Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Side 99

Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Side 99
KYN OG MÁLSAMBAND - DØMI í FØROYSKUM-DONSKUM OG KATALANSKUM-SPONSKUM 97 metrical in this respect (i.e., Croatian- Italian, Croatian having three genders and Italian only two). They compare the naming latencies of pictures whose names differ in gender witli those whose names have the same gender in both languages. The results show that the naming latencies do not vary depending on the fact that the word pairs have different or the same gender in both languages, no matter whether both langua- ges are structurally asymmetrical or identi- cal. This leads to the conclusion that the gender systems of a bilingual speaker are autonomous, even when both languages are similar, as it is the case of Catalan and Spanish. 2. Gender in language contact The aim of this paper is to observe how gender manifests itself in language contact. We will draw attention to two different language contact situations: one involves Faroese and Danish, and the other Catalan and Spanish. Specifically, for the fírst case we will take borrowings from Danish into Faroese into consideration. For the second language contact situation, we will observe the gender that Catalan speakers tend to use for cognate words that have different gram- matical gender in Spanish and in Catalan. 2.1. Faroese: how borrowings can help establishing default gender In entering a room, an Icelander would ask if a///r-m.pl. have arrived, that is, masculine plural when referring to both sexes. A Faroese would use neuter plural øll. Another evidence in favor of neuter as default in Faroese is the use of past par- ticiple neuter when referring to both sexes opposite to masculine plural in Icelandic: (Far.) brekaó-n.p\., ~ (lcl.) fatlaðir-m.p\. ‘handicapped’. Faroese has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter, whereas Danish has two: common gender and neuter. Common gender nouns in Danish are a rnerger of Old Danish masculine and feminine. One irn- portant principle noticeable in the Faroese- Danish language contact is that gender is preserved, so that Danish neuter nouns, not only cognates, are neuter in Faroese; and Danish common gender nouns are either masculine or fenrinine in Faroese. We will use the data fronr Faroese-Da- nish to find further evidence in favor of a de- fault neuter, assuming that cyclic deriva- tions with one default gender are crucial in language processing and derivation (cf. Kip- arsky’s (1982) and Anderson’s (1992) Else- where Principle or Elsewhere Condition, which has also been labelled Panini's The- oreni after the farnous Indian grammarian). The way we expect default to be repre- sented in the borrowings is that (1) there are rnore changes from Danish common gender nouns to Faroese neuter or from Danish conunon gender and ncuter nouns to neuter in Faroese, than (2) to the opposite gender: that is, changes from Danish neuter to mas- culine or feminine in Faroese. If we find more evidence in favor of (1) and there are not semantic, morphological nor phono- logical motivations behind the change, the only explanation is neuter as default. 2.2. Catalan: trends in gender usage Both Catalan and Spanish have two genders
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55. Bók 2007 (01.01.2007)

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