One Word, Two Genders

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Figures

Chapter 1

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

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Tables

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

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Preface

At the time I was prompted to investigate the phenomenon of ‘double gender’ in Dutch – more than five years ago for my PhD project – I did not imagine the variety of issues that would arise upon analysing the subject deeply. Though gender is commonly described as a morphosyntactic category (like number and case) and as a nominal classification system (like noun classes and classifiers), it is non-prototypical in so far as – apart from its agreement-creating effects – it seems to lack a defining function. This state of affairs, however, suggests that gender may have a more subtle function, which may become visible through the emergence of mismatches like those displayed by Dutch double gender nouns (DGNs), i.e. de/het-words. Indeed, when I became intrigued with this subject I started from the assumption that gender variation may also be related to semantic or pragmatic functions, but this hypothesis necessarily needed to be proved through careful analysis of literature and linguistic data.

To better understand the way gender flexibility in Dutch could be motivated by reasons other than dialect or chance, I spent a lot of time getting familiar with nominal classification and agreement in typological perspective. In particular, I searched for cross-linguistic evidence that real-world entities are basically categorized according to common features and that, in language usage, different perceptions of a certain entity may be responsible for different choices on the part of the speaker. Indeed, in a cross-linguistic perspective there are lots of cases which demonstrate not only that speakers frequently exploit the categorizing systems available to them, but that they do so according to recurring cognitive patterns.

To analyse the phenomenon of double gender in Dutch – as a non-native speaker – I had to learn the language and the way its gender system developed over time and works today. Crucially, when I began focusing on de/het-words I had to contend with a big limit, namely the lack of a uniform and systematic classification of such words. Besides, to assess whether de/het-nouns could be considered as a matter of conceptual agreement I had ← xvii | xviii → to carry out repeated investigations on corpus and web data whose results prompted me to extend my analysis to nouns with stable gender, i.e. either neuter het-nouns or common gender de-nouns, which turned out to be a shrewd choice.

This book relies on a huge amount of data (original lexicological and corpus-based databases) which due to space limitations could not be included here. Those interested in the data can contact me at semplicini@yahoo.it.

Many people have contributed, directly and indirectly, to the making of this book. My sincere thanks are due in the first instance to my friends and colleagues Prof. Gunther De Vogelaer and Prof. Letizia Vezzosi. I wish to record here my gratitude to them, since without their precious linguistic suggestions and their special way of encouraging and pushing me, when necessary, I don’t think this research would ever have been published.

I would also like to thank Prof. Jacques Van Keymeulen, for his constant support during the time I spent in Belgium, Prof. Silvia Luraghi for her fresh insights into my research, and Prof. Vincenzo Lo Cascio for helping me find a way to analyse the Dutch lexicon.

I am grateful to all the linguists who discussed with me the issue of gender during the conferences I attended in the past years, especially Jenny Audring, Elma Blom, Jan Klom, Margot Kraaikamp and Freek van de Velde, who gave me precious advice during the Colloquium Genus in beweging (University of Muenster, January 2014).

I am also deeply indebted to the anonymous reviewers of Semplicini (2012), Semplicini (2013) and Semplicini (forthcoming): these papers were the basis for Chapter 6, some sections of Chapter 5 and Chapters 1 and 2, respectively.

Last but not least, special thanks go to all the friends who took care of me with love and patience and to Luca who helped me understand that every day is unique and that life always gives you another chance.

February 2016

Chiara Semplicini

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Note on the text

Word-by-word alignment is provided for short examples.

For longer extracts only relevant (gender-marking) glosses are added.

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Abbreviations

Other abbreviations