Chapter 3 The Dutch Situation - LOT publications

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The Dutch Situation pronouns. The personal pronouns, however, have remained unaffected by the erosion process: they mark three genders to this day. (17) Dutch gender agreement and gender distinctions Agreement target (type) Agreement target (category) Example forms een de [C] het [N] Attributive Relative pronoun Indefinite Definite Adjective Relative article article pronoun 52 mooi-e [C] mooi [N] die [C] dat [N] Number of genders 0 2 2 2 3 Personal pronoun Personal pronoun hij [M] zij [F] het [N] It is cross-linguistically typical that pronouns preserve distinctions that are lost elsewhere. Well-known examples are the dual number in Old English, preserved longest in the personal pronouns of the first and second person singular, and the oblique case visible in forms such as him, her or them in Modern English. For gender, paradigmatic splits such as that of Dutch are surprisingly common amongst Germanic languages. Of the standard languages, more than half have lost one or all of their nominal genders, whereas all of them still possess (at least) three gender distinctions in the pronominal paradigms (see Chapter 9). Thus, the Dutch facts fit well within the Germanic context and beyond. One of the immediate benefits of such typological knowledge is that it explains the role of the demonstrative pronouns. Demonstratives can be used as attributive modifiers in the NP. As such, they have participated in the deflection process. In contemporary Dutch, they pattern with the definite article and the relative pronouns in their gender marking and only distinguish common and neuter gender. (18) Dutch demonstrative pronouns Proximal Distal Common deze die Neuter dit dat However, demonstrative pronouns can be used as anaphors, just like personal pronouns. In this function, they provide a way out of the mismatch problem: unlike normal personal pronouns, they have the same gender values as the nouns and can agree syntactically. Thus, they replace the missing common gender anaphor. As we have seen, this may cause speakers to use a demonstrative in many of the contexts where an ordinary pronoun would be expected. In other respects, the Dutch situation is a hard nut to crack for linguistic analysis. One of the main challenges concerns the question of how many - and which -
53 Chapter 3 genders the language has. Since gender marking has partly been reduced by erosion, different targets answer the question differently. This calls for a critical assessment of the theoretical tools that are applied to the data. Analyses of gender systems generally build on the (often unquestioned) expectation that there is a homogeneous gender system with one gender per noun, which is visible on any relevant agreement target. Under this approach, all agreements are equally good gender evidence. This works fine for languages such as Spanish or German where the gender is generally the same throughout the agreement targets. 11 Thus, changing the noun in the following German examples changes all agreeing elements: determiners, relative pronouns and personal pronouns. Such faithful formal covariance represents a high degree of canonicity in gender agreement (see 2.4 above). (19) Wir fragten den Mann/ die Frau/ das Kind, we asked DEF.M man(M) DEF.F woman(F) DEF.N child(N) der/die/das mitgekommen war aber er/sie/es wusste nichts davon REL.M/F/N come_along was but 3.M/F/N knew nothing of_it ‘We asked the man/the woman/the child who had come along, but he/she/it knew nothing about it’ From this mini data set, it is easy to conclude that German has three genders. The approach yields less straightforward results for Dutch, because changing the nouns in the parallel Dutch examples does not have an effect on all the targets in the same way. (20) We vroegen de man/ vrouw / het kind, we asked DEF.C man/woman (C) DEF.N child(N) die/dat meegegaan was maar hij/zij/het wist er niets van REL.M/F/N come_along was but 3.M/F/N knew there nothing of With man and vrouw, only the pronouns change in dependency of the noun, whereas with child, all targets are affected. Thus, according to the articles and the relative pronouns, there are two genders – glossed as common and neuter – while according to the personal pronouns, there are three, the familiar masculine, feminine and neuter. 11 Actually, heterogeneities do appear when having a closer look. In German, indefinite determiners only distinguish feminine and non-feminine, many adjectival forms are syncretic and possessives look the same for masculine and neuter.
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Chapter 3 The Dutch Situation - LOT publications

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