Grammatical gender in Norwegian: Language acquisition and language change

This is the accepted manuscript version. Published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1470542714000245 Based on data from two experimental studies, this paper investigates the production of gender in a Norwegian dialect (Tromsø) by several groups of child and adult speakers. The find...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Germanic Linguistics
Main Authors: Rodina, Yulia, Westergaard, Marit
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press 2015
Subjects:
VDP::Humaniora: 000::Språkvitenskapelige fag: 010::Nordiske språk: 018
VDP::Humanities: 000::Linguistics: 010::Nordic languages: 018
Tromsø
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10037/8531
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1470542714000245
Description
Summary:This is the accepted manuscript version. Published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1470542714000245 Based on data from two experimental studies, this paper investigates the production of gender in a Norwegian dialect (Tromsø) by several groups of child and adult speakers. The findings show that gender is late acquired (around age 7) and, furthermore, that there are considerable differences between the groups, indicating an ongoing historical change that involves the loss of feminine gender agreement. However, the feminine declensional endings, such as the suffixal definite article, are retained. While there are sociolinguistic factors causing this change, we argue that the nature of the change can be explained by the process of language acquisition.

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