Lecture | Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
Comparing apples and oranges: What grinding and portioning can tell us about gender and atomicity
- Date
- Wednesday 26 April 2023
- Time
- Series
- Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.30
Abstract
It is not uncontroversial whether or to what extent gender and classification are connected (Corbett, 1991; Fedden & Corbett, 2017; Audring, 2016; Dixon, 1986; Aikhenvald, 2000), or whether a language can embody both systems (described by Fedden & Corbett, 2017). In this talk I will argue that Norwegian nouns vary with regards to whether they are lexically specified for a gender or atomicity value, meaning that these features are found within the same language but in complementary distribution.
Norwegian is consistently reported to have three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Using novel data, I will show that neuter is not a gender, but rather a signal that the noun marker carries a +/-ATOMIC feature rather than a gender feature. I observe that neuter nouns are more restricted for grinding and portioning. Neuter nouns can be ground if the noun is bare but not if the NP is definite. Compare the masculine noun ‘appelsin’ to the neuter noun ‘apple’ below. Imagine a context in which you are being trained to work in a cake factory and the person training you points to a barrel of mashed oranges or apples and tells you that this mass will be added to some mixture.
|
(1) |
No |
tilset |
me |
appelsin |
/ |
eple. |
|
|
now |
add |
we |
orange.masc |
/ |
apple.neut |
|
|
‘Now we’re going to add orange / apple |
|||||
|
(2) |
No |
tilset |
me |
appelsin-en |
/ |
*eple-t. |
|
|
now |
add |
we |
orange-def.masc |
/ |
apple-def.neut |
|
|
‘Now we’re going to add the orange / apple |
|||||
For the indefinite portioned form, masculine and feminine nouns show article agreement according to their gender, but neuter nouns cannot be portioned using the neuter article:
|
(3) |
a. |
Kan |
eg |
få |
ein |
vin? |
|
|
|
can |
I |
have |
a.masc |
wine.masc |
|
|
|
‘Could I get a (glass/bottle of) wine?’ |
||||
|
|
b. |
Kan |
eg |
få |
ei |
suppe? |
|
|
|
can |
I |
have |
a.fem |
soup.fem |
|
|
|
‘Could I get a (bowl of) soup?’ |
||||
|
|
c. |
*Kan |
eg |
få |
eit |
vatn? |
|
|
|
can |
I |
have |
a.neut |
water.neut |
|
|
|
‘Could I get a (glass/bottle of) water?’ |
||||
The data shows that atomicity is intrinsic to neuter nouns, and so, I argue, it must be specified in the lexicon. This is represented in the syntax through a Noun Marker (NM) head (equivalent to other categorizing heads such as n, see Harris, 1991; Kramer, 2016), which carries the gender feature for gendered nouns, but a +/-ATOMIC feature when a gender feature is not present. My analysis implies that atomicity is in the lexical entry of some nouns but not others, within the same language. Gendered nouns are able to grind and portion via context and are free to do so because atomicity is not part of the computation (see Landman, 2011; Falkum, 2010; Pelletier, Kiss, Husić, 2021; Kiss, Pelletier, Husić, & Poppek, 2017; Cheng, Doetjes, & Sybesma, 2008; Ramchand & Svenonius, 2008). The analysis also somewhat unifies gender and classification by placing the two features in the same noun-marking head, while still treating them as different features with different properties and semantic content.