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  • Chapter 12 - Grammatical Gender in Modern Germanic Languages

  • from Part II - Morphology and Agreement Systems
  • Edited by Michael T. Putnam, Pennsylvania State University, B. Richard Page, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics
    Published online:
    31 March 2020
    Print publication:
    16 April 2020, pp 259-281

  • Summary

    Grammatical gender in modern Germanic languages displays strong variation. Some languages retain three adnominal genders (e.g., German, Icelandic), others reduced the system to two genders, usually by a merger of masculine and feminine gender (e.g., Dutch, Swedish). In English and Afrikaans, adnominal gender is completely lost. Pronominal gender, on the other hand, does not always reflect adnominal gender, and is retained in at least three genders in all Germanic languages. The chapter starts from the presentation of lexical gender systems in Germanic languages and dialects, reflecting the relevant assignment criteria. It then turns to pronominal gender systems, showing that mismatches, specifically between adnominal and pronominal genders, can result in a re-organization of gender systems. Since many Germanic languages retain a second class of nouns next to gender, namely declension classes, the interrelation between gender and inflection classes is subject of a final section before conclusions are drawn.