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Document Details : Title: Gender Marking in Inanimate Contexts Subtitle: Developments in Dutch and German Author(s): VERELST, Natalie Journal: Leuvense Bijdragen - Leuven Contributions in Linguistics and Philology Volume: 104 Date: 2022-2023 Pages: 154-187 DOI: 10.2143/LB.104.0.3293186 Abstract : The primary function of feminizing morphology such as the German suffix -in and Dutch -ster is the marking of sex on nouns in reference to human beings. Outside of this scope, sex markers can also occur in reference to inanimate entities, though such constructions are more common in German than in Dutch (e.g., German die Kirche als Hüterin vs. Dutch de Kerk als hoed(st)er ‘the Church as a guardian). The controllers of these nouns are (historically) grammatically feminine (die Kirche, de Kerk). Such occurrences of feminizing morphology have previously been analyzed as exponents of grammaticalization, whereby the former sex marker becomes a formal grammatical gender agreement marker. Drawing from cross-linguistic synchronic and diachronic data, it is argued that feminizing morphology is restricted to contexts of personification, i.e., contexts that allow for animate, human interpretations. Hence, they retain their status as sex markers, even in inanimate contexts. Comparing German with Dutch data, it becomes clear that a diachronic process of resemanticization of the German (ad)nominal gender system, leading to a strong correlation and therefore association of the masculine and feminine gender with male and female semantics (a sex-based gender system), plays a decisive role in the occurrence of gender morphology in inanimate contexts. While the marking of feminizing morphology on PNs with inanimate, grammatically feminine controllers is common in modern – written – German, it has become a rarity in modern Dutch. For German -in this means that it can occur in any context that is either directly or indirectly interpreted as animate, hinting at a process of obligatoricization. |
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