Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Side 109

KYN OG MÁLSAMBAND - DØMI í FØROYSKUM-DONSKUM
OG KATALAN SKUM-SPONSKUM
107
lan fiull comes from its neuter: fólíum. In
turn, the feminine word fulla, which refers
to ‘leaf’, comes from the plural form of this
word, i.e. fólía. It was originally used as a
collective noun referring to all the leaves of
a tree/bush, for example. Then, it adopted
the singular meaning too, but semantically
specialised to designate Teaf’ and not ‘sheet
(of paper)’ (Coromines, 1980). This seman-
tic association with specific genders paral-
lels the case of Norwegian described in
Beito (1986).
Group % of Catalan gender usage
G1 Grácia 30.76
G1 Nou Barris 62.5
G2 Grácia 88.88
G2 Nou Barris 58.33
G3 Grácia 70
G3 Nou Barris 61.53
Table 9. J'ull
Here we see that most groups have pro-
blems with using the appropriate gender
when designating a sheet of paper in Cata-
lan. Strikingly, the children in Grácia are
those with more difficulties in producing
fiull instead offulla. This group is followed
by G2 in Nou Barris, and then closely
followed by G3 in Nou Barris and then G1
in Nou Barris. The two groups with
production more in accordance with the
standard are G2 and G3 in Grácia. Thus, it
looks as though the influence of Spanish is
important because most groups that display
problems in producing this Catalan word
with the Catalan gender are those living in
the district with a higher usage of Spanish.
The children in Grácia also show difficul-
ties in producing ‘llum’ with its appropriate
gender when designating a lamp due to the
polysemy of the word. Therefore, the pro-
blenr might be developmental in the case of
this group rather than caused by external
factors.
4.2.23. Summary
This second group seems to be more pro-
blematic than the fírst one due to the poly-
semy of the target words, be it in the same
form or with slight modifications. It is clear
that the acquisition of these polysemic cog-
nates means a further complication for
children. It constitutes a real handicap for
bilingual children. However, it looks like it
is a developmental stage they go through
because older groups show better produc-
tion levels, even though hardly any of them
shows ceiling effects.
4.2.3. Thirdgroup: sida - /.' and análisi -
fi
In this third case, we have grouped two
words belonging to the semantic field of
science together: ‘syndrome’and ‘analysis’.
This was one of the cases in which we did
not try to elicit the words from the youngest
group (G1), since the words are not part of
the children’s lexicon. In fact, these are
words not commonly used in everyday
situations and often leamed late at school.
This means that adult speakers who have
received education only in Spanish will
have learned these scientific words in
Spanish and, as they are cognate words,
they will probably keep on using the Span-