Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Side 97

KYN OG MALSAMBAND - DØMII FØROYSKUM-DONSKUM
OG KATALANSKUM-SPONSKUM
95
Gender assignment is fully arbitrary, accor-
ding to Bloomfield, and this was a view
long upheld in the linguistic literature. More
recent research on the rnatter in Indo-
European, and also in other languages, has
shown that gender assignment rules in
different languages are rule based in that
languages have a predominant either se-
mantic, morphological or phonological as-
signment system; or there can be also a
mixture between these principles. This has
been incorporated into different linguistic
theories, see for example Steinmetz (1985,
1986, 1997), Kopcke & Zubin (1984),
Bittner (2000), Doleschal (2000), Leiss
(2000), Trosterud (2001,2006), Froschauer
(2003), Nesset (2006), Rice (2006), among
others.
With regard to French, as it is mentioned
by Bloomfield above, and as gender assign-
ment usually is taken to be totally arbitrary
in that language, Mel'cuk (1958), (cf.
Bidot, 1925), has shown that there are pho-
nological assignment rules at work for “not
less that 85 per cent of the frequently occur-
ring nouns” (Corbett, 1999:57).
As for gender assignment in German,
we refer to the work by scholars such as
Kðpcke (1982), Kopcke & Zubin (1984),
Steinmetz (1985, 1986, 1997), Doleschal
(2000). All these studies show that gender
assignment is rule based, and the main as-
sumption is that there is a hierarchy in
gender assignment in that semantic assign-
ment rules (SAR) take precedence over
morphological assignment rules (MAR),
which again take precedence over phono-
logical assignment rules (PAR) (Corbett,
1999; Corbett & Fraser, 2000a, b). Al-
though such a formulation (SAR » MAR
» PAR) might be too strong, given that for
example Faroese tjaldur ‘oystercatcher’ is
neuter even though names of birds are
masculine or feminine, there is a certain
core, which follows this principle:
Thc Corc Semantic Ovcrridc Principlc
Rules referring to biological sex take prece-
dence in gender assignment
(Nesset, 2006:18).
According to The Core Semantic Override
Principle, gender follows sex for example
in Gerrnan: der \Mann-m., die Frau-i'. and
das Kind-n. The same pattern is observed,
for example, in Faroese, lcelandic and Old
Norse: mað(u)r-m. ‘man’, kona-f.
‘woman’, barn-n. ‘child’; and Latin: v/r-m.,
femina-f., but liberi-m.pl. (because
masculine is default in Latin = here
denoting ‘human beings of both sexes’).
Evidence in favor of a rule based ap-
proach to gender are that:
(1) Native speakers typically make few mis-
takes,
(2) borrowed words acquire a gender, which
shows that there is a mechanism for assig-
ning and not just remembering gender, and
(3) when presented with invented words, spea-
kers give them a gender and tliey do so with
a high degree of consistency.
(Corbett, 1999: 7).
In addition to this, we note that there are
very few changes of gender in language
change, unless the whole systern ‘breaks
down’ (cf. English), with consequences for
the whole morphological systern of the
language. A fourth evidence in favor of
gender as rule based is the fact tliat children