Diachronic and synchronic aspects of the simplification of grammatical gender in an obsolescent language
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Alessio S. Frenda
Abstract
The comparison of two corpora of spoken Irish – one representative of a traditional variety as spoken in 1964, the other of the language spoken today on Irish-language media – reveals a number of differences in the way gender agreement is marked on different agreement targets. The difference is minimal in terms of article–noun agreement and most conspicuous with pronominal agreement. An intermediate position is occupied by noun–adjective agreement within the noun phrase. This study suggests that the gender system of Irish, historically based on both semantic and morphological assignment, is becoming purely semantic, similar in this to the gender system which characterized the final stages of a number of now-extinct Celtic varieties. In their final stages, these exhibited a purely semantic gender assignment system, whereby feminine agreement was limited to anaphoric pronouns with female antecedents. Within the noun phrase, feminine agreement markers were only found in a few fossilized expressions. Irish currently appears to be at an intermediate stage along the path towards a similar system.
Abstract
The comparison of two corpora of spoken Irish – one representative of a traditional variety as spoken in 1964, the other of the language spoken today on Irish-language media – reveals a number of differences in the way gender agreement is marked on different agreement targets. The difference is minimal in terms of article–noun agreement and most conspicuous with pronominal agreement. An intermediate position is occupied by noun–adjective agreement within the noun phrase. This study suggests that the gender system of Irish, historically based on both semantic and morphological assignment, is becoming purely semantic, similar in this to the gender system which characterized the final stages of a number of now-extinct Celtic varieties. In their final stages, these exhibited a purely semantic gender assignment system, whereby feminine agreement was limited to anaphoric pronouns with female antecedents. Within the noun phrase, feminine agreement markers were only found in a few fossilized expressions. Irish currently appears to be at an intermediate stage along the path towards a similar system.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Abbreviations and conventions ix
- Introduction 1
- The semantic reduction of the noun universe and the diachrony of nominal classification 9
- Niger-Congo numeral classifiers in a diachronic perspective 33
- Semantic generalization in Ch’orti’ Mayan numeral classifiers 77
- Diachronic and synchronic aspects of the simplification of grammatical gender in an obsolescent language 107
- Numeral classifier systems in the Araxes-Iran linguistic area 135
- The diachrony of Oceanic possessive classifiers 165
- Development and diffusion of classifier systems in Southwestern Amazonia 201
- Nominal and verbal classification 241
- The diachrony of inflectional classes in four Germanic languages 283
- The history of verb classification in Nyulnyulan languages 315
- Author index 353
- Language index 355
- Subject index 359
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Abbreviations and conventions ix
- Introduction 1
- The semantic reduction of the noun universe and the diachrony of nominal classification 9
- Niger-Congo numeral classifiers in a diachronic perspective 33
- Semantic generalization in Ch’orti’ Mayan numeral classifiers 77
- Diachronic and synchronic aspects of the simplification of grammatical gender in an obsolescent language 107
- Numeral classifier systems in the Araxes-Iran linguistic area 135
- The diachrony of Oceanic possessive classifiers 165
- Development and diffusion of classifier systems in Southwestern Amazonia 201
- Nominal and verbal classification 241
- The diachrony of inflectional classes in four Germanic languages 283
- The history of verb classification in Nyulnyulan languages 315
- Author index 353
- Language index 355
- Subject index 359
