Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Page 114

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GENDER IN LANGUAGE CONTACT: EVIDENCE
FROM FAROESE-DANISH AND CATALAN-SPANISH
of young adults (19-23 y.o.) in Grácia, the
district with the highest usage of Catalan of
the study. Education in Catalan and the
language of the environment do play a role
in this case. Actually, the second factor
seems to be the most influent one, since it
works also with the oldest generation (G3).
The polysemic character of the word and
the several contexts in which the word is
used can also be observed from the results.
The relative low percentage of the Catalan
gender usage in both groups of G3 may
reflect the old usage in Spanish of the
referent ‘sign of the cross’. Another context
in which the word is mainly used in Spanish
is that of traffic rules, since they are mainly
codified in Spanish and learnt also in this
language at the driving schools. This fact
may cause the low results for G2, especially
in Nou Barris, since many youngsters leam
to drive at that age, and in this district with
more presence of Spanish the chances to
hear the word with the Catalan gender are
lower than in Grácia.
4.3. Summary and discussion
The results have shown two different ten-
dencies among the words studied. On the
one hand, highly frequent and basic words
(i.e., olor, dent, front) do not lead to
confusion, in general. Only the group of
children in Nou Barris shows percentages
of the Catalan gender production below or
around 50%. On the other hand, with the
rest of the words speakers do show uncer-
tainty in gender assignment to several
degrees. The causes are diverse depending
on each case. One factor we have seen that
may lead to confusion is the polysemy of
the word, and specifically the fact of having
different genders for different meanings
(llum, full) within the same language.
Another case that causes low percentages
of the Catalan gender production, at least in
some groups, is when the cognate words are
more used or learned in Spanish than in
Catalan (síndrome, análisi, senyal). Finally,
with the word postres, we have seen that a
possibly imposed Catalan grammatical
norm might be responsible for the low
usage of the correct gender of tliis word in
Catalan.
The conclusion from Costa et al. (2003)
related to the autonomy of the gender sys-
tems in the bilingual speakers can possibly
account for the relatively high degree of
correctness in the case of the first group of
words. As for the rest of words, which do
lead to confusion, other causes, mainly se-
mantic and usage-related, make the speaker
access the wrong gender system, in this
case the Spanish instead of the Catalan one.
5. Conclusion
We have shown that we can use the lan-
guage-contact data in Faroese as evidence
in favor of a neuter default. The general
gender assignment process in which Danish
common gender nouns go to either mascu-
line or feminine in Faroese borrowings
shows exceptions. In the cases where com-
mon gender nouns in Danish end up as
neuter in Faroese, and there are no morpho-
logical, phonological or semantic rules to
account for them, the only possible expla-
nation is to have neuter as the default,
which is supported by other parts of gram-