Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Side 105

KYN OG MÁLSAMBAND - DØMI í FØROYSKUM-DONSKUM
OG KATALANSKUM-SPONSKUM
103
60
12 3 4
which happen to be cognates with Spanish
words but differ in gender in the two lan-
guages.
4.1. Methodology
4.1.1. Target words
A list of Catalan target words was devised,
with cognates that differ in gender in
Spanish and Catalan. The target words in
the present test are the following:
I able 3. Target Catalan words and their Spanish
cognates.
Catalan Spanish Gloss
front - m. frente - f. forehead
dent - f. diente - m. tooth
j4or - f. olor - m. smell
dubte - m. duda - f. doubt
Hum - m. luz - f. lamp
Jull - m. hoja - f. sheet (of paper)
sida-f. sida - m. AIDS
análisi - f. análisis - m. analysis
Postres - f. postre - m. dessert
scnyal - m. senal - f. sign
Figure 4. Figure 4 shows (I) nouns that are common
gender in Danish, but are borrowed into Faroese as
neuter. In this particular case there are no specifíc
rules, semantic, morphological or phonological that
might explain the change. The only explanation is that
neuter is default. The numbers show how borrowings
support other findings in the language. In (2) there is
a semantic explanation of why the Danish common
gender nouns end up, when borrowed, as neuter in
Faroese. In (3) the motivation behind the change is
semantic analogy and in (4) formal rules are respon-
sible for the change of Danish common gender to
neuter in Faroese.
4.1.2. Subjects
The subjects for this study belonged to 3
different generations in 2 different districts
in Barcelona, namely Grácia and Nou Bar-
ris:
• G1 (age: 3-5): 10 children in Grácia (8
girls and 2 boys; mean age = 3.9) and
Nou Barris (5 girls and 5 boys; rnean age
= 4.5).
• G2 (age: 19-23): 10 young adults in
Grácia (5 male and 5 female; mean age =
21) and 10 in Nou Barris (4 male and 6
female; mean age = 20.8).
• G3 (age: 32-40): The group of adults
comprised one of the members of each
parental unit of the children interviewed:
10 in Grácia (9 female and 1 male; mean
age = 36.4) and 10 in Nou Barris (6
female and 4 male; mean age = 37.1).
In the case of some words which do not be-
long to the child lexicon, we did not include
G1 in the test, because the chances to obtain
the word from them were too scarce. There-
fore, the cases in which this was the case
will be indicated in the results section.