Chapter 3 The Dutch Situation - LOT publications

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The Dutch Situation ‘... contains WARSTEINER Premium Pilsner only natural ingredients and the purest spring water. This is how it [lit.: she] gets its characteristic, fresh taste’ (advertisement supermarket magazine Allerhande 10/2006) c) dat het FB het zou betreuren that DEF.N faculty_administration(N) it would lament tov haar promotoren, haar promovendicoördinator with_regard_to POSS.F supervisors POSS.F PhD_coordinator(C) en haar promovendi dat ze op dit moment and POSS.F PhD_students dat 3.F at DEM.N moment(N) wegens geldgebrek haar beleid niet kan waarmaken? because_of money_lack(N) POSS.F policy(N) not can realize ‘that the FB [faculty administration] would be sorry that it [lit.: she] is unable to realize its (lit. her) policy with regard to its [lit.: her] supervising staff, its [lit.: her] PhD coordinator and its [lit.: her] PhD students because of lack of money?’ (official communication, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) While the feminine for common gender collectives may be the remnant of a historical usage pattern, the feminine pronoun for neuter nouns is in all likelihood a case of hypercorrection (Van der Sijs 2003: 269) Most recently, examples can be found that do not meet the criterion ‘collective’. Such cases can be considered opportunistic attempts to exploit the high style associated with feminine pronouns. Two examples from advertising texts are given under (15). (15) a) Dit tropische eiland zal je echt verbazen met DEM.N tropical island(N) will you really astonish with haar hagelwitte stranden POSS.F hail_white beaches ‘This tropical island will really astonish you with its [lit.: her] snow white beaches’ (advertisement in daily newspaper Metro 19-08-2004) b) Toch is dit ontwerp persoonlijk, passend bij het yet is DEM.N design(N) personal fitting with DEF.N huis en haar omgeving house(N) and POSS.F surrounding 50
51 Chapter 3 ‘Yet this design is personal, matching the house and its [lit.: her] surroundings’ (http://www.siergras.nl/frameset/tuinontwerp.php) Presumably, the writers of the advertisements wanted to boost their products by the use of the feminine haar. Another striking example, cited under (16), supports the hypothesis that such usage is indeed detached from any of the usual semantic properties associated with the feminine pronoun, in particular, the femininity of the referent. Clearly, “King Winter” is (metaphorically) male. (16) Als Koning Winter haar intrede heeft gedaan... when king(C) winter(C) POSS.F entry has done ‘when King Winter has made his [lit.: her] entry...’ (http://www.bnbdeuitspanning.nl/omgeving.html) The examples given above underline the fact that such cases have little to do with ‘ordinary’ gender agreement. After all, gender is usually thought of as a lexical feature, with agreement that cannot be manipulated at will for the sake of certain pragmatic effects. Moreover, we will see in Chapter 5 that this usage of haar for inanimate entities is not found in spontaneous speech. For these reasons, this particular phenomenon will be kept separate and will not be discussed in any more detail in the present book. After this brief look at the history of the Dutch gender problem and its echoes in grammar writing and language usage, it is time to return to a more theoretical view on the issue. In the remainder of this chapter, we will have a brief look at the analytical challenges that the contemporary Dutch gender system poses for linguistic investigation. 3.2 Challenges for linguistic analysis Generally speaking, the Dutch history of gender loss by syncretism is perfectly in line with well-known diachronic developments. There is cross-linguistic evidence that erosion of morphosyntactic markers affects some agreement targets before others: Priestly (1983), Marchese (1988) and Corbett (1991: 143) provide evidence in favour of a hierarchical order in which categories lose formal exponents. Erosion usually starts on the noun itself, before progressing to attributive elements, verbs and, last of all, to personal pronouns. Of course, the development does not necessarily carry through to all the positions in the hierarchy. However, the unaffected elements are predicted to be lower on the scale. The Dutch facts confirm the typological pattern. Erosion has removed the gender markers on the noun and reduced those on the attributive elements, even if this is to different degrees. The indefinite article is the same for all genders. The definite article and the adjective can mark the distinction between common and neuter gender. The same two-gender pattern is found in the paradigm of the relative
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Chapter 3 The Dutch Situation - LOT publications

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