Matching mismatches?
Comparing gender mismatches in French and German
partitive constructions
T.J.T. Westveer 10000693
Master Thesis Research Master Linguistics University of Amsterdam
April 2016
Supervisor dr. A.P. Sleeman 2nd reader dr. R. Pfau
Abstract
Languages displaying overt gender marking and agreement, such as French and German, can present gender mismatches due to discrepancies between lexical and semantic agreement. A possible environment for such mismatches are partitive constructions (i-ii), where one person is selected out of a larger group:
(i) le / la plus jeune de mes anciens professeurs
the.M.SG/F.SG most young of my.PL former.M.PL teachers.PL
(ii) der / die Jüngste meiner ehemaligen Lehrer
the.M.SG/F.SG youngest of.my.PL former.PL teacher(.M).PL
‘the youngest of my former teachers’
Following Sleeman & Ihsane (to appear) (henceforth SI), who analyze gender mismatches in French partitives, the present study investigates the same phenomenon in German. SI, based on informants’ judgements, show that the acceptability of gender mismatches is limited to superlative partitives and can only occur with specific types of animate nouns. They propose an analysis accounting for these observations.
By means of a grammaticality judgement task, exposed to native speakers of German, the present study investigates whether SI’s analysis could be extended to German too. The results suggest that gender mismatches in German are more acceptable in superlative than in quantified partitives, as in French. However, the acceptability of mismatches with specific types of animate nouns differs. Comparing the results for German to the ones for French shows that SI’s analysis is verified for German too, although some changes are necessary to account for the German facts.
Table of contents
Page:
Table of contents 2
Introduction 4
1. Gender mismatches in French partitives 7
1.1 Gender marking in French 7
1.2 Sleeman & Ihsane’s analysis 9 1.2.1 Different types of animate nouns 10 1.2.2 Analysis of partitive constructions 14 1.2.3 Analysis of gender mismatches 17
2. Comparing German to French 22
2.1 Gender marking in German 22
2.2 Gender mismatches in German partitives 25
2.2.1 Different noun classes? 26
2.2.2 What is the German default gender? 28
3. Grammaticality Judgment Task: issues and methodology 31
3.1 Design of the task 31
3.1.1 Main issues 31
3.1.2 Elements of the task 32
3.2 Execution and analysis 34
3.3 Participants 35
4. Grammaticality Judgment Task: results 37
4.1 Quantified vs. superlative partitives 37 4.2 Noun classes: main picture 38
4.3 Noun classes: fine-tuning 42
5. Discussion 47
5.1 First impressions 47
5.2 Word order and locality 52
5.3 Quantified vs. superlative partitives 54 5.4 Different types of animate nouns 55
5.5 The Agreement Hierarchy 65
Conclusion 67
Acknowledgments 70
References 71
4
Introduction
It is quite commonly known that gender marking in a language often does not directly reflect the way in which gender is present in real life. Gender in language is mainly – although languages do differ in this respect – a grammatical phenomenon, whereas in real life gender – at least for animates – is linked to biological facts. This leads to situations in which the expression of gender in a language has no one-to-one relationship to gender of animates in real life.
Common examples of this are neuter animate nouns in German such as the noun das
Mädchen ‘the girl’. Semantically speaking, this noun is feminine, the real life referent is a
female, but in grammar the noun has neuter gender in German. This distinction between gender in language and gender in real life also affects gender agreement, such as agreement with pronouns. Although the German noun Mädchen ‘girl’ is a neuter noun, one does find sentences like (1a), where the pronoun referring to the neuter noun Mädchen can be realized in its feminine form and not necessarily in its neuter form, as is possible too (1b):
(1) a. Ich sehe das Mädchen. Sie liest ein Buch.
I see the.N.SG girl.N she.F reads a book ‘I see the girl. She reads a book.’
b. Ich sehe das Mädchen. Es liest ein Buch.
I see the.N.SG girl.N it.N reads a book ‘I see the girl. It reads a book.’
The sentence in (1a) is an example of a gender mismatch. Comparing (1a) to (1b) reveals what is usually termed the distinction between semantic and lexical (or grammatical) agreement. In the case of semantic agreement (1a), the pronoun agrees with the semantic gender, that is, the real life gender of the referent, in this case feminine, thus allowing for a gender mismatch if grammatical and biological gender do not match. When there is lexical agreement, as in (1b), the pronoun agrees with the grammatical gender of the noun, here being neuter, thus not causing a gender mismatch.1
This phenomenon becomes especially interesting in combination with partitive constructions, as in (2), where one element is taken out of a larger group:
(2) Einer meiner Studenten hat die Klausur nicht bestanden.
one of.my student.PL has the test not passed
‘One of my students has not passed the test.’
1
See e.g. Audring (2006), Kraaikamp (2012) a.o. for more on the distinction between lexical and semantic gender agreement.
5 When you have a homogeneous group of male students, there is no problem, but this changes when you have a group of students consisting of both males and females. The noun referring to this group is masculine, but what about the word used to refer to the person you take out of this group? In the case of lexical agreement, you would always have masculine agreement, even if the person you take out is a female, but not if there is semantic agreement. In French partitive constructions, as Sleeman & Ihsane (to appear) (henceforth SI) show, next to lexical gender agreement, semantic agreement can occur in some cases, as shown in (3):
(3) a. Le/La plus jeune de mes gentils enfants est malade.
the.M/.F youngest of my kind.M.PL child.M.PL is ill
‘The youngest of my kind children is ill.’
b. Un/*Une de mes gentils enfants est malade.
one.M/.F of my kind.M.PL child.M.PL is ill
‘One of my kind children is ill.’
Semantic gender agreement, possibly leading to a gender mismatch, can occur in sentences like (3a), involving a superlative partitive of the type ‘the most Y of X’, whereas in (3b), a quantified partitive (‘one of X’), only lexical gender agreement is allowed, thus not leading to a gender mismatch.
In fact, as SI show, gender mismatches in partitive constructions in French are not only limited to superlative partitives, but are also limited to certain types of animate nouns. In their paper, they argue that the structure of animate nouns always contains a functional projection Gender Phrase hosting semantic gender, whereas grammatical gender is stored on the noun in the lexicon. However, those animate nouns that are accepted in partitives with a gender mismatch are, as SI argue, (at least partially) unmarked for grammatical gender in the lexicon. Second, SI explain why only superlative, but not quantified partitives allow for gender mismatches and argue that these two constructions have different structures, thus accounting for the observed differences in grammaticality in French.
The question now rises whether this analysis might also be valid for German: do gender mismatches in French and German match? Does German allow for gender mismatches in both superlative and quantified partitives, or only in superlative partitives, as in French? Are gender mismatches possible with all types of animate nouns in German, or can the same restrictions as in French be observed? In other words, are sentences like (4a-b) acceptable in German?
6 (4) a. ?Der/Die/Das Jüngste meiner Kinder ist krank.
the.M/.F/.N youngest of.my child.N.PL is ill ‘The youngest of my children is ill.’
b. ?Einer/Eine/Eines meiner Kinder ist krank.
one.M/.F/.N of.my child.N.PL is ill
‘One of my children is ill.’
One difference between French and German w.r.t. gender agreement is already visible in (4): whereas French only distinguishes two genders, masculine and feminine, German has three different genders, masculine, feminine and neuter.
The goal of this research project is to investigate whether the behavior of partitive constructions with respect to gender mismatches is the same in German as it is in French and to determine whether it is possible to extend SI’s analysis for French to German too. In order to determine whether speakers of German allow gender mismatches in the same circumstances as speakers of French, a grammaticality judgment task will be carried out. Hopefully the results of this task can shed some light on possible differences and similarities between gender mismatches in French and German partitive constructions. This project is well-timed in light of the current discussions on the position of women in the society and the influences of these discussions on language use.
In the first section SI’s analysis of gender mismatches in French partitives will be introduced, focusing on their analysis of superlative and quantified partitives, their distinction of different types of animate nouns and the gender system of French nouns in general. The second section will be devoted to an introduction of the German gender system and a comparison of French and German with regards to gender. In the third section, the grammaticality judgement task for German will be presented. Its results will be discussed and compared to the situation in French in the sections four and five. We hope to find out on the basis of German whether SI’s analysis for French is verified.
7
1. Gender mismatches in French partitives
SI present in their paper an analysis of French partitive constructions, accounting for differences w.r.t. gender mismatches between superlative and quantified partitives, which will be introduced in this section. However, before moving on towards this analysis, we will first take a quick look at some peculiarities of gender marking in French.
1.1 Gender marking in French
French has two different genders, masculine and feminine, both in singular and plural. Multiple elements in a sentence can agree with the gender of the noun they form a pair with, for instance attributive (5a) and predicative (5b) adjectives or determiners (5a-b). Other elements have to agree in gender with the noun they refer to, such as personal pronouns (5c):2
(5) a. une belle fille
a.F.SG beautiful.F.SG girl
‘a beautiful girl
b. la fille est belle
the.F.SG girl is beautiful.F.SG
‘the girl is beautiful’
c. Je connais cette fille. Elle habite là.
I know this.F.SG girl she.F.SG lives there
‘I know this girl. She lives there.’
Nouns are marked for gender in the lexicon. The gender of inanimate nouns is to a large extent arbitrary, that is, there are no clear reasons why one noun is masculine and another noun feminine, although the gender of inanimate nouns can be predicted to a large extent by looking at noun endings (cf. Lyster 2006). With animate nouns, grammatical gender usually matches the biological gender of the referent of the noun. The noun garçon ‘boy’, denoting a male person, is for instance masculine, whereas the noun fille ‘girl’, denoting a female person, is feminine.
However, some animate nouns form an exception to this. The noun sentinelle ‘sentinel’, usually denoting a male person, bears feminine grammatical gender. The noun
léopard ‘leopard’, which can refer to both male and female animals, only bears masculine
gender.
Profession nouns are another type of animate nouns that sometimes constitute a problem with respect to gender assignment and gender agreement. That is, some profession
2
All examples in (5) are instances of lexical gender agreement. See the introduction for the distinction between lexical and semantic gender agreement and some examples.
8 nouns denoting activities that historically where almost always performed by men, as for instance le juge ‘the judge’ or le docteur ‘the doctor’, in French still have only a masculine form, although nowadays there are also women having these professions. For some nouns, feminine forms have been proposed, using different strategies:
(6) a. Addition of the suffix –e to the masculine form: professeure ‘female teacher’, écrivaine ‘female writer’.
b. Masculine form, but use of feminine determiner: une professeur ‘a female teacher’, une docteur ‘a female doctor’.
c. Addition of the noun femme ‘woman’ or femelle ‘female’: une femme
écrivain ‘a woman writer’, un éléphant femelle ‘a female elephant’.
Such female variants of originally masculine profession nouns are quite common in Canada, but they are less frequent in France (cf. Van Compernolle 2007; Arbour & de Nayves 2014). For the present discussion, however, this phenomenon is less relevant, because the main interest lies in gender mismatches in partitive constructions, where the noun denoting the group generally is marked with masculine gender, as will be shown below.
A last point to go into is the marking of gender in the plural. Gender differences in the plural are not always visible on the noun, as the examples in (7) and (8) show:
(7) a. les vieux chanteurs
the.PL old.M.PL singer.M.PL
b. les vieilles chanteuses
the.PL old.F.PL singer.F.PL
‘the old singers’
(8) a. les gentils enfants
the.PL kind.M.PL child.PL
b. les gentilles enfants
the.PL kind.F.PL child.PL
‘the kind children’
Comparing the nouns in (7) and (8) reveals that the noun pair chanteurs/chanteuses in (7) does display gender on the noun, this is not the case for the noun enfants, which is the same for both masculine and feminine plural. Whereas in the singular the determiner can give a clue as to which gender a noun has, in the plural there is just one single determiner les for both masculine and feminine plural. The only conclusive clue to the gender of the plural noun in (8) is visible on the adjective gentil that comes into two different forms for masculine (8a) and feminine (8b) plural.
9 For nouns for which there is a distinction between masculine and feminine gender in the plural, there are cases in which a noun does not refer to a homogeneous group of people, consisting of only men or women, but instead refers to a heterogeneous group of people, consisting of both men and women, Still, in such cases in French the masculine plural form is used that serves as a sort of default form then. The feminine plural form on the other hand can only refer to a group of female persons.
1.2 Sleeman & Ihsane’s analysis
SI start from the observation that partitive constructions in French show different behaviour with regards to the acceptability of gender mismatches with animate nouns. Whereas some partitives, of the type un de mes enfants ‘one of my children’, so-called quantified partitives, do not allow for gender mismatches at all (9a-b), superlative partitives sometimes do allow for gender mismatches, as in (9c), but not in all cases (9d):
(9) a. *une/un de mes anciens collègues
one.F/.M of my.PL former.M.PL colleague.M.PL
‘one of my former colleagues’
b. *une/un de ces personnes
one.F/.M of these person.F.PL
‘one of these persons’
c. la/le plus capable de mes anciens collègues
the.F/.M most capable of my former.M.PL colleague.M.PL
‘the most capable of my former colleagues’
d. *la/le plus capable de ces personnes
the.F/.M most capable of these person.F.PL
‘the most capable of these persons’
As the distinction between (9a) and (9c) shows, gender mismatches with a noun like collègue ‘colleague’ are acceptable in a superlative (9c), but not in a quantified partitive (9a). However, as the unacceptability of both (9b) and (9d) shows, gender mismatches are never acceptable with a noun like personne ‘person’, neither in a quantified (9b), nor in a superlative partitive (7d). This suggests that there is not only a difference between quantified and superlative partitives, but also between different types of animate nouns, as SI show. In the next section we will first go into this distinction of different types of animate nouns.
10
1.2.1 Different types of animate nouns
SI, building forth on Ihsane & Sleeman (2016) (henceforth IhS), distinguish different types of animate nouns in French, based on the link between the lexical and the semantic gender of a noun. They argue that there are four different types of animate nouns, as listed below in (10):
(10)
A Suppletive forms: Noun pairs that have two unrelated morphological forms, one of them masculine, used to refer to males, the other feminine, referring to females (e.g. le garcon ‘the boy’ vs. la fille ‘the girl’ or le père ‘the father’ vs.
la mère ‘the mother’).
B Stem change: Feminine forms are derived from their masculine counterparts by adding a suffix (e.g. un étudiant / une étudiante ‘a student’), alternating the suffix (e.g. le directeur / la directrice ‘the director’), or a change within the stem of the word (e.g. le roi / la reine ‘the king / queen’).
C Fixed form with article change: Only the determiner changes from its masculine to its feminine form (e.g. un / une enfant ‘a child’, un / une collègue ‘a colleague’).
D Forms with a fixed article: Some French nouns always have either masculine or feminine gender, irrespective of whether they refer to a male or a female (e.g.
la personne ‘the person’, la sentinelle ‘the sentinel’, le léopard ‘the leopard’).
According to SI, these four noun types fall into two groups. For the first three types (classes A, B and C), lexical and semantic gender usually match, except in partitive constructions, where mismatches sometimes are possible, as we will see below. For the fourth type (class D), on the other hand, lexical and semantic gender often do not match. Nouns like la personne ‘the person’, though marked with feminine gender, can also refer to a male, despite the feminine gender marking. In this case, a mismatch is present.
With regard to the acceptability of gender mismatches in superlative partitive constructions, SI show that these are only acceptable with nouns of the classes B and C, nouns that have a related masculine and feminine form (by means of stem change or just article change). However, as they mention, when the feminine forms are used, mismatches are not accepted:
(11) a. la/*le plus jeune de mes étudiantes intelligentes
the.F/.M youngest of my student.F.PL intelligent.F.PL
‘the youngest of my intelligent students’
b. la/*le plus jeune de mes anciennes collègues
the.F/.M youngest of my former.F.PL colleague.F.PL
11 The examples in (11) show that only feminine gender agreement can be used when the inner noun is feminine.
However, type B and C nouns in French have a special property. Their masculine form cannot only be used to refer to males, but can also be used as a default form, the sex of the referent not being specified. For instance, you can use the masculine plural to refer to a group of persons, without referring to their sex:
(12) Tous les étudiants ont réussi.
all.M.PL the.PL student.M.PL have passed ‘All of the students passed.’
The noun étudiants, though being masculine plural, can refer to a heterogeneous group of students, both male and female, the masculine form being used as default.
In fact, gender mismatches only can – but do not necessarily have to – occur when the type B or C noun has default masculine gender, as exemplified in (13):
(13) a. la/le plus jeune de mes étudiants intelligents
the.F/.M youngest of my.PL student.M.PL intelligent.M.PL
‘the youngest of my intelligent students’
b. la/le plus jeune de mes anciens collègues
the.F/.M youngest of my.PL former.M.PL colleague.M.PL
‘the youngest of my former colleagues’
As can be inferred from the examples in (13), when the inner noun of the superlative partitive (étudiants (13a), collègues (13b)) bears default masculine gender, it is possible – though not necessary – to have feminine gender agreement on the determiner and adjective of the superlative, leading to a gender mismatch. Notice however that gender mismatches with class B nouns (13a) are not accepted by all speakers.
As SI show, gender mismatches in superlative partitives in French are judged far less acceptable with class B nouns than with class C nouns. To illustrate this point, they give the following examples, marked for acceptability according to their informants (cf. SI: 6):
(14) a. *?La plus jeune de mes chats est malade.
the.F.SG youngest of my.PL cat.M.PL is ill
‘The youngest of my cats is ill.’
b. *?La plus jeune de nos anciens directeurs
the.F.SG youngest of our.PL former.M.PL director.M.PL
a trouvé un nouvel emploi.
has found a.M.SG new.M.SG job.M
12 With regard to the judgements observable in (14), SI mention the fact that some of their informants only allow gender mismatches with class C nouns, but not with class B nouns, as in (14), whereas other informants allow gender mismatches with both class B and class C nouns. Thus gender mismatches with class C nouns seem to be more acceptable than gender mismatches with class B nouns in French.
In order to account for the differences observed between the four classes of animate nouns described above, SI, building forth on IhS, argue that semantic and grammatical gender of animate nouns should be separated and that they are introduced at different levels in the structure of animate nouns. They propose the following base structure for French animate nouns:
(15) DP
D GenP
Gen NP
According to them, grammatical gender is generally stored on the noun in the lexicon and surfaces in the structure at the NP-layer. Grammatical gender is uninterpretable and comes from the lexicon as either masculine or feminine. Semantic gender, on the other hand, constitutes the head of a special functional projection, the Gender Phrase (GenP) in (15), only available in the structure of animate nouns. Semantic gender is interpretable as either male or female.
With animate nouns of the classes A (suppletive forms), B (stem change) and C (article change) the gender feature on Gen receives its gender value form the lexical gender stored on the noun in the lexicon. The semantic gender feature on Gen is interpretable. In this case, lexical and semantic gender match. This is exemplified by the class A noun fille ‘girl’ in (16):3
(16) DP
D GenP
la [u: +f]
Gen NP
[i: +f] fille [u: +f]
3
In the structures ‘i’ means that a feature is interpretable and ‘u’ that it is uninterpretable, ‘m’ indicates masculine, ‘f’ feminine and ‘n’ neuter gender and ‘pl’ plural.
13 The noun fille is marked in the lexicon for feminine gender, visible in (16) as the uninterpretable grammatical gender feature [u: +f] on the noun. This value is transferred to the semantic gender feature on Gen. The gender feature on Gen is interpretable. Lexical gender and the sex of the referent match in this case – a girl being a female person. The uninterpretable gender feature on D, causing feminine gender marking on the determiner la, also gets valued as feminine.
With nouns of class D (fixed article) such as personne ‘person’, on the other hand, the gender feature on Gen is uninterpretable in SI’s analysis, resulting in (17):
(17) DP
D GenP
la [u: +f]
Gen NP
[u: + f] personne [u: +f]
The noun personne is marked in the lexicon as feminine (see the uninterpretable gender feature on NP), but can also refer to male persons. However, the gender feature [+f] is inherited by Gen from the NP. SI propose that the lexical gender does not match with the sex of the referent, because the gender feature on Gen is uninterpretable. The fact that there is a gender value [+f] present makes the entire DP agree with feminine gender.4
However, as the examples in (13) above show, nouns of the classes B and especially C do allow for gender mismatches if they are used as default masculine forms. To account for these special forms, IhS argue that such nouns are polysemous and represented twice in the lexicon: once marked for grammatical gender (either masculine or feminine), not allowing for gender mismatches, and once unmarked for grammatical gender, allowing for gender mismatches, as in (13). If the noun is marked for grammatical gender in the lexicon, as is the noun collègue ‘colleague’ in (18), this gender value is transmitted to the gender feature on Gen and because it is interpretable, semantic and grammatical gender match:
4 SI state that they do deviate from standard Minimalist assumptions w.r.t. Agree (Chomsky 2000, 2001),
concerning feature valuation and interpretability. They use Pesetsky & Torrego’s (2007) conception of Agree, stating that interpretability and valuation of features are two distinct concepts. Secondly, they argue, following Legate (2002), that Agree only works with valuation and not with interpretability, to explain the fact that the uninterpretable grammatical gender feature is not always accompanied by an interpretable counterpart. Still the derivation does not seem to crash in this case.
14
(18) DP
D GenP
le [u: +m]
Gen NP
[i: +m] collègue [u: +m]
If however no grammatical gender value is marked on such a noun in the lexicon, the resulting structure is as in (19): (19) DP D GenP le [u: _f] Gen NP [i: _f] collègue
In (19) (in contrast to (18)) the noun collègue is unmarked for grammatical gender in the lexicon, hence the lack of an uninterpretable grammatical gender feature on the NP. Due to the lack of a gender feature on the NP, the feature on Gen cannot inherit this value either. Still it is an interpretable gender feature, because matching of semantic and grammatical gender is possible, though unvalued here. In principle, the total absence of any value for the gender features would lead the derivation of the DP to crash. However, this is not the case. IhS, following Preminger (2009), argue that this is an instance of Failed Agree. Rather than causing the derivation to crash, Failed Agree results in the spell-out of default gender marking. The French default gender being masculine, this leads to default masculine gender agreement with a noun like collègue when it is not specified for gender in the lexicon.
SI further develop this analysis and argue that French class B and C nouns could also be considered as always unmarked for grammatical gender in the lexicon. Under this approach, these nouns could only receive a gender value through insertion of semantic gender in the Gender Phrase. We will however not follow this alternative approach, but rather keep IhS’s analysis. In the next section, we will turn to SI’s analysis of partitive constructions.
1.2.2 Analysis of partitive constructions
SI adopt an analysis of French partitive constructions developed by Sleeman & Kester (2002) (henceforth SK). In their view, French partitives consist of two nouns, one of them not being overtly realized. They argue against a one-noun analysis for these constructions, as for instance proposed by Kupferman (1999). In his analysis, mainly based on quantified
15 partitives, their structure (20a) resembles the structure of ordinary quantitative constructions (20b):
(20) a. [QP deux [Q de [DP mes étudiants]]]
‘two of my students’ b. [QP deux[Q [NP étudiants]]]
‘two students’
Kupferman (1999) analyses both constructions as QP, the only difference being that in the partitive construction (20a), Q selects a DP (mes étudiants), whereas in the quantitative constructions (20b), Q selects an NP (étudiants).
However, as SK show, this analysis is on the wrong track. Therefore, they argue against a one-noun analysis for French partitives. They show that partitives do not behave the same as quantitative constructions, for instance w.r.t. number agreement:
(21) a. une de mes soeurs
one.F.SG of my sister.F.PL ‘one of my sisters’ b. une soeur one.F.SG sister.F.SG c. *une soeurs one.F.SG sister.F.PL ‘one sister’
As can be taken from the examples in (21), a number mismatch is possible in French partitive constructions (21a), but not in quantitative constructions (21c), where the noun and the quantifier should agree w.r.t. number (21b). Partitive and quantitative constructions thus seem not to be structurally similar. Rather, SK argue that French partitive constructions display a construction similar to the one introduced for French possessive constructions by Hulk & Tellier (2000) and propose a two-noun analysis for partitives. They argue that partitive constructions contain an empty noun e, being the unpronounced copy of the noun of the inner DP.
16 (22) QP Q FP deux Spec F’ F PP Spec P’ e P DP ses amis
In the deep structure in (22), the empty noun e is merged in [Spec, PP] and moves to [Spec, FP] in the surface structure, causing the spell-out of the preposition de ‘of’ on F, as shown in (23): (23) QP Q FP deux Spec F’ ei F PP dej Spec P’ ti P DP tj ses amis
SI propose a similar structure for superlative partitives in French, also involving a two-noun analysis with an empty noun e in the outer DP as an unpronounced copy of the noun of the inner DP. This gives the following surface structure, which only differs with respect to the presence of an outer DP, containing a Degree Phrase to locate the superlative marker and a Functional Projection containing the adjective, instead of a Quantifier Phrase. This structure is represented in (24):
17 (24) DP D DegP le Deg FP plus AP F’ intelligent F FP Spec F’ ei F PP dej Spec P’ ti P DP tj ses amis
Comparing the structure in (23) and (24) reveals that quantified and superlative partitives in French in principle display the same structure.
This analysis, containing an empty noun e in the outer DP (superlative) or QP (quantified) as a copy of the noun of the inner DP, can partially account for the gender agreement observed with French partitive constructions. The quantifier or adjective agrees with the empty noun e. Since this empty noun is a copy of the noun of the inner DP – its gender features being copied too – this explains why there is usually gender agreement between the adjective or quantifier and the noun of the inner DP:
(25) La / *Le plus jeune de ces personnes.
the.F.SG the.M.SG most young of these person.F.PL
‘The youngest of these persons.’
[DP [D la] [DegP [Deg plus] [FP [AP jeune] F [FP ei [F dej] [PP ti [P tj] [DP ses amis]]]]]]
The outer DP la plus jeune in (25) receives its gender value from the noun personne in the inner DP. This noun bearing feminine gender, the outer DP, agreeing with the copy e, also gets feminine gender.
1.2.3 Analysis of gender mismatches
As has been shown above, SI assume one structure for both quantified and superlative partitives and, following SK, adopt a two-noun analysis for both types of partitives in French. In this analysis an empty noun e in the outer DP/QP is present as the copy of the noun of the
18 inner DP, thus accounting for cases in which there are no gender mismatches between the inner and the outer DP., However, as we observed in the examples in (9) (repeated here for convenience in (26)), superlative partitives in some cases seem to allow gender mismatches (26c), whereas quantified partitives do not (26a-b):
(26) a. *une/un de mes anciens collègues
one.F/.M of my former.M.PL colleague.M.PL
‘one of my former colleagues’ b. *un/une de ces personnes
one.M/.F of these person.F.PL
‘one of these persons’
c. la/le plus capable de mes anciens collègues
the.F/.M most capable of my.PL former.M.PL colleague.M.PL
‘the most capable of my former colleagues’
d. *le/la plus capable de ces personnes
the.M/.F most capable of these person.F.PL
‘the most capable of these persons’
As (26a-b) show, gender mismatches are not accepted in quantified partitives, but do seem possible to some extent in superlative partitives (26c), though not always (26d). As has been argued above, the acceptability of gender mismatches in superlative partitives depends on the type of animate noun involved. It has been shown that animate nouns of the classes B (stem change) and C (article change) do allow for gender mismatches when used in the default masculine form. With nouns of the classes A (suppletive forms) and D (fixed article) – as well as with nouns of the classes B and C when specified for gender – gender mismatches in superlative partitives are not acceptable.
How do SI account for the asymmetries not only between quantified and superlative partitives, but also between the different noun classes and the related (un-)acceptability of gender mismatches in superlative partitives? They argue that the difference between quantified and superlative partitives in French is caused by a difference in structure between those two types of partitives. Recall that SI, following IhS, propose that the structure of animate nouns in French contains a Gender Phrase (cf. the structure in (15)) that encodes semantic gender. This Gender Phrase thus should also be present in the inner DP of French partitives. As SI claim, the difference between quantified and superlative partitives boils down to the question whether the empty noun e is also headed by a Gender Phrase or not. They argue that this is only the case for superlative partitives. This accounts for the fact that in quantified partitives, there should always be gender agreement between the gender of the noun in the inner DP and the quantifier, because the gender value of this noun remains present
19 on the copy of the noun, the empty noun e, the element the quantifier agrees with. This results in a structure as in (23) for quantified partitives.
In superlative partitives, on the other hand, the empty noun e is headed by a Gender Phrase, thus allowing for a second position to encode semantic gender next to the Gender Phrase of the inner DP. If the noun in the inner DP does not have a valued gender feature, which is possible with nouns of the classes B and C (because they are polysemous) but not A and D, resulting in Failed Agree (cf. Preminger 2009), the inner DP is spelled-out with default masculine. If Failed Agree has taken place, the empty noun e in the outer DP still can receive a gender specification in its own Gender Phrase. The adjective then agrees with the gender of the outer DP, possibly resulting in a gender mismatch if the Gender Phrase of the outer DP encodes feminine gender, as in the structure in (27):
(27) DP D DegP [u: +f] la Deg FP plus AP F’ gentille [u: +f] F GenP Gen FP [i: +f] NP F’ ei F PP dej Spec P’ ti P DP tj D GenP mes [u: _f] Gen NP [i: _f] collègues
The noun collègues ‘colleagues’ in the inner DP in (27) is a class C noun, unmarked for gender in the lexicon. Therefore the NP does not bear a grammatical gender feature. There is no semantic gender encoded in GenP, thus resulting in an unvalued interpretable gender feature. This leads to Failed Agree and spell-out of default masculine gender in the inner DP.
20 The copy of the noun collègues, the empty noun e, which moves to the outer DP, is not specified for gender either. However, since the outer DP in a superlative partitive also contains a Gender Phrase, there is a second slot for gender specification. In (27) semantic gender specification as [+f] in the Gender Phrase of the outer DP takes place, resulting in a valued interpretable gender feature on the DP, which is marked with feminine gender, resulting in feminine gender agreement on the determiner la and the adjective gentille ‘sweet’. This causes a gender mismatch.
Such a mismatch is only possible if the inner DP does not have a gender value on GenP. If it already has a gender value on GenP, this gender value is transmitted to the outer DP via the copy of the noun, thus not allowing for a gender mismatch. This also explains why gender mismatches are only possible with class B and class C (and not with classes A and D) nouns, because these are the only noun classes that can be unmarked for gender in the lexicon.
A last point SI make concerns the place of quantified and superlative partitives on the Agreement Hierarchy (cf. Corbett 1979). The Agreement Hierarchy indicates how likely it is to have either semantic or lexical gender agreement. The standard Agreement Hierarchy of Corbett (1979) is given in (28):
(28) attributive – predicate – relative pronoun – personal pronoun
The further to the left, the likelier it is to have lexical gender agreement, the more to the right, the likelier it is to have semantic gender agreement. SI extend Corbett’s Agreement Hierarchy by adding both quantified and superlative partitives to it. The resulting hierarchy is shown in (29):
(29) attributive – predicate – quantified partitive – superlative partitive – relative pronoun – personal pronoun
As can be taken from (29), with quantified partitives, situated more to the left of the hierarchy, lexical gender agreement is more likely to occur, whereas with superlative partitives, located more to the right, semantic gender agreement is more likely.
According to SI, the difference in acceptability of gender mismatches between quantified and superlative partitives thus can be explained because quantified partitives have a different structure than superlative partitives. The latter contains an additional Gender Phrase in the outer DP, whereas the former does not. When the noun of the inner DP is unmarked for gender, which is possible with class B and class C nouns, resulting in default masculine
21 gender on the inner DP, the outer DP may receive a gender specification, possibly leading to a gender mismatch. This is not possible in quantified partitives, because they do not have a Gender Phrase in the outer DP. The difference in acceptability of semantic gender agreement between the two types of partitives is also reflected in their respective positions on the Agreement Hierarchy.
22
2. Comparing German to French
In this section first some basic properties of the German gender system will be introduced and compared to French, followed by a discussion of some preliminary issues that raise when comparing German and French w.r.t. their gender system and gender marking.
2.1 Gender marking in German
German, contrary to French, distinguishes three instead of two different genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Like in French, multiple elements modifying or referring to a noun have to agree in gender with this noun. This is for instance the case with determiners (30-32) and sometimes with attributive adjectives (compare in this respect (30-32)):5
(30) a. der große Mann
the.M.SG big man
‘the big man’
b. ein großer Mann
a.M.SG big.M.SG man
‘a big man’
c. großer Mann
big.M.SG man ‘big man’
(31) a. die große Frau
the.F.SG big woman
‘the big woman’
b. eine große Frau
a.F.SG big.F.SG woman
c. große Frau
big.F.SG woman ‘big woman’
(32) a. das große Kind
the.N.SG big child ‘the big child’
b. ein großes Kind
a.N.SG big.N.SG child ‘a big child’
c. großes Kind
big.N.SG child ‘big child’
5
All examples are in nominative case. Adjectives and determiners in German are inflected for case too. This case marking always appears with attributive adjectives, but not with predicative ones. Case and gender inflection are combined within one ending on the adjective. Determiners have paradigms to cover all four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative), all three genders distinguished in the singular (masculine, feminine, neuter) and a separate plural form (see below).
23 As can be taken from the examples in (30-32), attributive adjectives in German only show visible agreement with the noun they modify when there is either an indefinite determiner present (b) or when there is no determiner at all (c), whereas with a definite determiner (a) gender agreement is not visible.
Secondly, unlike in French, predicative adjectives in German never show gender agreement:
(33) a. Der Mann ist klug.
the.M.SG man is smart ‘The man is smart.’
b. Die Frau ist klug.
the.F.SG woman is smart
‘The woman is smart.’
c. Das Kind ist klug.
the.N.SG child is smart
‘The child is smart.’
The predicative adjective klug in (33) does not show any gender agreement, despite the fact that the respective nouns it modifies (33a-c) bear different genders.
Finally, when it comes to agreement with pronouns, in German agreement with animate nouns bearing neuter gender can lead either to lexical (34a) or to semantic gender agreement (34b-c). In the latter case, both masculine (34b) and feminine (34c) pronouns are possible, depending on the biological gender of the referent:
(34) Das Kind sieht schlecht.
the.N.SG child.N.SG sees badly
a. Es trägt eine Brille.
it.N.SG wears DET.F.SG glasses
b. Er trägt eine Brille.
he.M.SG wears DET.F.SG glasses
c. Sie trägt eine Brille.
she.F.SG wears DET.F.SG glasses ‘The child sees badly. It/He/She wears glasses.’
Although the noun Kind bears neuter gender, the pronoun referring to this noun in principle can be realized in all three genders in German. In French, this is different because of the absence of neuter gender.
Perhaps the presence of neuter gender, leading to cases as in (34), where semantic gender agreement is highly acceptable, especially when the sex of the referent of the noun is
24 known to the speakers, already constitutes one reason for the greater acceptability of semantic gender agreement in German, as compared to French.
Another difference between French and German is the presence of gender distinctions in the plural. Whereas in French the difference between masculine and feminine is still visible in the plural form of for instance adjectives (35), this is not the case in German (36):
(35) a. les pères intelligents
the.PL father.PL intelligent.M.PL
‘the intelligent fathers’
b. les mères intelligentes
the.PL mother.PL intelligent.F.PL
‘the intelligent mothers’
(36) a. die klugen Väter
the.PL smart.PL father.PL
‘the smart fathers’
b. die klugen Mütter
the.PL smart.PL mother.PL
‘the smart mothers’
As can be taken from the examples in (35) and (36), in French the adjective is sensitive to gender in the plural, hence intelligentes for feminine vs. intelligents for masculine. In German, on the contrary, the adjective displays only one single form in the plural, klugen, irrespective of modifying a masculine (36a) or a feminine (36b) noun.
Corbett (1991) visualizes this difference between French and German in the following models (cf. Corbett 1991: 155):
(37) French:
masculine masculine plural feminine feminine plural (38) German:
masculine
feminine plural
neuter
These models also show that whereas in French there is a gender distinction in the plural, at least visible on adjectives, this distinction is not present in German.
German nouns, like their French counterparts, are marked for gender in the lexicon and the gender of animate nouns usually follows the sex of their referents, although there exist, as in French, some exceptions to this (see below). With inanimate nouns, gender in
25 German is arbitrary, but noun endings do form an important clue w.r.t. determining a noun’s gender.
An important difference between French and German lies in the possibility of deriving a female denoting noun from its male denoting counterpart. In German, there is one important strategy to do this, the addition of the suffix –in, which can be added to almost all animate nouns that do not already have both a male and a female form. Some examples are given in (39):
(39) a. der Lehrer - die Lehrerin ‘the teacher’
b. der Student - die Studentin ‘the student‘
c. der Nachbar - die Nachbarin ‘the neighbour’
d. der Tiger - die Tigerin ‘the tiger’
e. der Hund - die Hündin ‘the dog’
Although such strategies do exist in French, as has been mentioned in section 1.1, they are far less common than in German.
Summarizing, three differences between French and German w.r.t. gender and gender agreement have come up. First, German has three different genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), whereas French only distinguishes two (masculine and feminine). The presence of neuter gender, even marked on some animate nouns, might have an influence on the acceptability of gender mismatches. Second, gender distinctions are not marked through gender agreement in the plural in German, whereas this is the case in French, gender agreement for instance being visible on the adjective. Third, deriving a female denoting noun from its male denoting counterpart (by means of the suffix –in) is much more frequent in German than it is in French. In the next section we will turn to gender mismatches in German and discuss whether some of the differences introduced above may play a role in the acceptability of such gender mismatches.
2.2 Gender mismatches in German partitives
Comparing the facts about the German system of gender marking to the facts about French as presented by SI gives rise to the following questions: Can we distinguish the same four noun classes in German as in French? What is the German default gender? In French, masculine gender can function as default gender, but how is this in German? Is it also masculine gender that functions as default, or rather neuter gender? And what about the acceptability of gender mismatches with different types of partitives? In this section we will mainly deal with the first
26 two issues, noun classes and default gender, leaving the acceptability of mismatches in partitives for the next section.
2.2.1 Different noun classes?
As has been shown in section 1.2.1, SI, following IhS, distinguish four classes of animate nouns based on their properties w.r.t. gender marking and the link between lexical and semantic gender, as visualized in (10). For convenience, this is repeated in (40):
(40)
A Suppletive forms: Noun pairs that have two unrelated morphological forms, one of them masculine, used to refer to males, the other feminine, referring to females (e.g. le garçon ‘the boy’ vs. la fille ‘the girl’ or le père ‘the father’ vs.
la mère ‘the mother’).
B Stem change: Feminine forms are derived from their masculine counterparts by adding a suffix (e.g. un étudiant / une étudiante ‘a student’), alternating the suffix (e.g. le directeur / la directrice ‘the director’), or a change within the stem of the word (e.g. le roi / la reine ‘the king / queen’).
C Fixed forms with article change: Only the determiner changes from its masculine to its feminine form (e.g. un / une enfant ‘a child’, un / une collègue ‘a colleague’).
D Forms with a fixed article: Some French nouns always have either masculine or feminine gender, irrespective of whether they refer to a male or a female (e.g.
la personne ‘the person’, la sentinelle ‘the sentinel’, le léopard ‘the leopard’).
SI show that these four noun classes behave differently w.r.t. the acceptability of gender mismatches in partitives constructions. Whereas nouns of the classes A and D do not allow for gender mismatches, nouns of class C – and to a smaller extent also nouns of class B – sometimes allow for gender mismatches, that is, when they appear in superlative partitives, but not when they appear in quantified partitives.
But what about German? Is it possible to distinguish these same four classes of animate nouns in German? Consider the examples below in (41):
(41)
A Suppletive forms: der Bruder ‘the brother’ vs. die Schwester ‘the sister’, der
Mann ‘the man’ vs. die Frau ‘the woman’.
B Stem change: der Direktor ‘the male director’ vs. die Direktorin ‘the female director’, der Student ‘the male student’ vs. die Studentin ‘the female student’. C Fixed form with article change: der / die Studierende ‘the student’, der / die
Tote ‘the dead person’.
D Forms with a fixed article: der Star ‘the star’, der Mensch ‘the human’, die
Person ‘the person’, die Geisel ‘the hostage’, das Opfer ‘the victim’, das Kind
27 It thus seems to be possible to distinguish the same four types of animate nouns in German as in French. However, some differences should be mentioned. First, the group of class B nouns in German is bound to be much larger than in French, due to the fact that many animate nouns, including – to my knowledge – almost all profession nouns, can take the suffix -in to create the feminine form out of the masculine form. In French, in contrast, this procedure is far less productive, at least in France
In German, on the other hand, the use of the feminine form of a profession noun is commonly accepted. There even exist special regulations in order to avoid what has been termed ‘sexist’ language use, the use of only a masculine form. This however can give rise to problematic situations when referring to a heterogeneous group of people, consisting of both men and women. Which form should be used in such cases? Different attempts have been taken to solve this, as shown for instance by Kastovsky & Dalton-Puffer (2002). They compare German and English w.r.t. strategies used to avoid ‘sexist’ language use and argue that German and English differ in this respect. Whereas English uses the strategy of neutralization, profession nouns generally being perceived as ‘neuter’, that is, not bearing any gender distinction at all, in German the tendency goes towards feminization through the use of splitting, the marking of both masculine and feminine on a noun, as shown in (42):
(42) a. die StudentInnen6
b. die Studenten/Studentinnen
c. die Student(inn)en
d. die Student/-innen
‘the students’
Secondly, class C mainly seems to consist of substantivized adjectives in German. Although not showing any formal difference when combined with either the masculine (der) (43a) or feminine (die) (43b) definite determiner (or even the neuter definite determiner das), these forms do display a clear difference in gender marking when combined with an indefinite determiner, as in (44):7
6 The German suffix –In(nen) (with capital I) can be added to a masculine animate noun, deriving forms like
StudentInnen ‘students’, LehrerInnen ‘teachers’. These forms refer to a heterogeneous group of people,
consisting of both men and women. This suffix however can only be used in written language and nowadays it is not used that frequently any more (cf. Scott 2006). For instance, instead of writing StudentInnen, it is now more common to use Studierenden to refer to a group of both male and female students. It should be noted, however, that such forms are not available for all animate nouns.
7 All examples in (43-45) are in nominative case. If they were in genitive, dative or accusative case, the ending
would be different, but there would still be a clear difference between forms combined with either the masculine or the feminine indefinite determiner.
28 (43) a. der Studierende the.M.SG student b. die Studierende the.F.SG student ‘the student’ (44) a. ein Studierender a.M.SG student.M.SG b. eine Studierende a.F.SG student.F.SG ‘a student’
As the contrast between (43) and (44) shows, German class C nouns can sometimes display gender marking, if combined with an indefinite determiner. However, used with a definite determiner, there is no visible difference between masculine and feminine, not even if the noun is modified by an adjective, because German adjectives, as mentioned above, only have one plural form. The plural noun Studierenden, as well as the accompanying adjective
schönen and the determiner die in (45) do not display any gender marking. Hence (45) is
ambiguous and can refer to both men and women:
(45) die schönen Studierenden
the.PL beautiful.PL student.PL
‘the beautiful students’
Nevertheless, the distinction of four types of animate nouns in German, following the pattern developed by SI for French, seems to hold.
2.2.2 What is the German default gender?
As has been discussed in section 1, masculine gender can function as the unmarked gender form in French. This becomes especially clear with plural nouns of class C (article change) in French when they refer to a heterogeneous group of people. The plural noun collègues ‘colleagues’ can for instance refer to a group of both male and female co-workers. In this case, masculine gender is used as a default form, because there is no clear gender specification, the noun referring to both men and women. SI give the following structure for such nouns in French:
29 (46) DP D GenP le [u: _f] Gen NP [i: _f] collègue
As SI argue, these nouns are polysemous and represented twice in the lexicon, once specified and once not specified for grammatical gender. In the latter case Failed Agree takes place, due to the lack of any gender values in the DP, resulting in the spell-out of default masculine gender.
But how is this in German? What is the German default gender? Due to the fact that German has three different genders, including neuter, it could be tempting to attribute the status of default gender to neuter gender, since neuter is neither feminine nor masculine, but is still used for some animate nouns (e.g. das Kind ‘the child’). However, as will be shown, it is not neuter, but rather masculine gender that serves as default in German, just like in French.
German animate nouns of class B (stem change), having two related forms for masculine and feminine, mainly created by adding the suffix -in to the masculine form, also display two distinct plural forms, as shown in (47):
(47) der LehrerM.SG die LehrerM.PL die LehrerinF.SG die LehrerinnenF.PL
The masculine noun der Lehrer ‘teacher’ can be made feminine by adding the suffix -in, thus deriving die Lehrerin. The standard plural form of the masculine noun is die Lehrer, referring to a group of exclusively male teachers. The feminine form die Lehrerin also has its own plural form die Lehrerinnen, denoting a group of exclusively female teachers. However, the standard (masculine) plural form die Lehrer can also be used to refer to a heterogeneous group of teachers, consisting of both men and women, or to a group of teachers whose sex is not specified at all:
(48) der LehrerM.SG die LehrerPL die LehrerinF.SG
In this case, the standard masculine plural form serves as the default form (cf. Steinmetz 2006).
30 Like in French, the masculine noun can also serve as default form in the singular in German. This is exemplified in (49):
(49) Ein Lehrer soll immer gerecht sein.
a.M.SG teacher should always just be.INF
‘A teacher should always be just.’
When having a generic interpretation, like in (49), the masculine singular noun ein Lehrer can refer to both male and female teachers. In this case the masculine thus also serves as default form.
To conclude, we have seen that the German gender system partially differs from the French system. Nonetheless is has turned out that SI’s distinction of four different classes of animate nouns can be applied to German animate nouns too, although the German class B is much larger than its French equivalent, whereas class C is smaller in German than in French. Besides, we have observed that in German it is also masculine gender that can serve as default gender for animate nouns when the sex of the referent is unknown, like in French.
31
3. Grammaticality Judgment Task: issues and methodology
As we have seen in the previous section, French and German seem to show both similarities and differences when comparing their systems of gender marking on animate nouns and the possibilities for gender mismatches in general. By means of a grammaticality judgement task, we hope to shed some light on the acceptance of gender mismatches in partitive constructions by native speakers of German. In this section, the design and execution of the grammaticality judgement task will be presented.
3.1 Design of the task
In this section the design of the grammaticality judgement task for German will be introduced. First we will return to SI’s analysis of gender mismatches in French partitive constructions and address the points that need to be clarified for German by means of this task. The entire grammaticality judgement task as exposed to the participants is included in the appendix.
3.1.1 Main issues
SI (see section 1) have shown that speakers of French only accept gender mismatches in superlative, but not in quantified partitives. SI account for this difference by postulating the presence of a Gender Phrase, encoding semantic gender. Superlative partitives contain two of these Gender Phrases in their structure, whereas quantified partitives only have one.
Besides, SI have also shown that only animate nouns belonging to a specific group of nouns, the class C nouns (article change) (and to a lesser extent also class B nouns (stem change)), do allow for gender mismatches. They account for this difference by assuming that class C nouns, unlike nouns of the other three noun classes they distinguish, are not always specified for gender in the lexicon, in this case thus possibly giving rise to gender mismatches.
As has been shown in section 2, it is possible to distinguish the same four classes of animate nouns in German as SI (following IhS) do for French, although the distribution of the nouns among these noun classes seems to be different, due to the existence of the suffix -in in German that allows to derive feminine counterparts of many male denoting nouns.
Another issue that has been raised considers default gender. In French, masculine gender can be used as default gender in cases where the gender of a noun’s referent is unknown or irrelevant. But what about German? As has been mentioned, it has turned out that the German default gender is also masculine gender. Besides, whereas in French there often is
32 a visible distinction between masculine and feminine gender in the plural on adjectives that modify the noun, this is not the case in German, which only has one agreement pattern for the plural, unlike French, which has distinct patterns for both masculine and feminine plural.
A last fact to point to is the presence of neuter gender in German, also used with some animate nouns, such as das Kind ‘the child’, next to masculine and feminine gender. The presence of neuter gender may also influence the acceptability of semantic gender agreement by speakers of German, since it is possible in German to refer to a neuter animate noun by using a personal pronoun in either the masculine or the feminine form.
The main questions, which we hope to (partially) answer by means of our grammaticality judgement task, are the following: (i) Is there a difference in the acceptability of gender mismatches between quantified and superlative partitives in German? (ii) Are there differences between the four classes of animate nouns in German, distinguished along the lines of SI for French? (iii) Does the presence of neuter gender enhance the use of semantic gender agreement? We will turn back to these questions in the following sections.
3.1.2 Elements of the task
In order to shed some light on the acceptability of gender mismatches in partitive constructions by speakers of German, a grammaticality judgement task has been developed and presented to a group of native speakers of German. The task consists of 60 sentences, which had to be marked with a grade between 1 and 4, according to their acceptability, grade 1 marking a sentence that is fully acceptable and grade 4 a sentence that is completely unacceptable.8
Of these 60 sentences, 30 sentences contained a quantified partitive, whereas the other half consisted of superlative partitives. The same words have been used at least twice in both constructions and for each construction both in a sentence with and in a sentence without a gender mismatch (see below). The scheme in (50) gives an overview of the nouns used in the task and their repartition among the noun classes as distinguished by SI:
(50)
Class B nouns: Hund (M) ‘dog’, Arzt (M) ‘doctor’, Dozent (M) ‘teacher’ /
(stem change) Dozentin (F) ‘female teacher’, Schüler (M) ‘pupil’, Student (M)
‘student’ / Studentin (F) ‘female student’, Katze (F) ‘cat’
Class C nouns: Tote (M/F) ‘dead person’, Studierende (M/F) ‘student’
(article change)
33 Class D nouns: Mensch (M) ‘human’, Star (M) ‘celebrity’, Koryphäe (F)
(fixed article) ‘expert’, Waise (F) ‘orphan’, Kind (N) ‘child’, Opfer (N) ‘victim’
As can be taken from the list in (50), no class A nouns (suppletive forms) have been used in the task, because it is expected that they do not give rise to gender mismatches at all, considering nouns such as Bruder ‘brother’ or Schwester ‘sister’ that can only refer to male or female persons respectively. Therefore, class A nouns have not been included in the task, which allowed us to test more different nouns of the other three noun classes.
Next, for some class B nouns their feminine counterparts (the forms with the suffix –
in) have been included, in order to compare speakers’ judgments of such nouns, referring to a
homogeneous group of only females, to default (masculine) plural nouns, referring to a group of people that is unspecified for gender as a whole. The noun Katze ‘cat’ represents a special case, as will be shown in section 4, because native speakers of German seem to judge it differently from the other class B nouns. Katze is the general term used to refer to cats, both male and female, next to the more specific Kater referring to a male cat, although Katze can also be used to refer specifically to a female cat.9 In this light, it is expected that a gender mismatch should be possible with this noun, but as will be shown in the next section, it actually is not.
W.r.t. class C nouns, only a very small number of nouns has been introduced in the task, because we expect them not to give rise to gender mismatches, due to the fact that they can refer to both male and female persons (and can be marked with both feminine and masculine gender).
Out of class D, nouns of all three genders have been used, both with and without mismatches. The neuter nouns occur three times in the task, once with neuter agreement (as instance of grammatical agreement), once with masculine and once with feminine agreement (the last two being examples of semantic agreement).
All nouns appear in their plural forms. This is the case because the partitive constructions follow a particular structure of the following type: X is part of a larger group Y. The Y-element, denoting the entire group, is a noun of the list in (50). The X-element is either the quantifier in a quantified partitive or the superlative in a superlative partitive and denotes the person taken out of this group. The Y-element appears in the plural, because it refers to
9 In French, the generic form is masculine, le chat, but there is a feminine form, la chatte, and a specific
masculine form, le matou, too. In German, the generic noun is feminine, die Katze, and there only exists an additional specific masculine form, der Kater (cf. Duden 2011).
