formally, sentence 19 is ambiguous in the reference of it. However, English speakers will take the reference of it to be to picture on the basis of the topic being associated with the subject of the first sentence and preserved in discourse unless a change is signalled.

As was seen in the previous section, disambiguating use of gender-marked pronouns in German relies in some instances on the presence of a semantic opposition, the opposition being between male and female natural gender. We have discovered new evidence for the importance of both the presence of the semantic opposition and the opposition in formal gender marking in the area of linguistic contrast. In English, the semantic opposition is necessarily present when the pronouns he and she are used, and these can be contrasted as sentence 25 illustrates.

Deictic Reference It is possible in both English and German to make unambiguous reference to

an entity which has not occurred explicitly in the previous linguistic context

(25) The professor and her husband visited us yesterday. She is much older than him.

40

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

In German, contrast is only possible when both the semantic and the grammatical oppositions are present (see sentence 26 as the German version of 25). Where the grammatical opposition alone is present, as in sentence 27, it becomes unacceptable for German speakers, although the grammatical reference is formally unambiguous.

Summary

41

is present only when these grammatical forms are associated with natural gender. The strength of the semantic coherence between the forms marking animacy and inanimacy can therefore also be tested using the context of linguistic contrast. Sentences with such a contrast, for example 33 and 34, are problematic, however, for the majority of English and German speakers.

(26) Die Profess orin und ihr Mann besuchten uns gestern. Er ist viel alter als sie. (27) Ein Computer und eine Schreibmaschine stehen im BUre. Er ist viel alter als sie. 'A computer and a typewriter are in the. office. It (rnase. = computer) is much

older than it (fern.

=

(33) The man fetched the parcel from the station. ?It was heavy and he was tired.

(34) Der Mann holte das Paket vom Bahnhof abo

typewriter).'

?Es war schwer und er war mude.

This observation holds for other contrastive contexts as the following sentences illustrate. (28) Tom und Maria sind in def Kuche. ?Er ist schon reif, sie nieht. 'Tom and Mary are in the kitchen. He is mature, she isn't.'

(29) Der Apfel und die Bime sind in der Kliche. ?Er ist schon reif, sie niehL 'The apple and the pear are in the kitchen. It (mase. = apple) is already ripe, it (fern. = pear) isn't.' (30) Die Lewin liegt neben dem Lowen. Sie ist dunn und er ist dick. 'The lioness is lying next to the lion. She is thin and he is fat.'

(31) Die Jacke liegt neben dem Pullover. ?Sie ist dunn und er ist dick. 'The jacket is lying next to the jumper. If (fern. (masc. = jumper) is thick.'

= jacket)

is thin and it

It is clear that the problem lies with the linguistic contrast, since the sentences become acceptable as soon as this contrast is taken out. Sentence 31 is acceptable if only one of the conjoined elements is produced, as in sentences 32a and 32b.

In English, the lack of acceptability of such sentences may be due to the problem of using it in association with any stress (Kuroda, 1968, pp. 250 - 251), which is necessary in a contrastive context. However, the pronoun it functions not only to indicate inanimate, but also common gender (see pp. 20 - 23), which suggests that the association of it with inanimacy will be weakened by this double function. This may be the reason that it cannot carry stress; that is, the semantic opposition is not clear enough for the contrast to be made. In German, there are also problems in using the neuter pronoun, es, in association with any stress. The semantic opposition inanimate/animate is also even less clear in the gender system than in English, since neuter is only to be identified with inanimacy in a few forms (see pp. 17 - 20). In conclusion, the male and female semantic features play an important part in the function of carrying contrast, in German as well as in English. Grammatical gender alone cannot carry this function. This implies a strong connection between grammatical gender and the related sex feature from the point of view of function.

Summary

(32a) Die Jacke iiegt neben dem Pullover. Sie ist dunn.

(32b) Die Jacke liegt neben dem Pullover. Er ist dick. It is only when a contrast is made that the masculine and feminine gramma-

tical gender pronouns cannot take on this function. 11 Contrast is dependent on a semantic coherence of the contrasted items (Werth, 1984, p. 158), which 11

It must be noted that sentences 27 and 29 are unacceptable, even when the contrast is not explicit in the second part of the clause. This is because the contrastive context is already established in the first clause through the conjunction of the two noun phrases. When the one noun phrase is mentioned in the second clause, the contrast

with the other noun phrase is made implicitly (Werth, 1984, pp. 131-165). This property of conjunction was noted also by E. Lang (1977, pp. 42-43).

From the description of the rules pertaining to gender in German, it can be seen that rules of gender assignment exist in three different areas; phonetics, morphology and semantics. There are also a considerable number of such rules. Gender is quite clearly not an arbitrary classification, as has been argued elsewhere (e.g. Maratsos & Chalkely, 1980). The implications of this description for acquisition is that children have the possibility of learning such rules and do not have to rely on rote. The large number of rules suggests that learning will take place over a longer period. A small number of nouns, however, appear not to fall under the scope of any rule; the gender of these must be learned by rote. There are a limited number of rules in English, which cover all nouns and which are related to semantic and pragmatic features of the referent. Here, the

42

A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German

child also has the possibility of learning the rules rather than learning the use of a pronoun in reference to a particular noun by rote. The reduced number of rules suggest that English children have less to learn than German children and that therefore their acquisition will be faster in this area. In German, there are not only a large number of rules but also different rules of different types. There appears to be a hierarchy among these rules in terms of economy of gender assignment (Kopcke, 1982). Acquisition data will show what principles determine the order of acquisition and how these are related to the formal criteria. The natural gender rule in German was shown to be just one of many semantic rules, unlike its status in English. From the discussion of functions of gender, however, it was demonstrated that the natural gender feature has more functional importance in German than has hitherto been claimed. The functional load associated with this feature would suggest that the natural gender rule would be more salient and acquired therefore more quickly by German children than other semantic rules.

CHAPTER 3

Rules and Speakers' Behaviour

When considering the acquisition of an area in a language, the formal properties of the system are clearly of relevance in making predicitions about the order and speed of learning. Part of the linguistic background for the child is however not only the formal properties of the area, but how other speakers behave with respect to those properties. The psycholinguistic evidence on the productivity of a rule, for example, shows that the rule has a different status in the input for the child, which must be considered in describing acquisition. This chapter presents what is known about adults' behaviour with respect to gender; this information is then related to questions of acquisition.

The Psychological Status of Morphological and Phonetic Rules of Gender Assignment of German Nouns Evidence from Loan Words When nouns are borrowed into German from other languages, they have to be assigned to a grammatical gender. Since this is an ongoing process, the current status of the gender-assigning rules can be investigated by looking at data from this area. 12 Weinreich (1968, p. 45) collected data from several languages which clearly showed the importance of such structural rules. English is the most important source language of loan words in German at the present time (Galinsky, 1980; Viereck, 1980), and its importance is increasing (see Engels, 1976). The discussion therefore concentrates mainly on loan words from English. Clearly, the source language, if it has gender marking itself, can influence the gender given to the loan word in the recipient language, as was the case in Middle English with French and Latin nouns. With English loan words bor12

The word 'current' should be emphasized here, since Surridge (1984) has shown for French that the inter-relationship of gender-assigning rules can change with time, that is, one rule can be dominant at one point in time but not at another. Compare the description of rules for German in Polzin (1903).

44

Rules and Speakers' Behaviour

rowed into German, the structural rules of the recipient language, that is German, seem to have a considerable influence on gender assignment. Although it might be argued that the use of the neuter pronoun it would lead to a dominance of neuter assignment, the English gender system does not in fact appear to influence German. Arndt (1970) described the rules of gender assignment related to syllabacity not only from his analysis of German (see pp. 32 - 34), but also from a corpus of loan words in German. In a considerable number of cases, the lexical equivalent in German has a different gender from that of the loan word so that semantic similarity must be seen as one of several factors (see pp. 50-51). The syllabacity rules appear to apply equally to loan words. This is substantiated by Carstensen (1980a, 1980b), who particularly emphasizes the association of monosyllabic words with masculine gender, for example, der Stress or der Song. 13 Carstensen also discusses morphological factors which can be seen to influence gender assignment to English loan words in German (see also Simmons, 1971). The phonetic rules of gender assignment have not been investigated so closely in connection with loan words, since the description of these rules is comparatively recent. 14 Of the morphological rules, several are clearly influential. English loan words which have the -er suffix-denoting agent are masculine; this morphological rule overlaps with the semantic rules of natural and common gender, as was noted earlier (pp. 16 -17). Other nouns with the -er suffix are also masculine, such as der Pullover or der Slipper. Nouns ending with -ster are also masculine probably because of the -er ending. English nouns derived from Latin which are then borrowed into German take the gender of those words with the same suffixes which were borrowed directly from Latin into German, for example, nouns with the -ment ending are neuter, while nouns in -tion are feminine. Another group of nouns have gender assigned to them not on the basis of the form of the suffix directly, but on the similar semantics of the suffix. Thus, gerundive nouns having the nominalizing ending -ing are neuter in German parallel to the nominalized infinitives ending in -en; nouns ending in -ness, the nominalizing morpheme suffixed to adjectives, such as fitness, are feminine in German, parallel to the gender associated with the equivalent morphemes -keit and -heit (not the phonetically more similar -nis). Nouns ending in the abstract nominalizer -ship are feminine parallel to German -schaft, and those ending in the nominalizer -ity are feminine parallel to the German -Wit.

13

14

Syllabacity has also been shown to be important in gender assignment in other languages, including gender assignment to loan words borrowed into those languages, for example, English loan words into French (Surridge, 1982). Such factors are again relevant for loan words into other languages, for example,

loan words into Canadian French (Barbaud, Ducharme & Valois, 1981) or Dutch words into French (Baetens-Beardsmore, 1971).

The Psychological Status of Morphological and Phonetic Rules

45

These data are evidence that certain morphological and structural rules of gender are productive. Some rules may be productive but not appear in such data because the language from which the words are borrowed does not have the particular structure. For example, English loan words provide no evidence ofthe productivity of the rule (-e .... fem.), since English nouns do not have this phonetic structure. This must be considered when searching for evidence of the non-productivity of morphological and phonetic rules. An experimental approach can avoid this problem by testing the gender assignment to invented words. It is possible to include in the test list words of all the phonetic structures of interest.

The Experimental Testing of the Use of Phonetic Rules iu Gender Assignment in Adult German Speakers The data frolll loan words as collected to date mainly provides evidence on the productivity of morphological rules; phonetic rules have been neglected in this area. But, as was mentioned above, the psychological reality of phonetic rules can be more thoroughly investigated using experimentation. 15 Some of the rules for monosyllabic nouns described by Kopcke (1982) were tested using nonsense words in an extended version of the study by Kopcke and Zubin (1981).

Method. A list of 44 nonsense words which were examples of the nine rules under test was presented to the subjects. The words were constructed so that some words illustrated individual rules only and other words combinations of rules (see Table 3.1 for a list of the rules and Appendix A for a list of the words tested). For example, Knaffhas the structure necessary for the applica-'tion of rule 1, while Knump has the structure appropriate for the application of rules 1, 4 and 5. The subjects were 30 adult native speakers of Southern Germany, 15 men and 15 women aged between 20 and 25 years; aU were students of the University of TUbingen and were voluntary participants in the experiment. The subjects were tested in one session in a lecture room of the university. They were presented with a typed list of the nonsense words distributed face down; on the list, two versions of each word were given with two of the possible three definite articles (see Appendix A). Half the subjects received a list in the order 1 - 44 (see Appendix A), half received a list with the reverse order. The experi15

Gender appears to be a psychologically salient element as judged from experimental results with English-Spanish bilinguals (Goggin, 1974). When a change in gender of Spanish nouns was included in the last trial, a release in proactive interference was observed. Such experiments have not been carried out with German speakers, so that the conclusion cannot be generalized. The result may dep~nd on the phonetic structure of the words.

46

Rules and Speakers' Behaviour

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mines the associations. If gender selection is examined in the case of rules 2 and 3 for each of the

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All children were attending state schools or playschools in the York area and were selected on the basis of parental consent and in order to obtain groups of . matched age and sex. The German adnlts were all native speakers of German, comprising 24 men and 24 women, in the age range of 19 - 31 years, (men, it = 24; women, it = 23). All were students at the University of Tiibingen who volunteered to take part in the experiment. The German children were grouped by age in the same way as the English children, with 24 boys and 24 girls in each age group. The groups had the following mean ages:

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1. 3:0-4:11 boys, x = 4;3 girls, x = 4;1 2.5:0-6:11 boys,x = 5:10 girls, x = 5;10 3.7:0-8;11 boys,x = 7:11

girls, x = 10;4

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mean ages:

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The toys used with the children were the same set in every case. They had

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125

Psychological Gender

126 3. 7;0- 8;11 boys, X = 8;0 girls, x = 7;11

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boys,x = 10;1 girls, x = 10;3

All children were attending kindergarten or primary school in the Tiibingen area and were selected on the basis of parental consent in order to obtain groups of matched age and sex. Results and Discussion. The results for the German subjects are shown in Table 5.3 and for the English subjects in Table 5.4. The table shows the number of responses assigning male sex to the toys; the maximum number of responses was 24. By implication, the remaining number indicates the selection of female sex. The toys are grouped in Table 5.3 according to the grammatical gender of the German noun referring to the toy; the same order is kept in Table 5.4 for purposes of comparison. Within each language group, the results were analyzed using a three-way chi-square statistic for each age group. The null hypothesis was that there would be an equal division between the choice of male and female sex. A comparison was made between the gender of the noun and the sex selected for the toy. In German, the grammatical gender is clearly defined; in English, the

An Investigation of the Interrelationship of Grammatical Gender

gender of the noun was defined according to the use of sex-marked pronouns as taken from use in lively style (see pp. 95 - 97). In this study, adult speakers had used the feminine pronoun for cat and mouse and the masculine pronoun for the other nouns tested. The sex of the subjects was also a variable in the analysis. The sex of the subjects was a clear influence in the younger subjects. In the youngest English children (groups 3 - 4 and 5 - 6 years), the boys made a significantly high choice of male sex for the masculine nouns, and the girls made a significantly high choice of female sex for the feminine nouns. The 7to 8-year-olds made a significantly high choice of female sex for the feminine nouns, boys and girls alike. In the next age group, the boys made a significantly high number of male sex choices for masculine nouns and female sex choices for feminine nouns; the girls make a significantly high number of female choices for the feminine nouns. An analysis of the gender:..matching choices across the age group of English 'children shows a significant interaction with age, the matching choices increasing with age (x2 = 27.15; p

II

"

. W

Appendix H. Mean rankings of German nouns by adult German speakers on a semantic differential test according to attribute and sex of subject (see pp. 130-140)

Tief - hoch Glatt - rauh Verschwommen ~ klar Warm - kalt Klein - groB Sanft - wild Passiv - aktiv Schwach - stark Schon - haBlich Traurig - froh Leise ~ laut Rund - eckig Gelost - gespannt Feucht ~ trocken Stetig - veranderlich Mean:

Mann

Mann

Ear

Bar

Katze

Katze

f

Ball m

Frau

m

Elefant f

Frau

f

Elefant m

Ball

m

f

m

f

m

f

3.17 3.42 3.42 3.00 4.00 3.42 3.92 4.25 2.92 3.42 3.58 3.25 3.50 3.25 3.33 3.46

3.00 3.25 3.25 2.08 3.58 2.92 3.33 3.42 2.67 3.08 3.17 3.00 2.92 3.08 3.58 3.09

3.00 4.00 3.08 2.50 4.50 4.50 3.58 4.67 2.25 3.08 3.50 2.42 2.83 3.25 3.50 3.38

3.25 3.25 3.33 1.83 4.58 4.25 4.17 4.83 2.08 2.92 3.08 2.17 3.25 3.33 3.25 3.31

3.75 3.75 3.42 2.67 4.50 3.58 3.67 4.50 2.42 2.75 4.00 2.50 2.50 3.25 3.50 3.38

3.58 3.67 3.33 2.08 4.83 2.75 3.42 4.67 2.25 2.83 3.75 1.92 3.00 3.75 2.83 3.25

2.92 2.33 3.67 3.25 2.50 3.08 2.50 3.08 2.67 3.08 3.25 1.08 3.25 3.17 3.75 2.91

3.17 1.17 3.33 3.92 2.67 3.00 2.67 3.17 2.17 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.25 3.58 2.75 2.79

2.83 2.42 3.25 2.67 2.58 1.75 3.17 1.92 1.33 3.17 2.58 2.75 2.42 2.92 3.17 2.59

3.00 2.33 3.42 1.83 2.67 2.75 3.58 3.00 2.58 3.08 3.08 2.67 2.92 3.08 3.67 2.91

3.00 3.50 3.08 2.25 2.00 3.00 4.00 2.83 2.33 2.83 2.25 2.50 2.75 3.25 3.50 2.87

2.92 2.08 3.33 1.75 2.33 3.00 4.00 3.08 1.42 3.08 1.42 2.17 2.75 3.58 3.92 2.72

~

...

~

"oro

[

Appendix H. Differential test (continued)

Tief - hoch Glatt - rauh Verschwommen ~ klar Warm - kalt Klein - groB Sanft - wild Passiv - aktiv Schwach - stark SchOn - haBlich Traurig - froh Leise - laut Rund - eckig Geiost - gespannt Feucht - trocken Stetig - veranderlich Mean:

Maus

Maus

Uhr

m

f

m

Uhr f

Pferd m

Pferd f

Schwein m

Schwein f

Auto m

Auto f

Euch m

Buch f

3.08 2.33 3.58 3.50 2.50 2.83 2.67 3.00 2.33 3.00 2.58 2.50 3.33 3.42 2.50 2.90

3.17 1.83 3.58 4.25 2.75 3.25 3.83 3.17 2.33 3.00 2.58 2.67 3.00 3.50 3.25 3.08

3.75 2.75 3.42 2.50 4.08 3.00 3.75 4.00 2.00 3.08 3.42 2.75 2.92 3.25 3.17 3.18

3.33 2.58 3.25 1.83 3.92 3.00 3.50 3.92 2.00 3.00 3.42 2.50 3.17 2.83 3.17 3.03

3.08 3.66 3.17 2.50 3.00 3.08 2.83 3.42 3.42 2.75 3.75 1.92 3.00 2.67 3.08 3.02

3.00 3.08 3.33 2.33 3.00 2.75 3.08 3.33 L75 3.08 3.67 1.83 2.83 2.67 3.08 2.92

3.17 2.50 3.50 3.58 3.50 3.25 2.67 3.75 2.50 3.00 3.75 3.33 3.08 3.17 3.50 3.19

3.00 1.67 3.67 4.17 3.33 3.08 2.67 3.50 2.75 3.00 3.83 3.00 3.00 3.17 3.17 3.13

3.17 2.42 3.50 3.33 2.75 3.00 2.08 2.92 2.50 2.75 2.67 4.58 3.08 3.92 2.08 2.98

3.00 2.00 3.67 3.67 2.92 3.00 2.08 3.00 2.25 2.92 2.33 4.50 3.00 4.00 2.17 2.97

2.58 2.92 3.17 2.58 1.50 2.08 3.67 1.75 3.17 3.08 1.75 2.25 2.92 2.75 3.33 2.63

2.83 2.50 3.25 2.08 1.17 2.08 3.58 1.50 2.25 3.00 1.83 2.33 3.17 3.33 3.25 2.54

{ ;;. ~

m, male; f. female

U> U>

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Subject and Author Index

Wienold, G. (1967). Genus und Semantik. Konigstein im Taunus: Anton Hain Meisenheim. Wade, H. (1971). Some stages in the acquisition of questions by monolingual children.

Word, 27, 261- 310. Wurzel, W. E. (1984). Flexionsmorphologie und Nattirlichkeit: Ein Beitrag zur morphologischen Theorienbildung (Studia Grammatica, Vol. 21). Berlin: Akademie. Yaguello, M. (1978). Les mots et les femmes. Paris: Payot. Zubin, D. A. (1979). Discourse function of morphology: The focus system in German.

In T. Givan (Ed.). Syntax and Semantics (Vol. 12, pp. 469- 504). New York: Seminar.

Zubin, D. A., Kopcke, K.-M. (1981). Gender: A less than arbitrary grammatical category. In R. A. Hendrick, C. S. Masek, & M. F. Miller (Eds.), Papers from the Seventh Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 439 - 449). ChIcago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zubin D., Kopcke, K.-M. (1982). Affect classification in the German gender system. Manuscript, University of New York at Buffalo and University of Hannover, Federal Republic of Germany. Zubin, D. A., K6pcke, K.-M. (1983). Semantic categorization efoouns in the German

gender system. Paper presented to the Conference on Noun Classification, Eugene, October 1983.

Abbott E. A. 24 accusative case 64,67-69, see case acquisition explanatory theories of 1-2,8, lO9-li5 of animacy rule 86-98 of formal rules 62-85 of gender 61-116 of natural gender rule 98-109 adjective 52,61,63,65,109 declensions 13-15 affective context 97, see emotional markedness age, and gender 52,56,91-93, lO3-lO4,127-128 agreement 9, 10, 13, see also cohesion, congruence Algonkian 6 Altmann G. 32 analogy 47-50 , anaphoric reference 38, see also pronouns Angermaier M. J. W. 4 animacy 5,7,9,23-24,29-30, 53-55,62,77, 115, 120-121 acquisition of 86-98 rule of 17-20,143 Apache li8 Arabic 134-13 5 Arndt W. W. 32, 44, 50 articles 36-37,52,61,73,84,99, lOl, lO7-1lO, li3, 115 definite 62,63,74,80,85,88, 112 acquisition of 67-71 experimental testing of 78-79 gender marking on 13-14 indefinite 62,63,67,74,83,85,112

acquisition of 64-66 gender marking on 13-14 association, gender and 47-50,70, 72,81-83 Atkinson M. 2 Ausbiittel E. 24 AveryD. 59 avoidance strategy 67 awareness of gender, see metalinguistic awareness Bach E. li8 Baetens-Beardsmore H. 44 Barbaud P. 44 Baron J. lOO-lOl Baron N. 13, 24 Bates E. 3,7 Bauch H. J. 32,53 Beit-Hallami B. 98 Berman R. il2 bilingualism lO6 Bindseil H. E. 7 Bloomfield L. 6 Bohme K. lO5 -lO6, lO8 Bornemann E. 53-55 Brener R. 89, lOO-lOl Brinkmann H. 18 Brown R. 86, li8 Brugmann K. 7 Brunner K. 13 Carstensen B. 44, 50 case 61,63-64,77, lO6, 115 accusative 13-15,64,67-69 dative 13-15,99,106, lO8, III genitive 13-15 marking of 13-14 nominative 13-15,64,67-69,113

Subject Index

168 Chiat S. 100 children's literature 52,55-57,59, 87,93,120-122,140 Chinese 6 Chomsky N. 2, 8-9 C1ahsen H. 2,4,63,86-87 Clark E. V. 11, 112 Clark H. H. 36, 118 Clarke M. A. 134-135 classification systems 140-141, see also noun classification systems clear rule, notion of 114-115,144 Clyne M. 47, 50 cognitive development and lan-

guage 2,29,98-99,107,118,143 cohesion, syntagmatic 37 common gender 29-30,41,44, 55-56,115,121,143 rule of 20-23, 55 acquisition 86-98 comprehension

and production 104,108-109, 116 of pronouns 100-101,105 Comrie B. 6 congruence 7,61, see also agreement, cohesion content, anticipation of 36

contrast 40-41, 106 convention 26, 138 CorbettG. 51 Coseriu E. 8, 118 Cromer R. 12 cross-linguistic investigation

Donaldson M. 11 Dutch 44

endings, see phonetic rules Engels B. 43 English acquisition of

1,4

gender system of 5, 12-42 parts of speech marked for gender 13-15 pronouns, frequency of 55-57, see also acquisition, gender Ervin-Tripp S. 138-139 exceptions 29,33,49-50,81,83, 112, 114-116 experimental data 5,74,115 on animacy rule 90-98 on definite articles 67-69 on formal rules 77-85 on indefinite articles 65-66 on natural gender rule 101-109 on phonetic rules 45-50,59,61, 120 on sex assignment 122-130 explanatory theories, in child language 62, 109-115 feminine gender

1, 110,

115 cross-sectional studies 5, 100 Curme G. O. 19,32,52 Dani 118 dative case, see case de Vi1liers J. G. and de Villiers P. A. 4 deictic reference 38-39 demonstrative pronouns, see pronouns derivational suffixes 30-31,44, 72-74 Deutsch W. 65,99,106,108 dialect 35,47,76-77 diminutive suffixes 30-31,53-54,73 disassociation with gender 32 distributional patterns 62,85, 111,115

and animacy 18-20 development of 7 markedness of 10 marking of 13-15, see gender Finnish 6 Fodor r. 7 form and function, see function

formal rules, acquisition of 62-85, 99, 109-113, see phonetic rules and morphological rules French 8,10,43-44,51,57,93-94, 112 frequency 55-57,63,71,84, 114, 143 functions 3,36-42,108 and fann 13, 65, see one form-one function principle, plurification of nOun classification sys-

tems

6-7

Gabelentz G. v. d. Galinsky H. 43

52

Subject Index

169

gender acquisition of 61-116 and linguistic description 4,6-11 arbitrary classification 41 concept of 98, 108-11 0 definition of 6 ontology of 6-8 origins of 36, 119 paradigms 13,63-65,83,85, 100, 108, 110, 112, 115, see also distributional patterns

parts of speech affected by 13-15 system 1,4,7-8,12-42,61,109, 112, 119, see also animacy rule,

Hall R. 16 Hawkins J. 12 Hebrew 112, 134 Heider-Rosch E. 118 Hellinger M. 58 Herder J. G. 7 Herold A. L. 135 hierarchy of endings 84 of rules 9,34-35,42,51 Hindi 57 Hjelmslev L. 9,17,38, 140 Hofstiitter P. 130, 135, 138 hypernym 10, 18,22

loan words, morphological ru.les,

personal rule, personification rule, natural gender rule, semantic rules

generic terms

53-59, 104, 107-108

German

acquisition of I, 4 distribution of gender in 32 gender system of 5,7,9-10, 12-42 metaphors in 53-55 parts of speech affected by gender 13-15 see acquisition, gender GillW.S. 121,130 Gipper H. 118 Givan T. 8 Glahn N. von 13 Gleitman L. 109 Goggin J. 45 Gopnik A. 3 grammatical gender and natural gender 41,93, 105 and sex assignment 120-130 and sex attributes 134-140 conflict with semantic rules

Greenberg J. 11,99 Greenfield P. 2 Greenhalgh S. 89 Gregor B. 50 Grimm H. 4,76 GrimmJ. 7 Guentherodt r. 59 Guiora A. Z. 134-135 Gvozdev A. N. 86

51-54

Ibrahim M. H. 7, 50 Icelandic 106-107, 113 inanimacy, see animacy

Indo-European 6-7,16 Indo-Germanic 9 innate principles 3,8,110, 143 see explanatory theories oflanguage acquisition input 35,93,98, 115 interaction, related to language acquisition 3

interaction of rules hierarchy

109-113 see also

interrogative pronouns see pronouns

Ioffe V. V. 7 Italian 57, 135, 138-139

Jakobsen B. 10 J ako bson R. 6 Japanese lJ8 Jarnatowskaja V. E. 13 Jespersen O. 13,140 Joly A. 24-25 Karmiloff-Smith A. 3,93, 107, 112 Karpf F. 24 Katz J. 8 Kleinke C. L. 54 Kopcke K.-M. 16,20-21,26-29, 31-34,36-38,45-50,74,78,82, 110, 114, 120 Kuroda S.-Y. 41 Kutter U. 53

Subject Index

170 LakoffR. 57 LangA. 51 Lang E. 40 Langenfelt O. 24 language and thought 5,117-120 change 29 language acquisition, see acq uisition Last member principle, see noun carow pounds Latin 43-44, 51 Lehrer A. II Levy Y. 98-99,105, 107, 112 lexicon 72-73, 113-116 entry in 9 equivalents in 50 organisation of 26-29,37-38 status in 33,50,59,114 structure

12

Mater E. 32,70,84 Mathiot M. 25,97 Meillet A. 6-7 metalinguistic awareness 88,106,108 metaphor, gender in 53-55, 59, 120 Middle English 24, 43 Miller C. 55 Miller M. 3,65 Mills A. E. 3-4,64,75,86 MohnD. 53 morphological changes 13,24 morphological rules 9, 14,26,29-31, 34-35,41,59,61,74,99 psychological status of 43-50 morphology 12 Morsbach L. 24 Moulton J. 58 Mugdan J. 75 Mulford R. 106-107, 113

Lienert O. 91 linguistic description and gender 6-11 related to language acquisition 142-143 literature, see children's literature loan words, gender of 43-45,50-51, 59 Lohmann 1. 16 longitudinal data 5,63,85, 100 Lutzmann K. 53 Lyons J. 9, II Mackay D. O. 59 MacWhinney B. 83-84, 105 male dominance 57-58,120-122 MaratsosM. 9,41,62,85,111-112 markedness 4,9-11, 18,89,99, 104-105,109,116,142-143 distributional 10 emotional 25 psycholinguistic aspects of 11,57-59 semantic 10 Martinet A. 6, 8 Martyna W. 58 masculine gender

and animacy 18-20 and common gender 21-23 and markedness 10 marking of 13-15, see gender

Subject Index

171

object 106, see case observational data 5,115

phonological change 13,24 PiagetJ. 2 Pinker S. 8, 110-112 Pinxten R. 118 plural acquisition of 68-69,75,85 description of 13-15 gender and 37,74-75,115 plurifunction 14, 113, see also func-

on animacy and common gen-

der 87-89 on formal rules 63-77 " on natural gender 99-10 I Ohmann E. 50 Old English 13, 24 omission

of article 67-68 of gender marking 115 one form-one function principle 115, 143, see functions opposition 9-11 male/female 39-41 neutralization of

tion and form

93,

10

semantic 39-41 Osgood C. 130, 138 overgeneralization 65,67,89,100, 104-105, 108

Nalibow K. L. 57 Nash R. 57 nativist approach 2-3, see innate principles natural gender 5,44,59-60,94, 120 rule of 1,16-17,29-31,41-42, 51-55,59,61-62,115,142 acquisition 98-109,120 natural sex 6, see natural gender negative poles 25-26, see affective

Palsdottir M. 107 paradigm, see distributional patterns, gender paradigm Park T. Z. 64-65 part of speech gender marking on 2, see gender influence of 106 Patemann T. 59 Pechmann T. 65

context, positive poles neuter gender

perception of objects, see sex-related features

and common gender 20-23,87 and inanimacy 18-20,86,88,94, 115 marking of 13-15, see gender Nilsen A. 58 nominative case, see case

person

noun

gender marking on 7 with two genders 35 noun classification systems 8-9,16, 36 functions of 6-7 systems of 6, see also classification systems, gender systems noun compounds 30-31,37,72-74 noun phrase, marking onset of 36-37 number 63, see also plural

III

13-14,107

pronouns

101

personal rule 17 - 20 personification 93, 121, 140, see also metaphor rule of 23-26,95-98,115 Peters A. 107 Petzold L. 53 phonetic cue 113 phonetic regularities 72 phonetic rules 9, 14,28, 59, 62, 70-73,78,99,105-107,110-115 acquisition of 63-77,79-85 description of 32-35,41 experimental testing of 79-85 psychological status of 43-50 phonetic similarities 142

Polish 57,83,112 Poplack S. 34-35 Popova M. 1. 83 positive poles 25-26, see also affective context, negative poles possessive function III

possessive pronouns, see pronouns pragmatic factors 22, 106 pragmatic rules 34-35,41 Preyer W. 63,67 production task 90-97,101-108, see comprehension

pronouns 36-41,61,63,83,85,99, 124, 142 acquisition of 100, 107-113, 115, 121 comprehension of 100-10 I, 105 demonstrative 7,17-20,87 experimental testing of 90-98 function of 113 gender marking on 13-14 generic 58, see generic terms indefinite 17-19,22 personal 51-53,62, III possessive 105-106 production of 101-108 relative 17-19,51-52,62,75-77 psychological factors in gender use 24-26 psychological gender 5,117-141 PuschL. 57-58 question words

75-76, see pro,nouns

interrogative reduced forms

regularization eralization

63-65,68 112, see also overgen-

relative pronouns, see pronouns

Subject Index

172 rhyme 24,49 rote learning 9,41,78, 100 rules

and speaker's behaviour categoria! 114

43-60

exceptions to, see exceptions hierarchy of, see hierarchy

psychological status of, see psychological reality relative strength of 35 scope of 32,62-63, 112, 114, 116 status of 61,112, 114, see formal rules, morphological rules, phonetic rules, semantic rules

Russian

6, 51, 83

Sapir E. 117, 119 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 117-120, 141 Schaner-Walles C. 67,75 Schlesinger J. M. 108 Schneider J. W. 58 Schneuwly B. 67, 71, 84 Schulz H. 26 Scupin E. and Scupin G. 63-65,67, 71-72 self-corrections 65,69 semantic differential 130-140 semantic features 8, 16 semantic fields 24,26-29,44, 87 semantic primacy principle 109-110 semantic rules 5,9-10,14,16-31, 33-35,41-42,61-62,74,109-113 acquisition of 86-109 psychological status of 50-57, see sex

animacy rule, common gender fule, natural gender rule 7,9, see natural gender

sex assignment 88,137-140 and grammatical gender 120-130

Simmons H. 44 Siobin D. I. 1,3,63,69,83,86,89, 109-110,115,144 Smoczynska M. 83,86 Spanish 16,45,51,57,112 speaker's behaviour 43-60 Spender D. 58 Stern W. and Stern C. 1,4,6,63-65, 67,75 stress 41 style, and use of gender 17,35,56, 93-98, 121-122, 127-140 subject 106, Ill, see case nominative subject's sex, see sex of subjects

superordinate terms 20-21,26-27, 30,87 Surridge M. E. 44 Swiss-German 68,84 syllabacity 32-33,44,81,83, see also phonetic rules

Talmy L. 110 Tamburello M. 57 Thavenius C. 55 they, use of singular

23,59, see com-

mon gender, generic terms

Tromel-Ploetz S. 57 Trudgill P. 47 Tucker G. R. 112 universals language 6,8,118 language acquisition

2,114,116

Vachek J. 10,25-26,93 Valentine T. 57 van der Geest T. 109 Viereck K. 43 vocabulary 68,71-72,74,78-79, see lexicon

sex attributes and sex assignment 137-140 perception of 5,7,25-26, 117-120 testing of 130-140 sex of subjects as factor 52, 58, 96, 103-104,109, 116, 127-128, 133-134 sex stereotypes 93, 121, 123, 134

Weinrich U. 43 Wells G. 3 WemerO. 13 Werth P. 40 Wheeler B. I. 7 WhorfB. L. 117-118, see SapirWhorfhypothesis Wienold G. 6, 38, 140

Subject Index Wurzel W. Yaguello M.

173

74 57

Zubin, D. 16,20-21,26-29,31,34, 36-38,45-50,83,86,114,120