Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Determiners: articles and pronouns 781
3RD PERSON hij/zij/het ‘he/she/it’ [3] zij ‘they’ [3]
The conventions regulating the regular and the polite forms of the second person
pronouns are subjected to subjective, social and regional variation. Generally
speaking, the use of the polite form reflects a difference in social status or age, but it
may also reflect a lack of intimacy. In certain southern varieties of Dutch, the form
gij/ge is used as the subject form of the second person (singular and plural)
pronoun, and u as the regular object form; in other varieties of Dutch the form ge is
felt as archaic; cf. Haeseryn et al. (1997: 243ff.).
II. Third person pronouns
The traditional view is that singular third person pronouns are sensitive to the
gender of their antecedent: normally, the masculine pronoun is used when the noun
denoting the set containing the intended referent of the pronoun is also masculine,
and the same thing holds for the feminine and neuter pronouns. It must be noted,
however, that for many, especially northern speakers the distinction between
masculine and feminine nouns is on the decline, so that masculine pronouns are
often used where, according to the dictionary, only a feminine pronoun would be
appropriate. This means that other factors are involved in determining the choice of
the gender features of the pronoun.
The examples in (293) show that considerations of sex may overrule
considerations of syntactic gender. Although the noun meisje in (293a) takes the
article het, and is therefore formally a neuter noun, most speakers would find it
weird to use the neuter pronoun het to refer back to it; the feminine pronoun zij
‘she’ is the one normally used. Similarly, despite the fact that the noun phrase de
huisarts ‘the GP’ in (293b) is headed by a masculine noun, the feminine pronoun zij
can be felicitously used provided that the participants in the discourse know that the
referent of the noun phrase is a woman.
(293) a. Het meisje was ernstig ziek, maar ze/ *? het was gelukkig
the girl was seriously ill but she/it was fortunately
buiten levensgevaar.
outside peril of death
‘The girl was seriously ill, but she was fortunately not in peril of death.’
b. Ik ben bij de huisarts geweest en hij/zij zei dat alles goed was.
I am with the GP been and he/she said that everything well was
‘I have been to the doctor and he/she said that everything was ok.’
Other factors may be relevant as well. For example, there seems to be a tendency,
both in speech and in writing, to refer to institutional bodies by means of feminine
pronouns, even when the noun is neuter; cf. Haeseryn (1997:162) and De Vos
(2009). An example of this sort is found in (294).
(294) Gisteren is het bestuur[+neuter] samengekomen. Zij heeft besloten dat ...
yesterday is the board prt.-assembled. She has decided that
‘Yesterday, the board assembled. It decided that ...’