Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Page 99

KYN OG MÁLSAMBAND - DØMI í FØROYSKUM-DONSKUM
OG KATALANSKUM-SPONSKUM
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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