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Document Details : Title: A Golden Age for the Gender System? Subtitle: Adnominal and Pronominal Gender Agreement in 17th Century Dutch Author(s): SEMPLICINI, Chiara , DE VOGELAER, Gunther Journal: Leuvense Bijdragen - Leuven Contributions in Linguistics and Philology Volume: 104 Date: 2022-2023 Pages: 93-120 DOI: 10.2143/LB.104.0.3293184 Abstract : The history of the Dutch gender system is characterized by two developments, viz. on the one hand a reduction of three to two gender categories, and on the other a resemanticisation of pronominal gender, which manifests itself mainly via an increased usage of neuter pronouns to refer to inanimate entities. While both developments have traditionally been analysed as independent historical phenomena, psycholinguistic accounts seem to assume the reduction from three to two genders to be the cause of resemanticisation. This article reassesses the idea of a time gap between the emergence of the two-gender system and the resemanticisation of pronominal gender, using new sources from the North-Hollandic region, and adopting a predominantly quantitative approach. The results point towards a greater resilience of the three-gender system than assumed in most current accounts, as well as to a non-negligible degree of resemanticisation already in the 17th century. |
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