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Elke Ronneberger-Sibold

Typologically motivated over- vs. underspecification of gender in Germanic languages

Keywords: Germanic languages, typology, morphosyntax, gender, framing

This paper investigates different means of expressing natural gender in personal terms, namely derivational suffixes, different inflectional classes, and the inflection of pronouns, adjectives, and determiners for grammatical gender in the history of Ger-man, English, and Swedish. These three languages were chosen as representatives of different routes of typological development among the Germanic languages. The major typological division, which can only in part be described in the classical terms of syntheticity vs. analyticity, separates English and Swedish on the one hand from German on the other. The differences in the expression of natural gender are related to these typological differences.

STUF – Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Akademie Verlag

Print ISSN: 0942-2919
Volume: 60, 03/2007
Pages: 205 - 218

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