Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Side 101

K.YN OG MÁLSAMBAND - DØMI í FØROYSKUM-DONSKUM
OG KATALANSKUM-SPONSKUM
99
While through the Faroese-Danish case we
are trying to find out a more theoretical
aspect of Faroese (i.e., to account for the
default gender of the language through
loanwords), the case of Catalan-Spanish
looks for trends of usage among different
groups of speakers and their corresponding
linguistic explanation. The common point
of both approaches is that they look for
possible semantic, morphological or phono-
logical patterns in gender assignment that
could explain both the speakers’ usage (for
the case of Catalan) and the establishment
of grammatical decisions (for the case of
Faroese).
3. The Faroese study
The Faroese data builds on simplex nouns
in the following two dictionaries: Donsk-
føroysk orðabók (1995) (Danish-Faroese
dictionary) and Føroyslc orðabók (1998)
(Faroese dictionary). The data from Før-
oysk orðabók was used to look into seman-
tic, morphological and some phonological
assignment rules in Faroese. This work was
needed in order to understand the mechan-
ism behind assignment in borrowings,
which we found in the Danish-Faroese
dictionary. Where there were doubts, we
asked different people by sending them
sentence examples via e-mail, but also by
looking at the word in Google by simply
wringing the ‘WORD siteifo’. In some
cases we used the collection of words in
Føroyamálsdeildin (Department of Faroese,
Fróðskaparsetur Føroya).
The following nouns are common gen-
der in Danish, neuter in Faroese:
afasi ‘aphasia', alkohol ‘alcohol', aktiv ‘active ’,
aorist ‘aorist ’, antahus ‘antahuse ’, haby ‘haby ’,
hlits ‘Jlash ', boykott ‘boycott ’, bonus ‘bonus ’,
brint ‘hydrogen ’, buffe ‘sideboard ’, butan
'butane’, dativ ‘dative’, deodorant ‘deodorant’,
ebonilt ‘ebonite ’, fallitt ‘bankruptcy ’, forbannilsi
‘curse ’, forlovilsi ‘engagement ’, forbiydilsi
‘crime', fornermilsi ‘insult', fornýggilsi
‘renewal’.forsinkilsi ‘delay’, galopp 'gallop’,
garanti ‘guarantee', ginn 'gin ’, grafitti
> ‘graphite ’, granitt ‘granite ’, liekti > 'hook ’,
herpes ‘herpes ’, herts ‘hertz ’, infinitiv
‘infinitive’, liobby (hobby-f.) ’hobby’, judo 'judo’,
indikativ ‘indicative ’, kaffi ‘coffee ’, karat ‘carat ’,
kompliment ‘compliment’, krem ‘cream’, jogurt
‘yogurt’, luksus ‘luxury’, lockout ‘lockout',
metadon ‘methadone', manna ‘manna’, moskus
‘inusk ’, melis ‘refined sugar ’, neksus ‘nexus ’,
modell2 ‘model ’, nitroglyserin ‘nitroglycerine ’,
narkomani ‘drug addiction ’, nugga ‘nougat ’,
notits (notits-f.) 'note’, onani ‘masturbation’,
paprika ‘paprika ’, papyrus ‘papyrus ’, pedofili
‘pedophHia', pláss ‘place ’, passiv ‘passive',
perno ‘pernod’, porno ‘porn’, poesi (poesiur-m.,
poesi-f.) ‘poetry’, reggae ‘reggae’, pláss ‘place,’
pynt ‘decoration ’, sex ‘sex ’, rísalamang ‘ris a la
mande ’, silicon ‘silicone ’, sement ‘concrete ’,
sjalusi ‘jealousy ’, sirkumfleks ‘circumflex',
spiritus ‘spirits', skepsis ‘skepticism', suvenir
‘souvenir ’, stripptis ‘striptease ’, te ‘tea ’, teyp
‘tape’, telefaks ‘telefax’, tekk ‘teak’, tennis
‘tennis ’, teleks ‘telex ’, terror ‘terrorism ’,
terpentin ‘wliite spirit', ting ‘thing ’, trend
(trendur-m., trend-f.) ‘trend’, tyfus ‘typlioid
fever ’, tubbak ‘tobacco ’, upplivilsi ‘experience',
vigilsi ‘wedding’, urin ‘urine’.
Some of these nouns change gender due to
semantic or morphological assignment ru-
les. More specifically, one of these rule
states that alcoholic drínks are neuter. alko-
hol ‘alcohol’, ginn ‘gin’, perno ‘pernod’,
spiritus ‘spirits’; clieinical elements and
metals are neuter: hrint ‘hydrogen’, butan