Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Síða 115

KYN OG MÁLSAMBAND - DØMI í FØROYSKUM-DONSKUM
OG KATALANSKUM-SPONSKUM
113
mar, where neuter is also the default, as the
change of allir -m. pl. ‘all’ to øll - n.pl.
As for the language-contact study of
Catalan, basic words in the lexicon (i.e.,
front, dent and olor) do not represent a
problem for Catalan speakers, although
these words have a differing gender in
Spanish. When confusion in gender usage
arises, it can be mainly attributed to two dif-
ferent factors along the Spanish influence:
semantic rules related to polysemy, as in the
cases of llum,full and senyal; and the fact
that the word is more often leamt in a
Spanish-related context (e.g, sida, análisi).
The two studies in the present paper are
consistent with Costa et al. (2003)’s fín-
dings, that is: the speaker uses the particular
gender system of the language he/she
speaks when in that language mode. The
errors found in structurally asymmetric
gender systems such as Faroese and Danish
are few, even in cognates, and when chan-
ges are found in borrowings as those pre-
sented above, they are motivated by the
selected language (Faroese). The produc-
tion of Catalan basic lexical items without
íncurring in gender confusion might pro-
vide further evidence for the autonomy of
the gender systems in bilinguals of struc-
turally similar languages.
Acknowledgements
This study has bccn carricd out as part of the research
Projects "K8: Variance in multilingualism on the Faroe
blands" and "FI6: Phonoprosodic development of
Catalan in its current bilingual context" at the
Collaborative Research Center for Multilingualism. Wc
a,e indebted to the Center and its sponsors, the
^cutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Science
''oundation) and the University of Hamburg for thcir
support. For the Catalan part of the study, we want to
express our most sincere gratitude to M. Rosa Lloret,
who gave us inspiring suggestions during her stay at
our Center. We would also like to thank Laura Batalla,
Laia Puig and Anna Schreibweis for their essential help
with the transcription of the data. Finally, our most
sincere gratitude to the schools, children and parents
who kindly accepted to participate in the study, which
without their collaboration would not have been
possible.
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