Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Page 102

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GENDER IN LANGUAGE CONTACT: EVIDENCE
FROM FAROESE-DANISH AND CATALAN-SPANISH
‘butane’, ebonitt ‘ebonite’, nitroglyserin
‘nitroglycerine’ and terpentin ‘white spir-
its’. One important semantic rule is that
beings ofboth sexes are neuter, cf. barn-n.
‘child’, hence the change in baby from
common gender to neuter. There is one
more semantic rule observable in the data
above: Latin grammatical terms are neuter:
aorist ‘aorist’, dativ ‘dative’, injinitiv
‘infínitive’, indikativ ‘indicative’, passiv
‘passive’, sirkumfleks ‘circumflex’. These
nouns do then have a semantically motiva-
ted change from Danish common gender to
Faroese neuter.
In other cases it is possible to find mor-
phologically motivated clues behind the
gender change: forbannilsi ‘curse’, forlov-
ilsi ‘engagement\ forbrydilsi ‘crime’, for-
nermilsi ‘insult’, fornýggilsi ‘renewal’,
forsinkilsi ‘delay’, upplivilsi ‘experience’,
and vígilsi ‘wedding’, as the suffix -ilsi is
associated with neuter.
In the Donsk-føroysk Orðabók (1995)
there are 51 simplex Danish words with
word final -ment, which are neuter, and only
cement ‘concrete’, kompliment ‘compli-
ment’, and konsument ‘consumer’ are com-
mon gender in Danish. The reason for the
change of gender in Dan. cement-cg. > Far.
sement-n. ‘concrete’, and Dan. kompliment-
cg. > Far. kompliment-n. ‘compliment’ is
obvious. The opposite is also obvious, that
is, where common gender is preserved as
masculine - more specifically, in Danish
konsument-cg. to konsumentur-m. ‘consu-
mer’ - there is a semantic rule: persons are
masculine in Faroese (cf. other borrowings
such as kommunistur-m. ‘communist’,/jro-
fessari ‘professor’, and native nouns such
as einstaklingur ‘person,’ and the historical
change of Old Norse persóna-f. to persón-
ur-m. ‘person’). Note also sjúkrarøktar-
frøðingur-m. Lit.: sick-nursing-researcher
= ‘nurse’.
The above changes are obvious and in-
disputable. Then we observe nugga-n.
(Dan. nougat-cg.). Words with word fínal
-a are, as a rule, feminine. There are 1,262
simplex Faroese feminine nouns with this
suffix, 32 neuter3 in Føroysk Orðabók
(Faroese Dictionary) from 1997. The
change of gender in nugga is suspect. If we
look at simplex nouns with word final -gg
with different nuclei vowels, the following
picture emerges:
Table I
Three words with word final -egg are masculine
(veggur ‘wall’, leggur ‘calf’, seggur ‘man’). There
are four neuter nouns with word flnal -egg (egg ‘egg’,
dregg ‘grapnel’, legg ‘pleat’, skegg ‘beard’). There is
one feminine word with -ágg, (gágga ‘whelk’), but
there is no actual rule at play here, as
-ágg and -ogg >are phonologically the same [og:].
///// indicates that it is not possible to ftnd any rule.
i/y e ø u 0 a/æ á ú ó ei ey oy í/ý
gg //// 3,4 /// /// /// /// i /// /// /// /// /// ///
Gend. m,n
This could perhaps explain the change of
gender in nugga ‘nougat,’ although we are
inclined to take the change to be simply that
neuter is default, especially since four
words are too few to establish a rule, and
they do not have -u as the nuclei vowel.
The ending -o in Danish common gen-
der nouns is as a rule associated with femi-
nine in Faroese, e.g. konto-f. ‘account’.